Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-34596229-20180308160451/@comment-28266772-20180309210648

This is a very long reply. I hope you find it useful. - I’m Richard Daves, a second generation Indian American and an ex internet [ex-internet] celebrity or rather what people these days refer to as a Cyberstar [doesn’t need to be capitalised]. What made me famous you ask? Well, I’m a ghost hunter.Though [<-missing space] technically I don’t really hunt ghosts, but instead prove that they don’t exist. I got this idea after I saw a documentary where a team of paranormal researchers visit [visited] a haunted place and collect evidence of an evil presence. *They had EMFs that were flashing like crazy, and cameras acting all weird and the usual shit they show in horror movies for cheap thrills.

I was 22 back then and had seen tons of horror movies and believed that it was nothing more than a money-making business. I am not saying I didn’t enjoy the jump scares, the nail biting suspense or the anticipation. Anticipation after all is worse than the actual scare. I found horror thoroughly entertaining, and so did millions of other people.

That’s how the idea of Ghost Myth Buster was born. I knew that just like me, there are millions out there who enjoy ghost stories, but don’t necessarily believe in the supernatural. *

'[Okay so one of the most important rules comes straight from the famous author Kurt Vonnegut, who once said that you must never leave your reader feeling like their time was wasted. If something can be shortened, it should be. So everything in those asterisks above is largely useless, or extra information. Do you need to tell us that a ghost hunting show visited a haunted place? Or is that not already the very obvious and well-known premise that all those shows follow?'

'Remember, you can cut a lot of time by just reading something and asking if you *really* need to explain it. Beeping machines are part of the routine. The fact that millions of people enjoy horror movies? You don’t need to explain that. You don’t need to explain that anticipation is worse than the actual scare. It feels like you’re telling me things I already know. All of the words between those asterisks can be neatly summed up as “I watched a ghost hunting show and it was so false it inspired me to make a show just like it, but where we busted the haunting and didn’t just fake it”. <- that’s the only information that I didn’t already know]'

All excited, I created a teaser on youtube (the same night I saw the documentary) and titled it Ghost Myth Buster (no point searching it on YouTube, I have deleted my account and all the videos). I spoke about how the Business of Scary [you should italicise titles like Business of Scary – the capital letters on their own won’t make it obvious that you’ve made the term up on your own, and will instead cause the reader to pause and wonder if you’ve just made a typo]  is a billion-dollar industry and how they fool people by advertising their movies as true stories. I went on for another 10 minutes about how I plan to visit the most haunted places in the world and prove that ghosts don’t exist and it’s all bullshit. I uploaded the video and hit the sack.

When I woke up the next day, I immediately regretted what I had done the night before. People would think I am [tense change] crazy. '[so, this is where things get difficult to explain, but basically it isn’t clear that this sentence reflects the mc’s thoughts *at the time he woke up*. It scans poorly. You might wanna say something like “I thought people would think I am crazy” or something like that] 'After all, there were so many people already out there who embark on similar adventures. I logged in to my account to delete the video but noticed that I had more than 10k comments on it. I was flabbergasted. People loved my idea, well most people did. I literally read all the comments and even replied to most of them '[nitpicky but the mc clearly hasn’t replied to “most” comments when there are 10,000 of them. Maybe a hundred, at most]'. Loads of them encouraged me to put this plan in action. Many liked how I was not associated to [with, not ‘to’] the entertainment business and thus believed I won’t fake it by including false scares in my video.

I was overwhelmed, but then I didn’t really have the money to travel. The best I could do was visit the haunted sites free for the public to see and come back with my experience, but what good would that be [?]. My audience would want more.

I made a general comment in the video description thanking people for being so supportive and encouraging, and then explaining [explained] that I’ll have to drop this idea as I have [had] just finished my graduation and I’m [I was] looking for a job and thus won’t [wouldn’t] be able to afford this adventure. I couldn’t believe what happened next.

