Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28466248-20160720234744/@comment-28266772-20160721140752

The theater sat dormant for years after being left by the owners. Many of us don't [<- this should be in past tense, or you should clarify the chronological relationship e.g. “Many of us still don’t”] know why they left the theater to rot or why they even thought of it [thought of what?]. Me and some friends decided to go investigate the place in hopes of finding answers.

So we met at the theater '[<- you tend to repeat words. This is the third instance of ‘theatre’ in less than 50 words] 'around midnight with some crowbars and began to force the old wooden door open. The door gave us a bit of a struggle but we were able to pop the door [<- repetition with door] open. The smell of mold and mildew hit us in an instant and we backed up and coughed our lungs out. After what seemed to be a curtain of death soon became nothing but air '[<- awkward wording. The subject, object, action relationship isn’t super clear, plus try to avoid uncertain language unless it’s actually relevant e.g. seems, mostly, nearly, almost etc. People tend to overuse these words as filler]'. We finally got our wits [<- awkward wording, not really how you’d use the word ‘wits’] and went inside the relic of a building, still seemingly '[<- see, exactly what I mean. A better word here would be ‘appeared’ or ‘apparently’] 'untouched by life. The lobby had posters of old, [no comma] pasted on the walls featuring cliche [clichéd] stuff such as "Macbeth" '[<- at first I thought you meant the posters would be of clichéd shit like “murder zombie slaughter strippers 3” but when you mention Macbeth I realized this wasn’t the case. I assume you mean that the image itself is clichéd – as in you are literally signposting your setting as clichéd; this is not an endearing quirk of writing] and other plays that follow [what other plays that follow? Like what? Sequels to Macbeth? This sentence is unnecessarily vague]'. But what caught most [<- another great example of one of those ‘almost’ words being used as filler] of our eyes was the fact that even though most of the posters were fated [<- do you mean faded?] and torn one stood out. '[<- how does it stand out? You imply it’s because it isn’t faded and torn, but why not just say “one poster was clearly fresh and in perfect condition” – description through exemption is great in some cases, but not by here]'

It was a poster for a ventriloquist [ventriloquist] act and the condition was seemingly new compared to the others [here we go, although by now this is completely redundant]. We thought it was strange but carried on as one of the guys wrote something down in a notebook. We entered a big hall with two sets of double doors and we decided that 2 [don’t use numbers for less than 10, you should just spell them out] people will [would] look for the office and the other 2 will [two would] go through the theater itself. We all agreed and I stepped into the double doors awaiting the stech [stench] to wail on me [very awkward wording]. But what surprised me was the fact it seemed new and for a theater around 20 or so years old it was touched by animals, such as all the seats being perfect but dusty to the touch [I don’t even understand what this sentence is trying to say]. We continued to the stage and made it to the back. This is [was] where we found the hall of dressing rooms sitting '[how can a hall sit? Why not just say “this was where we found the dressing rooms”?]'. What was odd was the fact that the place had dust kicked up and upon closer examination it seemed [<- another filler word] that there were tiny footprints on the ground.

We shook the fact off and pushed on, trying each door before we bust in with crowbars [broke in with crowbars]. All but one door opened for us [but you just said you’d broken in!?] and it was for the "Guest Of The Night" which seemed [another one] to be full of the last performers [performers’] stuff [stuff is the worst word ever invented, clarify what it is that was found]. A case sat against a wall, seemingly [here it actually works because working out whether a box is in the right place or not isn’t an immediately cut and dry situation, as such it makes sense that it might ‘seem’ out of place] out of place, I went over and brushed off the dust to find a name labeled [just get rid of ‘labelled’ by here] on the box "Charlie".



I soon began to put two and two together relizing [realizing] that the last performance was of that ventriliquist [ventriloquist] and his dummy. But another thought hit me, is charlie still there? [this should be put in some sort of quotation, you can’t just mix narrative and monologue] I leaned in and slowly reached my hand out until it touched the box, by then I was shaking in fear '[try not to put descriptors last. You need to get the correct imagery into your readers’ heads in the correct order, and not have them going back to rewrite something they’ve already pictured]'. I could not tell why but I continued [if there’s no reason why bring attention to it?] and the first latched [latch] clicked open and the second in the same manner. I lifted the lid to find a mangled face peering out at me and I sighed to find the dummy still sat in his case, untouched, yet part of his face shattered. I closed the case and we went on our merry way to see if the others [had] found the office yet. We walked and walked until the door finally read "Management" [this sentence doesn’t really work, just say “we walked until we found the door that read “management” with no capital letter]. We entered and found no one [no one] in there and the room seemed to be missheveled [<- not a real word] recently but [and] papers seemed [had been] thrown instead of checked. So we went back to the lobby and waited to see if the other 2 would arrive back. We waited and waited but not even a footstep was made. [heard]

-

So you just seem to be repeating the same issues again and again. I’m going to quit my annotations at this point and make three major points clear.

1) You need to use spellcheck and proof read any work you ever write before showing it to another human. Why would anyone bother to read a story that the even the author couldn’t be bothered to read after they had written it? This is especially daft given the dawn of computerized spellchecks included with MS word, and available on spellcheck.net

2) You need to improve your wording – best way to do this is by reading other authors’ works. You need to avoid repetition, filler words, and think very deliberately about the purpose of each and every single word you write. Each word must contribute something. You also occasionally change tense which is a big no-no.

3) The plot is pretty clichéd and predicable – you could either trim this down or try and make the plot more original but I think it's kind of easy to guess as it is.