Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-30157838-20170208182455/@comment-28266772-20170210151401

'The great wolf leaped through the air like a malicious streak of midnight, pointed fangs bared and snarling as it...'

"No, no no, that's not right either..."

'[This is just a minor formatting thing, but I think to make it clearer you should put the ‘written’ section in italics and keep the speech in quote marks. At a glance, I initially read it as two people exchanging dialogue]'

Henry gave the paper beneath him a sneer before crumpling it up into a ball. Hours of work down the drain, just like every other story he had written in the past month. It all lacked pizzazz, energy, something was missing...he [… he] shook his head, wrinkled skin curling into a bulldog-like frown. He knew his style remained firm, and his mind was certainly still sharp, but for the life of him he just could not write something to his liking. [that last line felt a bit wordy]

Perhaps it was just a case of his age. Henry was certainly getting on in years, and his ideas for new horrific tales [I’d also put ‘horrific tales’ in Italics] were becoming fewer by the day. It felt as if he had tread all the ground he was able, wild and horrific beasts, spirits from beyond this world, vampires that stalked the night, he had done it all. Now, he just wanted nothing more than to retire, but he knew he could not without one last hurrah, one final tale of true, unyielding terror to chill his audience to the bone like never before, but he just could not put ink to page properly. [the preceding sentence is two long and repeatedly stitches clauses together with ‘but’] Just in the past week alone he had scrapped over a dozen new concepts, and the number was only growing by the day.

Matilda, lovely wife that she was, brought him food day after day, knowing how her husband would get so caught up in his writing, but he had done little more than pick at it every time, so obsessed with the creation of his magnum opus that he barely took his eyes off the page. Sleep was rare, as were trips outside of his bedroom in general, the bags underneath his eyelids a clear indication of his fatigue in what now seemed like a fruitless endeavor. Henry banged his hand on the mahogany and cursed aloud, slumping over in his chair and withdrawing a new parchment from his writing desk, dipping quill in ink once again and turning his thoughts to the page.

'In the moonlit town of Ravensbrook...'

Henry screamed in frustration and swept his hand over the wood before him, scattering papers everywhere. None of it was good enough for his public! He could not let himself go out with the tripe that had been his last novel, they all deserved something better! This was a legacy he had to uphold! As he rest his bald head in his aged, gnarled fingers, there was a knock on the door, the wood creaking open as Matilda poked her head into the room.

"Perhaps you'd best get some rest, dear?"

The writer shook his head.

"No...just some fresh air. That's all I need..." [noted once before but generally ellipses are best followed by a space i.e. No… just--]

Henry wobbled to his feet, grabbing his coat off the rack beside the door and passing his wife by, walking downstairs and into the foggy streets of London. As his spats clacked against the lamp-lit cobblestone, he briefly pondered how long it had been since he had taken a trip outside. It may have been days, perhaps even weeks, but he knew it had been some time since the cold London air had filled his lungs...this would hopefully be good for him. He was far more accustomed to the indoors, to the worlds in his pages, but the long block he had been facing was beginning to drive the old writer absolutely mad.

'[So as we’re clearly moving onwards I think it’s worth noting that as I’m reading this, right now, I feel as though the last 500-600 words were a bit unnecessary. I remain unsure about the setting and time; instinctively the voice makes me think of a contemporary setting but some things like ‘spats’ and ‘horrific tales’ and the fact this guy is writing with pen and paper make me suspect the setting is more twenties/Lovecraftian. I think a lot of words have been spent demonstrating that this guy is a frustrated writer when, honestly, you achieved that in the first paragraph and set about reinforcing it without really contributing much to the following few paragraphs.'

'In other words, your introduction achieves very little. It’s written well and it engages the reader with a sense of futility but I question if it’s the best use of time when you demonstrate the writer’s frustrations very effectively in the first few sentences. I think there’s a lot of fat that could get trimmed down.]'

The novelist met with but a single soul on his extensive walk through the gloomy, bending streets, a curious man clad in many coats despite the relatively average (albeit rather depressing,) [<- extra comma] weather. This stranger looked almost ready for seven feet of snow instead of what could be potentially be [delete; be] some light drizzling [drizzle] at the most, [.] a [A] scarf and a dusty old top hat concealing [concealed] most of his face save for his piercing blue eyes. He appeared wider than he likely was, buried under all those layers of clothing, and though it was impossible to tell his age, this stranger certainly seemed to be an older man judging by his deep, mature voice when he spoke.

"Mister Coville, out and about on the town this evening, hm?"