People willingly offered to sponsor this mission, and thus [<- you love this word] started my reign as a Cyberstar [no one calls it that]. It lasted a good 5 years. I don’t want to go into the specifics of how I got my crew, as that would digress me from what I want to tell you. So just know this, we were a team of 4, including me, my cameraman Mike, my PR Stacey, and Jerry, my trip advisor, that’s what I called him as he [who] researched about haunted places and planned our next destination[s] and even made our travel arrangements. We never ran out of haunted places [haunted places; repetition] to visit, as there were at least 20 new ghost sightings reported almost every month in America. But it was just me and Mike, the two daredevils who went on these missions.

We had successfully released more than 400 episodes on youtube, and never once did we encounter anything remotely supernatural. Though I’ll be honest, we did include jump scares to keep the audience entertained. Don’t judge me, I was now part of show biz after all.

I had returned from Connecticut after filming yet another episode of Ghost Myth Buster, and had fixed myself a nice lunch. I was just about to bite into my club sandwich when I heard a soft knock on the door. I was too hungry and too tired and was going to dismiss it when the knock turned into banging. So much so that I thought the door will [was going to] come off its hinges. I didn’t open the door right away, and [but] peeped through the key hole. I saw a woman’s silhouette just for a split second. I opened the door to catch hold of her, but there was no one there. I even looked around but didn’t see anyone.

I dismissed it as some kid playing a prank but then my eyes fell on a neatly folded red head scarf lying at the door entrance. I picked it up to investigate. The fabric was smooth and it had detailed gold embroidery on it, [comma splice] it looked quite expensive. I undid the scarf and a piece of paper fell out of it, on which were the words ‘भानगढ़’. I knew it was hindi, [I’m no expert but I thought Hindi would be capitalised?] but I didn’t know to read in hindi that well, so I used Google Translate, and it translated to Bhangarh.

'[So I’ve mentioned a comma splice - this goes into sentence structure which can be quite complex but the gist of it is this. A sentence is usually made of at least one clause. A clause, at the minimum has a noun and one verb (e.g. I run), but they almost always have a subject, an object, and a verb (or action). '

'Shelly (subject) likes (action) Fred (object) -> That’s a complete clause. It makes sense of its own so it’s called an independent clause. An independent clause can be written as a single sentence and it will still make sense. '

'But you also get dependent clauses. Dependent clauses don’t make sense on their own, they need to be attached (usually using a comma, or a conjunction) to an independent clause. An independent clause usually doesn’t have an object, but just has a subject and a verb. '

'“almost as much as Bill” -> that’s a dependent clause. It only makes sense if you staple it to the first clause so it reads, “Shelly likes Fred, almost as much as Bill”.'

'Using a comma to stitch multiple independent clauses creates comma splices, and run-on sentences. They read poorly, and it’s important to get on top of them early.'

Sentence structure is difficult to get your head around – I still don’t understand it all, but it’s worth learning about it because a) it’s interesting and b) it makes it harder for your readers to scan the story and read the words fluidly.]

I understood Hindi, and could manage to even speak broken Hindi, but I didn’t know what Bhangarh meant. Again Google came to my rescue. Bhangarh is a village situated in India. It is famous for its historical ruins, and Bhangarh Fort is considered as one of India's most haunted locations. This brought a smile on my face. I had shot all my episodes in America till now, and had been planning an overseas adventure for a long time. This was the perfect location. I forgot all about how fatigued and famished I was and called Jerry to make the necessary arrangements.

Both Jerry and Stacey weren’t too happy about it, but I argued saying this will [was going to] get our fans excited and we could even lure in Indian viewers. And I was right. Within a day of posting our upcoming Bhangarh teaser we had over 2 million new followers. We became a sensation in India overnight.

Within 2 weeks of getting that piece of paper, I and Mike [Mike and I – you never put yourself first in English] set out on our journey to India. I had been to India couple of times with my family, but had never been to Jaipur. After a really long and tiring flight we landed in Jaipur in the evening. We checked into a hotel near the airport and slept 16 hours straight. We got up around mid-morning the next day, and after a quick shower and a heavy Indian lunch we set out to Bhangarh Fort.

