Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24859608-20140505145720/@comment-24077689-20140506165106

You’re already off to a pretty bad start. You’re dealing with a pretty massively cliché subject.

I like the set up, with the parents, but you really need to work on how you set up dialogue. It should look something like this:

“…I asked them, ‘why are you going to Savannah, if you’re not doing car sales there?’

My mom replied, ‘we are checking out some of the haunted sites.’”

Drop down for the replies; otherwise it is just sort of a chore to read. Now, moving onto the next point of interest: your grammar. You misuse the ellipses a lot. Which if you’ve spent any time around the forums you’d know is my number one fucking pet peeve. The ellipsis is not to be used to replace spaces, commas, periods, etc. For example, in the sentence where your protagonist says “So ghosts are rea…?” you don’t have to have a question mark there, first of all, it’s implied that he’s asking a question anyway. Second of all, you shouldn’t be using an ellipsis there. You should be using a hyphen or a double dash as such:

“’So ghosts are rea—‘ I started to reply, when my dad cut me off…”

I’m using ellipses to show that I’m cutting the quote short, that there is more there. It looks so much neater than it did before. You really shouldn’t be using ellipses in your story, generally, most of the time it’s not necessary at all.

This set up is really sloppy. So they’re car salespeople and they’re gone all the time. So they’re going to take a mini-vacation to check out haunted sites without their children? Whom they don’t see very often? And they only offer to take one kid? Like, the other kids would be mad jelly, my dude.

I’m a little confused about this kid’s motivations. On one hand he wants to go because he’s interested in ghosts. Then you imply that he doesn’t believe in ghosts then HE implies that he does believe in ghosts. I think the main motivation would be more believable if he just, I don’t know, wanted to spend some quality time with his neglectful parents or something. But who knows, that could be too far-fetched.

So the 17Hundred90 Hotel (man, what a name!) is used “for ghost purposes”. What the ever loving fuck does that even mean? What are ghost purposes? That’s really silly and just sounds kind of juvenile.

Read this out loud to yourself, you’ll see awkward phrasing like “to a man by the last name Steele”. For that sentence to work you’d have to set it up differently. It’d read much smoother if it was “to a man by the last name of Steele.” That little time 2-letter addition makes all the difference.

Clearly, this isn’t a small hotel. I’m wondering how they know that the watch was on the roof?

This ghostly activity is mad cliché. It’s like a downplayed version of 1408. I’m wondering what the “pictures that were already orbs” are, as well. You’ve got some seriously weird phrasing in this story.

I’ll give you some kudos for the frozen mirror image, that’s not something I’ve heard before. That’s interesting. So I think it’s safe to assume that this kid is pretty young, most likely 10 or 11, I’m assuming. You expect me to believe that he just instinctively recognizes that it’s the Lord’s Prayer backwards?

And now he’s an insomniac? Come the fuck on, man. Try to be a bit less cliché, please. Also, stop borrowing scenes from the movie 1408, man.

So now they’re locked into the room? Hmm… that doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard of before. And I thought all the light fixtures were new? Why are they suddenly old and rusty?

<p class="MsoNormal">Why was the mom relieved? They’re not contacting an evil, sinister, demon. Ashes? What’s the deal with ashes? I don’t recall a single mention of them before.

<p class="MsoNormal">Yeah, carbon monoxide wouldn’t be making you hallucinate.

<p class="MsoNormal">Yeah, the ending was confusing as fuck.

<p class="MsoNormal">You seem to have put WAY more effort into the beginning of this story than you did the end. The ending is convoluted, trite, ugly, unclear, confusing. This could use a lot of work. And even if you did put a lot of work in it, it’ll still be a cheap knock-off of  a John Cusack movie which was an adaption of a Stephen King story.