Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26893881-20150801113443/@comment-26425680-20150801151006

You have a decent idea, one that could be incredibly effective with better writing. The problem is your writing style, which is bloated and inefficient. You could probably delete about 20% of the words you've written and the story wouldn't suffer for it. Here's an example:

"There were problems on the motorway as we got closer to Stoke caused by an accident on the M6 and road works which really put us behind schedule, so my wife called her parents and she told them that we should get there in the early hours of the morning."

You used 50 words to tell us that traffic was slow, and that you called ahead to say you'd be late. Since you didn't really add too many details of importance (beyond you being late), most of this is wasted effort. Try something like this:

"There was an accident on the M6 that slowed traffic to a crawl. Shelly called her parents to tell them we wouldn't be arriving until well after dark."

I named your wife Shelly, BTW. Anyway, that was 28 words, and it relays the exact same information as the passage above, just more efficiently. It even plants the idea of darkness in the readers mind, which is important for later.

Let's try another passage:

"I then suddenly drove past what looked like a derelict school and then my daughter woke up and said, “Daddy, look at those blood covered and burnt people watching us.” While eerily smiling at me." (35 words)

If we trim the fat, we get:

"I drove past a derelict school. My daughter woke up and said, "Daddy, look at those blood covered and burnt people watching us." She was smiling eerily."

Do you see how those omitted words added nothing to the original paragraph? Now let's try to rewrite that again, but this time, we'll add a little style:

"I soon found myself driving past a derelict school. Broken windows and clinging vines betrayed its once striking architecture.

Emily called out eerily from the back seat. "Daddy, why are those burned people looking at us?" (36 words)

This is about the same length as the original passage, but instead of being wasteful, the words are used to set an eerie mood. To be clear, my point isn't that you should go around counting your words. Instead, it's about the importance of making sure every single word is meaningful and necessary. For a story this short, you don't have the luxury of pointless words and meaningless paragraphs.