We had hired a car to drive us around. And [around, and…] Bhangarh Fort was a 2 hours’ drive from the hotel. The plan was to reach Bhangarh at around 4pm and stay back surreptitiously till it was dark and then begin rolling the cameras. I say surreptitiously as no one is allowed to remain in the precincts of the fort at night, per a notice board put up by the Archaeological Survey of India at the entrance. There are guards who come looking for adventure seekers and force them out before dusk. But since the fort is huge, it’s not too difficult to hide from them.

Our driver Ravi told us couple of spooky stories about Bhangarh Fort on the way. He left us outside the Ajmeri entrance of the Fort (there are 3 more), and promised to pick us up at dawn the next day.

On entering the fort, we saw so many temples and palaces, but they were not in the best of condition. We explored the place for a bit and decided on a hiding spot in the fort just before dusk, but no one came looking. It seemed like the difficult part was over, now it was simply rolling the camera and recording. I was so, so wrong. If only I knew of the horrors that awaited us.

[so I’m gonna put a marker here since it is, ostensibly, where the story *actually* starts]

We were in one of the many rooms of the fort when it got [became] pitch dark. I knew it was a full moon night, so it shouldn’t have been this [that] dark. Even Mike was thinking the same thing.

“Rick man, I have never seen a night so pitch black, I can’t see a thing. This doesn’t seem right.” [so when writing you should almost always give an attribution i.e. you need to say who’s saying something in a clear easy to understand way.]

I tried to sound reassuring, [new speaker, new line] “Relax Mike, I’ve been to India before, and this is how it is here”. [no attribution] I didn’t sound too convincing, but Mike didn’t argue about it.

“Do you realize that it’s not just dark but there is literally no sound, either of the wind or the crickets or anything for that matter? Or are you going to say that in India wind is mute and there are no crickets and insects?”

I had no reply to his question. He was right. It was eerily quite [quiet] and unsettling. Also, it [It] felt like the temperature had dropped almost by 50 degrees. It had gotten freezing cold. [<- another example of overexplaining things.]

“Rick, could you at least switch on the fucking flashlights? It feels really creepy in here.”

I couldn’t agree more, even I was spooked. This place was giving me the creeps. I fumbled the flashlight out of my coat pocket, and pointed it in front of me and clicked. The light fell on something that was mere 2 feet away. It was a two-headed large mangled dog, rather a beast. It had abnormally large and sharp teeth, reddish hate filled bulging eyes, it was bleeding and looked rabid. Both me and Mike were paralyzed with fear.

[I’m gonna put a little marker here for later explanation too]

Our trance was broken by its angry growl. We regained our senses and bolted out of the room. We just kept running. I could literally feel the beast’s breath on my neck. We must have run for a good 10 minutes before we both sensed we had lost him. We were out of breath and panting heavily.

After gaining his breath Mike said,

“Fuck dude, this is not happening. I can’t do this. Let’s get out of here. This place is indeed haunted.”

“Just because you are chased by a dog doesn’t mean the place is haunted. Stop being a sissy.” I snapped. I was not going to give up so easily and ruin everything I had built in the last 5 years because of some rabid dog.

“Fuck man, you are crazy. How many 2 headed dogs have you seen in your life, huh? Did you see the teeth on that thing? Did it look normal to you? I don’t care if you want to stay, but I sure don’t. I’m calling Ravi and asking him to pick me up. You can fly solo on this one.”

Before I could argue with Mike, we heard an ear-splitting scream. It sounded inhumane. Before we could react, it came again, and this time it was louder and closer than before. Now I didn’t need any convincing that this godforsaken place was damned.

“Mike, let’s get out of here quick. Whatever cursed creature is making that noise would be on us in no time, let’s try to get to the main entrance and then call Ravi.”

I didn’t get any reply from Mike, so I shined [maybe I’m wrong but I swear ‘shone’ is the correct past tense here, but maybe it’s a US/UK English thing so you might wanna Google it first to see if I’m right] the flashlight on him, and what I saw filled me with dread.