The writer gave the figure a short glare before continuing on his way. He had no time for fans right now, he was in the midst of a crisis! Conversing with his public could come after his masterpiece was complete, and not a moment earlier. His ears perked up, though, despite his hearing being as weak as it was, at what the stranger said next, those ocean eyes shimmering in the moonlight.

<p class="MsoNormal">"I believe I may have the solution for what ails you."

<p class="MsoNormal">Henry spun around and gave the bizarrely dressed gentleman a yellow-toothed sneer.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Feh."

<p class="MsoNormal">The color in the stranger's irises swirled into a deeper blue, speaking not a word [this is unclear – it makes it sound like the stranger’s irises have not spoken a word when you probably mean that the stranger did not speak a word] but outstretching [outstretching feels weird in this sentence] a gloved hand instead, a brown cloth bag held loosely in his palm. Coville shook in righteous anger for a moment, then relaxed, pulling his hat down over his aged and tired eyes before snatching the sack away with a grumble, turning on his heel and walking to whence he came. '[the little flourish; ‘to whence he came’ feels artificial; is he really returning from where he came? Is he going home? If so why was it not made clear that he’d turned around on his walk to cut it short? Etc.] 'The mysterious stranger quickly disappeared as the writer put distance between them, lost in the thick fog as easily as he had emerged. It had been a curious encounter, to be sure, but he had no time to ponder such doldrums. The writer had his work to attend to.

<p class="MsoNormal">Henry placed his hat and coat on the rack once he walked back into the relative warmth of his home, giving Matilda a short nod before retreating once more to his study, failing to mention to his beloved his [repetition of ‘his’ when ‘the’ would make a good substitute for the second] encounter with the stranger on the moonlit streets. She would only worry about him more, and the last thing he needed was '[were? I’m not sure if I’m right here but I think it reads better with ‘were’ but I’m far from %100 sure] 'more interruptions. The bag thudded onto the writing desk as Coville sat down, taking quill in hand once more as he plunged into another attempt to bring terror to the masses.

<p class="MsoNormal">It was less than five minutes before the paper was scrapped, the old wordsmith pounding his wrinkled fists into the mahogany in another fit of rage. The night air had done nothing for his writer's block, it seemed. Henry grumbled underneath his breath, tossing the crumpled ball behind him and into the pile. The clock seemed to taunt him, ticking and tocking incessantly, over and over, the only other sound the writer heard being that of his own pounding heart as the silence finally overwhelmed him. So long had been spent in this room with only his thoughts, but now even those had stopped. Aged fingers clutched his temples, trying to conjure up new ideas for scares, for stories, but the well had run dry, Henry's best ideas for his writing had already come and gone. Part of him considered dismantling this project altogether, it was better to quit while you were ahead, after all. No use sullying his good name with another trashy novel. He may not end on a particularly high note, but still...

<p class="MsoNormal">The old man's eyes moved to the burlap bag sitting next to his extra quills, his tongue briefly running over his lips to wet them. The stranger he had gotten it from was suspicious, no doubt about that, but he could not help but be intrigued. He had told nobody about his recent battles with his writing but his dear wife, and he found it hard to believe that the no doubt rather humid stranger was even an acquaintance to Matilda, much less somebody she would have told her husband's troubles to. What did he have to lose? His options were already extinguished anyways.

<p class="MsoNormal">Gnarled and bony digits struggled with the tight rope wrapped around the top of the bag, Henry's teeth gritting together as he pulled and stretched the bindings. It was not made of any material he had expected, that was for certain. The light of his lantern now made abundantly clear that this was no nylon or polyester, it was instead a deep scarlet, and had a texture that could only be described as sinewy. It was wound together as rope was, tied like rope was, but it was something curious and altogether different.

<p class="MsoNormal">Henry found little time to ponder this bizarre material, managing to open the bag just as soon as he noticed the strange texture within his fingers, his eyes now occupied with what was inside of the bag rather than what had held it shut. Oily black tendrils slithered outwards and wrapped around his fingers, each one resembling long, tangled masses of human hair. If he looked closely, he could almost see the split ends, hundreds of tiny follicles wriggling against his flesh and expanding ever outwards, moving from his fingers to his palms within seconds, swallowing his forearms before he could process the situation at hand.

<p class="MsoNormal">A look of fear the likes of which he had never known crossed his face, and his exhausted gaze now sparkled with what seemed to be a glint of inspiration. This was all so horrifying, so undoubtedly bizarre...it had been exactly what he had been looking for. Henry Coville laughed as the snaking locks began to consume him, shaky hands reaching for his quill as the vines plunged within his cackling lips, spilling between his teeth and stuffing his throat with their wriggling presence. It took less than three minutes after opening the bag for the writer's world to go black.

