Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-34190740-20180103155004/@comment-28266772-20180104170453

I got home, [comma splice] I was sweating harder than ever. My breath was almost completely out of my body [be efficient; you can just say “I was out of breath” – it conveys the exact same amount of info]. I had just gone for a jog with my best friend and brother I wish I had, Darren. [the wording here is clunky] Darren was a friend I had met in the second grade at a Halloween party and we stayed friends ever since.

'[It’s not easy to fix that above passage with just annotations but you could just write, “I got home,   sweating and out of breath. I had just gone for a jog with my best friend, Darren. He was the brother I never had, a friend I met in the second grade at a Halloween party and had been close to ever since.”] Aim to be snappy, avoid repetition “…I wish I had, Darren. Darren was…”, and pay attention to sentence structure. Don’t splice commas and always use as few words as possible.'

“Bye Darren!” I shouted as unlocked the door to my messy and old apartment that I had just moved into.

“See you soon[,]” He shouted back. '[<- punctuation is important when it comes to dialogue. It’s hard to get right, but generally you should always have some punctuation between the last word and the final quote marks. Usually a comma, question mark or period. Also ‘He’ shouldn’t be capitalised]'

As soon as I felt my feet touch the floor in my bedroom, I was out. I fell onto [into] bed I [and not ‘I’] thought about how happy I was, but what I dreamed was the exact opposite '[what did he dream about? Here you are telling us stuff, not showing us]'. I woke up. I got out of bed and stepped into the dark hallway and saw a big, disgusting, and nightmarish creature [you’re just telling us that the creature is scary, not actually showing us how it’s scary], the devil himself I assumed. I fell to the ground looking at it. I stared into its deep, dark, hollow eyes as it stared into mine.

“Find the Book [book,]” It’s [its] dark and fear inducing [again, you can’t just say something is scary, you have to show us how] voice hollowed '[not the right word. I think you mean ‘bellowed’]'.

I then, I saw [I then saw] a book on a rock outside my apartment. Everything flashed before my eyes. I had to be dreaming, and I was dreaming indeed. I woke up, sweating even harder than the jog made me. I knew exactly what to do. I went outside as fast as I could and saw it, [delete comma] lying there like it was another rock, the book. I clenched the book in my hands and felt like screaming, but I certainly '[certainly, almost, seemingly, actually, nearly etc. – these are ‘filler’ words and are a waste of both your and the readers’ time. Avoid them unless they are absolutely 100% literally applicable]' did not.

I woke up in bed, the book still in my hands [how many times can this guy wake up?]. I went over to Darren’s house.

“What happened?” Darren asked, he knew something was wrong.

“This book is what’s wrong”

“Are we going to read it?”

“No!” I almost shouted.

He asked why I brought it and I explained. I said it was the devils [devil’s] book of nightmares and death. He laughed and told me I was funny, which I was, normally. I told him it was no joke, but of course, he laughed and laughed harder and harder. [<- Don’t repeat words like this.]

“Fine!” I yelled.

He stopped.

“But when you die, don’t blame me for not warning you, idiot!” I exploded out of my mouth '[Lmao – did he really explode out of his own mouth? Or did the words explode out of his mouth? Be careful with the words you choose, they won’t always assemble in the reader’s mind to create the same meaning as you intended]'.

I left his house and went back to mine. I clenched the book and blew up. I teared [tore] it apart, [comma splice] I ripped it like a woodchipper and threw it out the window.

<p class="MsoNormal">“You stupid book! You’re killing me!” I cried.

<p class="MsoNormal">'[Nah, it’s not. The reaction here makes no sense. So far this guy has had a nightmare, woken up with a book, gone to his friend’s house, and is now accusing the book of killing him. Does that seem like it makes sense? Would he really be at his wit’s end by this point?]'

<p class="MsoNormal">I calmed down and sat down [repeating words closely together can hurt the flow] and cried. It felt like [I spent] hours just sitting there crying. I stopped after I looked out the window and saw the book on the cement, ripped to shreds. I went to bed trying not to think. I woke up and felt like there was a presence and then, slam! I heard the door slam '[he literally just described hearing a loud slam. There’s no need to over explain and repeat ideas like this. It’s called redundancy,]' and saw feet under the door, clawed, monstrous feet. I launched back when the door creaked open with the same, devilish monster in the doorway.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Read the book!” It yelled.