Mike’s mouth was sewed '[sewn. Same as above though, could be regional spelling differences] shut with what looked like human hair, and it [but he]' didn’t need words to describe the horror and pain he felt as it was evident in his eyes. Standing behind him was a creature from hell itself, an abomination. It must have been roughly 7 feet tall, [comma splice] it’s [its] skin was the darkest shade of purple and scaly like a lizard’s, and it had a long tail. It was bald and had just one eye in the centre of its face and seemed to be grinning. It was the ugliest grin. There were 2 holes for nostrils and a mouth too big for its face, with razor sharp teeth and it was drooling. It had claws for hands and they were clutching Mike’s shoulder. It didn’t need an expert to guess that Mike was the monster’s meal.

I am not a coward, but I’m not stupid either. I knew I couldn’t save Mike. Just when the devil was about to take its first bite of my friend, [you can delete that comma] I made a dash. I could never forget Mike’s dying screams, sometimes I wish I could though. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. My heart and lungs were burning and after running for maybe about 3 miles [this is weirdly specific], I fell face forward on the cold floor. I didn’t try to get up, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I had run so far, still I was in the fort and nowhere near the exit. It seemed like a loop I could never get out of.

I started sobbing, and cried like I had never cried before. I felt so helpless, I had just left my friend to die in the worst manner possible. I was responsible for his death. All this happened because I didn’t believe in the supernatural, and now the supernatural came to bite me. This was so ironic. Despite the circumstances, I started laughing and then crying and then wailing.

This went on for what felt like hours. I finally mustered the energy to stand up on my feet. I had lost the flashlight while trying to escape, but still had my mobile phone on me. With renewed hope I unlocked it to call Ravi, but fate was not on my side. There was no network. I tried moving around to get even a single bar, but in vain.

I checked the time on my phone. It was 3am, that meant I had to survive 3 more hours before the sun came up, and this nightmare could end. This filled me with new hope. I tried to access my surroundings to see if I can spot a window or other possible exit. There were none, this was a torture chamber. There were chains, shackles, manacles and whips of all sort. There was a sword hanging on the wall opposite me, and it had fresh blood on it. I had seen enough to know better to run for my dear life, when something tucked [tugged] at my ankle.

I looked down and from the light emitting from my phone saw a partially decomposed being, which could have been a man once. He was cut in half, the part from the waist down was missing. His eyeballs were hanging out of his eyes’  [eye sockets]. The room started smelling like rotten meat. The man was dragging himself towards me while make gurgling noises. It sounded like ‘Bachao Baabu’, which is hindi for ‘Save me Sir.

I kicked at him and bolted out of there. I ran for a while before I fell down a flight of stairs. I heard my left-hand bone crunch, and an immense pain shot up from my hand to my shoulder. I clutched my left-hand [you can just say ‘hand’] and cried out. Just then, my cell phone rang, it was 3 steps away from me. I got excited, what if it was Ravi checking up on us [lots of commas in the wrong place in the last two sentences]. I somehow managed to reach for my phone. Mike’s name was flashing on the screen.

With shivering hands, I answered the call. It was Mike screaming, followed by the inhumane screams. I threw the phone away and it hit something hard and broke. I cried again and wished for this to be over. I had lost both my cell phone and my hope of escaping alive from this place. I decided to just stay where I was and await my impending doom. There was no point fighting now.

I must have been still for what seemed like hours when I heard something in the distance. It sounded [like] anklet bells. I knew the sound as my grandmother too wore those, and when she walked it sounded like what I was hearing now [there are shorter ways of phrasing this]. That sound used to make me happy as a kid, but now it scared me. I briefly decided to run, but what good would that have done in the dark [?]. I would fall again and suffer. Instead, I closed my eyes and waited.