<p class="MsoNormal">Henry awoke in a desert of gray ash, naked and cold.

<p class="MsoNormal">The Shepard and the Flock

<p class="MsoNormal">The old writer coughed as he struggled to his feet, wrinkled fingers wrapped around his body for warmth. The temperature had been the first thing he noticed, then the snow falling from the sickly green sky. Henry's waking mind briefly pondered if it was winter, but as his eyes came into focus he noticed that it was anything but, finally beginning to take in the landscape around him.

<p class="MsoNormal">That was no snow, it was falling cinders, only adding onto what must have been miles of the stuff underneath his feet. As strange as it was, the phenomenon was not concerning, at least not as much as what was dropping the smoldering embers from on high. The sea of vomit green above him was only pierced by large pointed spikes that emerged seemingly at random across the sky, all of varying sizes but each one at the very least several hundred feet long. They thinned from a wide base into a narrow point that, for some of the sky-structures, nearly reached the wasteland below.

<p class="MsoNormal">These spikes were not the source of the ashen snowfall, however. That would be the ghoulish corpses bound to the rock with heavy iron chains, hundreds of them, their mouths all opened and spilling forth the noxious clouds of gray smoke endlessly, their deposits falling to the ground unceremoniously and adding to the endless spread Henry currently stood on. The old writer shook at the very sight, his lips moving as if trying to form words, but no sound came. He had been a master of terror, of fear, and yet he had never felt anything such as this in his life.

<p class="MsoNormal">Weakly, Henry moved a hand to his chest to ensure he was still alive, that his heart was still beating as his gaze focused on the ash-belching carcasses above, finding little comfort even when he felt the familiar thump-thump beneath his ribs. His knees wobbled, but he took a step forward, then another, beginning his slow trek through the endless sea of cinder as his eyes turned to the horizon. There was naught but a row of mountains in the distance, all taller than any he supposed existed around London, but the writer had nowhere else to turn. All around him, the substance under his feet built on top of the many layers that came before, endless hills of ash that carried on for miles...where else was he to go but the mountain?

<p class="MsoNormal">Henry considered it a sign that he had a purpose in this place, a glimmer of hope within his heart...surely, this all was a gift? Never before had he laid eyes on anything so astoundingly horrific, so unthinkably strange, already he could feel the words to his magnum opus begin to take form within his mind! As he stumbled forward, a sort of madness building from his newfound determination, Henry began to cackle to himself, teeth chattering from the cold. He would make the trip, even if it killed him. What else was there to do?

<p class="MsoNormal">It seemed like he had been walking for hours by the time he came across the skull. It was that of a ram, perhaps twice the size it should have been, partially buried in the dunes, the ridges on the horns caked with the smoldering dust from on high. As soon as Henry saw the skull, he froze in his tracks. There had been nothing else this whole journey thus far that he had seen, nothing aside from the endless cinders beneath and the silent corpses trapped on their rocky prisons above. Surely, this was a sign.

<p class="MsoNormal">Coville crouched down, placing one hand on the shifting embers beneath him to steady himself as he tried to get a closer look, his entire body shaking and his skin starting to take on a bluish hint from the overwhelming cold. At first, there was nothing out of the ordinary, in fact, sights like this should be expected in such a desolate wasteland, but there hung a lingering dread in the pit of Henry's gut. His mind could not process this newly alien thing in this hellish nightmare, paranoia beginning to set in about what it could signify. There had been nothing on the path behind him, nothing for hours and hours, what could it all mean?! Was he to die, the skull a sign of death for the journey ahead? Was it a threat from the reaper himself, or whatever creature ruled this hellscape? Perhaps this place had already driven him mad. Henry reached a quaking arm outwards.

<p class="MsoNormal">Just before his finger brushed against white bone, a dreadful ringing filled his ears, then a deafening shriek, the old writer taken aback enough to draw his hand away. The noises only lasted a short few seconds, but the silence did not last long, the air now echoing with a potent squelching, the sickening gurgles pervading the old man's senses and drawing his eyes directly towards the gaze of the skull before him. Two bloodshot eyeballs lurched their way out of (presumably,) where the brain on the ram would be, each taking their place in respective sockets before continuing their movement upwards. Thick veins coiled up and up, forming grotesque stalks that held the calm, steady stare of their eyes upright, like the stalks one would expect on a snail.

