Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26444401-20160202234008/@comment-26399604-20160203060531

Hi LexPetitxVampire,

I felt your story lacks description to help sell the creepiness of the moment. First, there was no real description for the abandoned Mechanic garage. There should be some depiction on how rundown the building was. You could describe: the walls, the lighting, or even the overall atmosphere.

There was also a part in the story where the main character mentioned the inside of the building was beautiful. With no indication to how the setting appears, I was confused in the context of this word: was the inside, cleaner than expected or rather did the place have the appearance the protagonist preferred for their abandon explorations?

Next, it is mentioned that there were flies buzzing over a coyote's corpse. I feel there should be more detail for this moment. There was no reference to the smell of the corpse prior to seeing it or how the character felt when seeing it - this could be a great way to start to twist the "thrill" of this particular abandon exploration to a more uneasy feeling. You can even describe the annoyance of that many flies (smacking up against the protagonist's face and buzzing in their ear continuously). +For this: "I refuse to learn Spanish and anyone who gets angry at me, I just say Ich spreche kein Spanish. Unless I am in an all Spanish speaking country. 

''But the whole Ich spreche kein Spanisch usually shuts them up. Because at that point, I’m not even speaking English.'' "

I feel this part is a bit out of place. It kind of retracts from the story. After seeing the Spanish words, you could just say something along the grounds of: "I didn't understand Spanish and I refused to learn it."

Another nice little touch could be the indication that someone is present among the place. You could describe areas where it looks like things were moved recently or a makeshift bed, or whatever. These could act as foreshadowing elements and all the while, continue to take the fun away from exploring these types of places for the protagonist.

Lastly, I would describe the crazed young man more - is he thin and frail looking like he's been starving? Is he wearing torn, ragged clothing? Does he smell? What does the mark on his forehead look like? Compare the mark to something so we as the reader can know.

In the end, you could state whether this experience has ruined abandon building explorations for the protagonist or not.

Overall, the story lacks descriptions which are a key piece to setting up the tone and depictions for the reader. This story does more telling versus showing. These are my thoughts on it. I hope this helps. Good luck and happy writing! :)

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Last note, you have several areas with incomplete sentences.

+Example:

+By no means was the building beautiful. It was a brown stucco structure[,] not that uncommon in a place like California.

+ The drug cartels didn’t start using these buildings until sundown, but we’d be in Vegas at that point [-] not to get married!

++(The "{}" show where the fragment is, but to prevent a long run-on sentence, I cleaned it up a bit)

+Original: +Before we stopped in at my favorite diner in town, I decided to take him to explore an abandoned mechanic’s garage on the edge of the town. {or at least the main drag.} He was into cars, so I figured it’d be a cool thing to show him

+Revised: Before we stopped at my favorite diner in town, I decided to take him exploring. It was an abandoned mechanic’s garage on the edge of the town. To the least, I figured I show him the main drag, since he was into cars.