Nothing happened. I finally opened my eyes and standing in front of me was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. She was dressed like an Indian bride, in a bright red saree. The material of the saree was same as that of the scarf I had found left on my door the other day(I realised this much later though). She also had a lot of jewellery on her, and smelled like jasmine. She held an oil lamp in her hand, and was smiling at me. After all that happened, I should have suspected that the devil was playing tricks on me. But she didn’t scare me at all. She was like an oasis in the desert. I forgot all my woes, and smiled back at her.

All exchanges between me and Bride (I never learned her name) happened in Hindi, but I’ll keep it simple and mention it in English.

“What are you doing here? Are you hurt?”. She sounded concerned.

“Yes, I think I broke my arm.”

“Do you want to get out of here?”

“Hell yes, who wouldn’t?” I sounded excited. She chuckled at this.

“Ok, follow me, I will help you escape. But no matter what, don’t look behind you.” I obliged.

While we were walking I heard my name being talked many times, one time it was my mother, another time it was Mike calling out for help, pleading me to save him, and then when I didn’t respond, angrily cursing me and calling me a back stabber and a coward. I was so tempted to turn and explain myself to Mike, but I knew he was dead. It was the devil trying to trap me.

We must have walked for about 20 mins [minutes] in silence when I could finally see the exit. I was thrilled. [The] Bride looked at me and said in a serious tone.

“Remember this Rick, he wants a life for a life. Because I’m setting you free, he will come to get your first born.”

It didn’t make much sense to me then, all I could see was my freedom from this nightmare. I could see the first rays of the sun. I turned to thank Bride, but she was nowhere to be seen.

The next couple of days were a blur. Police never found Mike’s body or the camera. The case was closed as a missing person. I obviously couldn’t tell the truth, no one would have believed me anyway. I cut all ties with my crew and deleted anything remotely associated with Ghost Myth Buster.

I never forgot about what happened to me or Mike, I still carry that guilt, but life moves on. It’s been 4 years since that incident, and since then I have found a decent paying job, found love and got married. Life got back on track.

But today my wife told me she is pregnant, and I’m very scared for my child.

-

Mechanical issues – So sentence structure is a big one. I’ve outlined the bulk of the issues in text but a quick summation is incorrect comma usage including splicing and run on sentences, incorrect formatting of speech, and repetitions and redundancies. I haven’t explained sentences and there’s a lot of stuff online about how to do it properly but the general approach is statement, comma, new line if there’s a new speaker.

Kate looked at me and asked,

''“How are you? Are you feeling well?”''

Or:

''“How are you?” Kate asked. “Are you feeling well?”''

Or:

''“How are you? Are you feeling well?” Kate asked. ''

Another semi-common problem are tense changes. If you write in the past tense you should keep everything consistent, and not swap around. I’ve marked out all the examples I’ve seen but I could have missed some and it’s good to proofread your own work anyway.

Stylistic issues – So, this blog outlines a pretty good approach to mood and atmosphere, but I suppose a TL;DR would be this:

Use descriptive language to give your work atmosphere. Use adjectives, describe characters’ feelings, sensations, and use emotive and creative language to make your reader feel something.

Let’s consider the following:

''Standing behind him was a creature from hell itself, an abomination. It must have been roughly 7 feet tall, it’s skin was the darkest shade of purple and scaly like a lizard’s, and it had a long tail. It was bald and had just one eye in the centre of its face and seemed to be grinning. It was the ugliest grin. There were 2 holes for nostrils and a mouth too big for its face, with razor sharp teeth and it was drooling. It had claws for hands and they were clutching Mike’s shoulder.''

You give a lot of detail here. But it doesn’t help us actually understand what it’s like to see this thing through the narrator’s eyes. In film, and in our heads, we often see things as images with lots of detail. But in fiction you can’t really do that. You have to use as little as possible to give the reader as much information so they can build their own image. You can’t just issue a step-by-step instruction on exactly what they’re seeing, hoping the resultant mental image will be frightening. That’s called “telling”. You need to show, and you do that by asking how you want your readers to feel, and working towards that. Consider the following:

''Mr. Kirby was a massive man, with arms like tree trunks and a giant head he kept shaved bald and gleaming. That huge head of his sat atop his shoulders like an unsteady boulder atop a mountain and he had the strange habit of snarling, his upper lip rising contemptuously up in an animal-like sneer, even when he was smiling, and he enunciated his speech with a fierce growl.''

