Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24304936-20140606132152/@comment-24304936-20140606185650

Resident DeVir wrote: The story is well-written, and it obviously meets quality standards. I'm sure a lot of people would really like it as well, but I personally didn't. I thought your other story, Meek, was one of the best CPs I've ever read, but this one just didn't manage to get my attention, mostly because the rapid, inexplicable transition from everyday person to serial killer is something I see in a lot of the stories I mark for deletion - though never exclusively because of that.

I realize that it's a classic set-up for horror stories to lure the reader into feeling a sense of normality, only to suddenly flip everything upside down, but as Stan threw the garbage bags into the truck, I was expecting a skeleton to pop out. All CPs are pretty much rehashing old horror clichés, but there's good and not-so-good ways to use these clichés.

There's also things I don't quite understand about the story, like how a sociopathic killer even got a wife, how none of his coworkers noticed the crushed body parts appearing in their garbage trucks on a weekly basis, and why someone with obsessive compulsive behaviour would ever take people's poorly wrapped trash for a living.

Anyway, these are purely subjective views on my part, and the things I've listed probably won't bother the vast majority of your readers. May I ask you what your own problems with the story were?

You pointed out one reason. That being the "serial killer setup" is a tired idea. I just wanted to try my hand at it as I have never really written a story like this one. I wanted the shock value to take place when the reader is suddenly presented with Lydia's body, then see it build from there.

I think Stan had a banal turned psychotic psyche (filthy city, filthy job, and just finding out the night before that his wife was cheating on him), which is why he acted as he did with killing Lydia and Phil. These were the first victims of Stan and he was working alone that day, so who knows if other coworkers would've discovered his actions?

I also wanted to leave the reader hanging as to whether the final trashcan actually had the other bodies in it since I never directly said that they did.

I guess I need to word things better if I want to be fully satisfied with this story. Thanks for the feedback.