<p class="MsoNormal">“No!” I screamed.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Then feel pain” It whispered. [again, the punctuation is all wrong,]

<p class="MsoNormal">I felt a monstrous ringing in my ear, it hurt more than anything ever. I kept screaming, I felt the pain rush through my ear into my head and then the rest of my body. I woke up. Blood was flowing out of my ears. I looked around and saw it. I became angrier than ever, it was the book, fresh and new. I heard in my ear: [this whole paragraph is riddled with comma splices]

<p class="MsoNormal">“Read it”

<p class="MsoNormal">I looked at it I laughed. I grabbed it and read it. I would read it to you, but if you see the words on the page you would go through what I was now [awkward wording – mainly because the tense of this sentence is all buggered], all I can say is that it was twisted and dark and not for the faint of heart, like me.

<p class="MsoNormal">After reading I felt a weird, creepy sensation go through my body. I was going insane I walked out of my room to see the monster standing in the hallway.

<p class="MsoNormal">“You are mine now” It said.

<p class="MsoNormal">“What do you need?!” I cried.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Kill the friend you call, Darren”

<p class="MsoNormal">“No!” I cried.

<p class="MsoNormal">It grabbed me with its long, knife-like fingers.

<p class="MsoNormal">“What did you say? Huh?” It asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I said No! [no]”

<p class="MsoNormal">I felt its claws on my skin, tearing through it as I screamed.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Fine! I’ll do it!” I screamed.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Good boy” It said.

<p class="MsoNormal">I found myself at Darren’s front door, a dagger in my right hand. I rang the doorbell. I heard the foot steps getting closer and closer to the door and the door opened, but it wasn’t Darren, it was a girl I had never seen before. She asked who I was. I didn’t answer.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Umm…” She murmured

<p class="MsoNormal">“Hello?” She asked

<p class="MsoNormal">I grinned, and then I smiled, and then laughed.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I need Darren” I whispered

<p class="MsoNormal">“Darren! - Ah!” She shouted as I stabbed her back and threw her into the thorn plants [what thorn plants?]. I felt her blood flow down my tearful face.

<p class="MsoNormal">There was no going back now. I saw Darren at the door, his eyes were wide open with shock and saw him about to scream but I grabbed him and punched him in the face twice.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Shut up, idiot!”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I’m sorry, please I’m sorry” He wailed.

<p class="MsoNormal">“It’s too late for sorry, Darren”

<p class="MsoNormal">I put the dagger on his throat. I laughed as I slid the knife across his throat and left him to die on the floor. I walked to my apartment as people all around the neighborhood. I went inside and told the book that I did it.

<p class="MsoNormal">“You are still my puppet, and always will be. You are stuck in my world” The book said

<p class="MsoNormal">I cried as I realized I will always be stuck in this eternal nightmare of a world and this story will be the last you will ever hear of me...

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">Mechanical issues – loads. Look through my annotations just to get a loose sense but yeah, you need to put some serious work into learning the rules of sentence structure, grammar and punctuation. You shouldn’t be posting things with errors that MS word can pick out. Everyone makes mistakes but you shouldn’t rely on anyone to proof read your own work but you. That means re-reading your work and using automated spell checkers like MS word or spellcheck.net – remember, if you post a story with a lot of errors you are explicitly telling people “I haven’t been bothered to re-read my own story” and if the writer can’t be arsed to read their own work, why should anyone else? It takes time and practice to learn the rules of English but it’s time you should be willing to commit if you are even slightly serious about writing.

<p class="MsoNormal">Style/plot issues – So first off, you need to show us events and ideas and not tell us. You shouldn’t just “there was a scary monster” but should instead tell us what it looks like, how it makes the characters feel, and so on. You should use language to build up mood and atmosphere by using descriptive phrases and adjectives. To do that effectively you need to build up a good working vocabulary. The more words you can competently use the more tools you have to build an interesting world.

<p class="MsoNormal">In summary – proof read your work and use descriptive phrases and adjectives to start building atmosphere and mood.

<p class="MsoNormal">How to do this?

<p class="MsoNormal">Read. Reading is the number one route to address these shortcomings. Reading will teach you the conventions and rules that govern English. It will fill your brain with new words that you can then use to create interesting descriptions and scenes. And the constant exposure to various writing techniques will just generally help improve you by a kind of osmosis. When you read something you like you need to stop and take the time to think “why do I like this?” and “how has the writer made me like it?”. You need to take the time to note words that you like, and you should always be willing to look up words you don’t know.