There’s no magical instruction on how to write like this. It comes from HumboldtLycanthrope (the story is gym teacher) and he’s a very good writer (his book, Kind Nepenthe is doing very well at the moment) and he’s also active on the wikia. If I knew how to write like him I’d probably have my own books published right now. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from other writers. There’s still a few things we can do by looking at his work to get a sense of its qualities.

So in this passage Humboldt shows us how to feel about this man, without actually telling us anything that’s too specific. He doesn’t say he’s 6ft 3. He says he is “a massive man”. He doesn’t tell us what Mr Kirby is wearing, he doesn’t tell us the colour of his eyes, he doesn’t tell us if he is attractive, or if he has a sharp face or a round face. He doesn’t bog us down with details. He isolates the important thing to convey, and uses creative and descriptive language to make us feel like this character is bullish, difficult, and angry. He wants Mr Kirby to be threatening so he is “animal-like” and “sneers”, and Humboldt uses imagery that invokes danger (“an unsteady boulder atop a mountain”). He shows us trunk like arms, his growling, his sneering, his contempt, and so on.

So this monster of yours, is it imposing? Colossal? Threatening? Gross? Disgusting? Wet? Slimy? Does it snarl, grunt, growl? Does it smell? Is it bulky? Or is it lithe and skinny? You give us so many details, but none of the ones that actually let us know how to feel. Use metaphors, use adjectives, use creative word choices, and make us feel something rather than force us to picture something. You do this now and again (e.g. “hate filled bulging eyes”) but you don’t do it enough. More “hate-filled”, less “2 holes for nostrils”.

Plot issues – Remember that first marker I put up there? That’s where your story starts. Guy busts ghost myths for a living on Youtube, gets a clue about a temple, goes there. That’s the intro as we need it. Not much else really matters. The funding, the names of his team members, the blow-by-blow description of who he is and why he does it; all those things and more don’t actually matter. It’s filler. I like to think that I have two paragraphs at most to give my reader something genuinely interesting. It’s harder than ever to get people hooked and making them read a 1000 words of slow tedious build up that has no real interest or bearing on the plot, that’s gonna turn people away. That doesn’t mean you need to start with an explosion on a train or some crazy plot device, but it does mean you should think very very carefully about whether the audience actually needs to know a specific detail.

In conclusion – you don’t need to worry too much about mechanical issues. You just learn and fix them over time. That’s the easy part. The hard parts are the stylistic and plot decisions. Every word you choose, every decision a character makes, every plot point you do or don’t include – that’s up to you, no one can do it for you although plenty of people will tell you when you get it wrong (especially in the comments). It takes practice to develop the skill to know when to include a detail, and to know the right words to put on the page. I can give you some general rules or bits of advice like I have above but ultimately it comes down to two things: reading and writing. You need to read a lot, and you need to read critically. You need to read and when something sticks out, when something works, you need to stop and consider how and why. And you should always feel comfortable taking ideas and techniques from other writers. If you like a word, a turn of phrase, or a particularly clever approach, you should use it.

And then you just need to write, and practice. And you need to seek out good critical feedback and you need to carefully consider how to use it to improve. It’s hard and scary and you’ll often get some pretty rough feedback but it’s always better to overcome a criticism than to shy away from it. Everyone will have their own opinion. I think Stephen King once said that when someone tells you something is broken, they are always right. When they tell they know exactly how to fix it, they are always wrong.

Finally, you get more than a few things right. Don’t take this enormous essay as some huge condemnation. I wouldn’t write it if you wrote total garbage. I wrote it because you get a lot of things right. You write to a good standard, you have a great imagination, and you have your characters make interesting and powerful decisions that resonate with the reader and you put them in interesting places. You write interesting stories. Don’t be discouraged. I look forward to seeing more of your work.