<p class="MsoNormal">[Fuckin’ awesome]

<p class="MsoNormal">The eyes on top of these eye [I think the second ‘eye’ is a mistake] stalks turned and twisted on their new perches, unblinking as they moved not with focus but through sheer subconscious will. Each pupil swirled and glanced in constantly shifting directions, pinballs within their milky white prisons, always bouncing, bouncing. Henry fell onto his rear, scrambling backwards as the shifting cinders moved, the dead ram's body writhing underneath the ashes as it slowly began to pull itself out of the dune. In lieu of hooves, the creature had human feet, flesh still sticking to the bone, its toes wriggling as it dragged itself forward with great effort. The jaw of the skull snapped open and it screeched, a second set of legs revealing themselves, then a third, then a fourth, the tendons that remained clenching as if every pull forward it made was pure agony. This ram (or something close to it,) was in pure, unbridled torment.

<p class="MsoNormal">The unnaturally long abdomen stretched on for what must have been twenty feet, a haphazard collection of random bones that served little purpose other than to hold the wretched thing together, small clumps of messy black hair bursting out between the cracks. The ram's screaming and the sounds of its bones snapping and lurching were louder in Henry's ears than they should have been, the old man giving a pained howl of his own as rivulets of blood began pouring out of either one of his ears, the horrific sounds soon replaced with a loud ringing. He had gone deaf.

<p class="MsoNormal">Gnarled fingers clawed at either side of his head, trying in desperation to make what was now an insufferable shriek end, part of his mind expecting to be trampled as more skulls made themselves visible in the quaking ashen dune, dozens of them. Each one sprouted its own eye stalks, repeating the very same process the first did, a herd of the things all buried beneath the ashes and struggling to be free. They were grotesque centipedes, their pained moans and eager, piglike squeals still able to find their way into Henry's mind despite his deafness, bouncing off the walls in his skull and forcing him into a writhing mess on the ground. Surprisingly, the flock of rams slowly passed him by with their lunging gaits as they freed themselves from the hill they had been trapped in, the naked human in their wake of little consequence to them. He was not an intruder, it was simply as if he was not there.

<p class="MsoNormal">As a finale to this erupting carnival of bone, the last of the ash dune swept away to reveal a creature much bigger than that of the others, its skull adorned with hundreds of tiny holes from which sprang eyes of all shapes and sizes. When their stalks began to emerge, they twisted and wrapped around one another, congealing into a fleshy heap hanging between the horns, twitching and unblinking as the thing's many legs began to shuffle outwards. Henry was so focused on the birth of eyes and the screaming in his head that he only now noticed the beast's rider, a pale, skinny thing with arms that nearly dragged into the ashy sands below him and a neck that stretched up, up, up, the writer just barely able to make out a ruby-lipped grimace in those sunken, wrinkled features.

<p class="MsoNormal">For whatever reason, Henry's mind sprang to his work, and he immediately found need for a pen and paper to write down what he saw. This was the thing he had been looking for, the shock, the pizzazz, a thing to truly bring fear into the masses. A shepherd and his twisted flock.

<p class="MsoNormal">"My muse! My muse!"

<p class="MsoNormal">As the old man began to cackle, that perilously long neck craned down to observe him, watching those gnarled fingers desperately grasp at the desert beneath him as Coville struggled to hold on to his sanity. Its baggy eyes blinked once, and just before its mount galloped into the horizon with the rest of the herd, it spoke a single word in response, voice raspy and echoing.

<p class="MsoNormal">"No."

<p class="MsoNormal">The writer wept and curled himself into a tight ball in the sea of ash below, choking and sobbing as the otherworldly cattle sped off to gods knew where. The cold grabbed him again, as if to keep him on his way, and his hearing slowly returned now that the deafening shrieks of the skeletal beasts had finally faded. Henry worked himself to his feet with some effort, and as he began lurching his way towards the mountain, he stared upwards, and heard that the chained corpses were now wailing.

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">Holy fucking shit, that delivered! I think most of my thoughts are put into the annotations but I’ll sum up a bit more neatly.

<p class="MsoNormal">The first section suffers. It lacks a sense of time and place and it labours on endlessly to establish the sort of framing device that could have actually been revealed in much less time. I felt like you were trying to gauge a sort of Lovecraftian style but it felt a little odd. I think you’re writing is just a bit too contemporary which is hardly a bad thing, but it did mean that the first section felt… ''off. ''I think you could cut the word count and with a few little markers you could establish the location and time much more effectively.

<p class="MsoNormal">But then the second section sums up why that style of yours isn’t a bad thing. It works perfectly. It’s imaginative, weird, impressive, engaging, frightening, and many many other things. There are no notes to write on the second half at all – it’s just a fucking great and interesting read and I look forward to the next two ‘muses’.