Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-44778745-20200102183947/@comment-28266772-20200107154846

As i[capitalisation] opened my eyes

I saw myself sitting on a bench in what appeared to be a small suburban playground. Green steel pipes and bright plastic with old laquered [lacquered] hardwood pieces surrounded by a dark brown mulch. The type you would see in most Midwestern American states. The mulch was still damp, and I [capitalisation]  could smell the steam and musky fog from it mixing with the clean, warm, air that you tend to get after a rainy night. [I like this but I think I think you could nix the bit after “mixing”]

I cleaned the fog from my glasses and looked around. On the ground, there was something colorful that caught my eye. Amongst the soil and mulch, I saw the corner of   [so for the sake of conciseness, I’d replace “something” in the previous sentence with “a small brightly colored object”]. It was a Rubik's Cube. I walked over and picked it up[comma] examining it. I've never been too excited over puzzles and such. [capitalisation] but something made me take an interest in this one.

[because of the sort of dream logic you use, I don’t think you need to say “I’ve never been into puzzles.” You have the reader interested and that’s all that matters, you don’t need to go that extra step]

I sat down with it on one of the old hardwood benches. By all means it looked average, nothing interesting or seemingly special about it; cleaning it off revealed bright colors printed with stickers and the cheap plastic of the moving pieces. And yet, something inside compelled me to try and solve the small plastic puzzle. '[I don’t think you need the compulsion element. Most people will just fiddle with a Rubik’s cube quite naturally. The uncanniness of this story will come through te mood you create, not necessarily from how the cube forces you to solve it]'

As I began to shift one of the sides I felt some resistance not from the cube but from my own hand. Yet still I was pushed, by some unseen thing to keep going [<- this bit is actually fine, and the perfect moment to start hinting to the audience about the cube controlling the narrator]. I heard a slight whispering sound and felt more resistance from my hand, it was uncomfortable, it was getting painful, but I [capitalisation] kept going. and as [capitalisation] I finally shifted the side in the place

[formatting error] my finger immediately bent back and snapped. [conciseness: drop immediately (things don’t snap slowly, it’s a sharp hard word that invokes immediacy] and consider whether you need to say “bent”. I’d cut at least one of those words to get  either“my finger immediately snapped backwards” or “my finger bent backwards and snapped”.]

The pain was intense, yet I couldn't scream, or curse, nor could I stop myself from further progressing with the puzzle[I think you can word that last bit in a more concise, snappier, way]. I shifted another side, my hands now almost completely out of my control. As it fell into place another snap, my bottom two fingers on my other hand crack backwards with a sickening pop '[“sickening pop” is a lot of fun. I think you should start with it so it goes something like “As it fell into place I heard a sickening pop, my bottom two fingers snapping backwards something something rest of the sentence” '. I looked around, "could anyone see this?" I thought. [you repeat this idea almost immediately afterwards] But no as my eyes searched the bright colorful pipes and plastic of the play area. [comma, not full stop] I could see people but it seemed as though they could not see me '[how does it seem like this? Do they not look at him? Are they looking elsewhere?]'.

My right hand grabbed the first two layers and shifted them to the left [full stop] as I did I felt my entire wrist twist and then violently snap [this is a bit repetitive, you over-use snap] on my left hand. The pain was unbearable, [full stop] As I looked at my mangled disfigured hands I [capitalisation] felt nauseous and silently begged for whatever was doing this to stop [a good image to consider would be the way broken bones look/move under the skin]. I moved the left side of the cube and felt something pull on my shoulder until with another loud pop it came loose. [Again, this is all very repetitive] The strained, forced, smile still not leaving my face. [I don’t remember the smile]

The next thing I felt was my left leg being pulled to the side until it also popped out at my hip and thigh. I could hear giggling and whispers as my hands continued with their work.

One by one I felt each tendon and bone pop, every sliding bone [repetition] and firing nerve sending me further into this self contained hell. "This has to be a nightmare, right?" Though I [I] knew it wasn't. You cant [can’t] feel nightmares; and this pain was most certainly real. I could see my knuckles and bones jutting and bulging through the bruised skin at odd angles [here we go, that’s a good bit of description]. I wanted to scream. Scream or cry or curse and yell so badly... but nothing came out, my face stayed contorted in a calm grin. The [The] childish whispers and giggling became louder.

On the last turn there was only one row of one color left to move. I felt a sharp pain in the side of my neck[full stop] I felt my chin being moved to the side. Somehow the cube dropped for [from] my hands. I watched as it rolled away. taking the voices and giggling sadistic laughter with it. I'm not sure if it was sheer luck or if it was some last throw of strength I had, or maybe this was the cube still taunting me but I didn’t [didn’t] care. I somehow managed through heavy labored breaths to get up and crawl away on what was left of my broken limbs.

Even through the intense pain I was just glad it was over I was so glad that I made it. I felt like the man who escaped hell itself. if i couldve [I could’ve] seen what ever was giggling and whispering to me earlier, puppeteering my hands this whole time, i wouldve laughed [I would’ve]. I [I] know it sounds crazy, but the sheer relief mixed with the defiant anger at being placed in this situation. '[this reaction doesn’t make sense to me because it’s specified as something he’d do only if he saw the puppeteer? But you say it like it’s in response to the general experience?]'

Then I happened to hear a young child run up behind me. Completely oblivious to the Broken Man crawling away from him. He picked up the Box[colon, new line for speech->] "hey[Hey], only one side left." I tried to lift my head up from the damp mulch and yell at the kid. He quickly shifted it into place and ran back to show his parents.

Before I could even shout at him to stop everything went dark.

-

Mechanical errors: still a hell of a lot. You have to use a spellchecker, it’d catch 99% of the obvious ones.

Style issues: so you make a deliberate effort to describe things and the improvement is colossal. Seriously, congrats on actually coming back with a new edition. Most people aren’t willing to face up to the gruelling task of learning/improving. Still, you have a lot of work ahead of you starting with issues of repetition. I’d recommend looking at your use of words like snap, pop, etc which are overused in this story. There are definite nuggets of good writing in this, but I can see you struggling to fill in the word count. My advice is to cut what you can’t find justification for and to revisit the final “oomph” of the story.

Don’t forget this is an early attempt for you, and you should feel free to experiment and not commit to dragging this exact version up to standards. Maybe give it a day and think if there are other ways to approach this story? The core concept is good but consider rewriting it with a subtle twist. Maybe we only see the aftermath of the cube’s destruction, and it’s up to a different protagonist to piece together the grotesque folded corpse found on a playground? At the end of the day there’s only so many ways you can say “I turned a bit of the cube and the motion was mirrored in my flesh”, and if you keep saying it over and over it’s inevitable that repetition will set in. Maybe only having that event occur once or twice is all that's necessary? That way it's impact is maximised.