Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24841494-20140319151353/@comment-24077689-20140319180814

Since you so nicely broke this into sections, I will follow your lead and review per section.

Pt. 1

A variety of grammatical errors, small things here and there throughout; “someone holded up somewhere” isn’t a thing, someone would have holed up. Overall, your intro is fine, go over it again, read it aloud and look for any errors. I will say, the first sentence begrudgingly grabs my attention, it succeeds but it’s not the most amazingly interesting thing ever. The whole “recon guys in heavy suits and gas masks exploring somewhere that mysteriously is in ruins or something” has kinda been done a billion times. With that being said, your dialogue flows well enough, except when the little fellow cuts off his sentence. An ellipsis would be far better suited (…) than the hyphen, it won’t disrupt your flow quite so much.

Pt. 2

I get it, you’re trying to set up suspense. Shadow in the shower. Honestly, use this time to introduce the character. Let us get to know him, immerse us slowly. As it is, it seems like you just sort of threw that in there last minute. Honestly, most people wouldn’t think much of it, they certainly wouldn’t include it in a letter to a loved one.

Also, while I’m thinking about it, you say at the beginning that grammar and such has been corrected. It might be interesting as a suspense builder to have something illegible or really fucking wrong and just write [sic] afterwards, leave bits to the imagination. Intentionally exclude paragraphs use the strike through to show certain words or letters and say the rest is somehow obstructed. That would be an excellent suspense builder.

Pt. 3

Watch capitalization, grammar. Also, did you research this at all?

First of all, FTL travel is highly uncertain; you may want to clarify on that. You’re not leaving it vague enough for it to not matter, plus if this is a report of some kind (I assume because it’s been redacted) then the writer would certainly know that it’s Fort Meade. It’s really unprofessional to have a little notation like that.

Pt. 4

First of all, really? Pope? Is that like a fucking stock name for crude soldier archetypes? Might as well have a character called Bishop while you’re at it. This whole exchange is a tad ridiculous. It doesn’t flow, it’s just choppy mediocre place-holder dialogue. “blah blah blah” said James “blah blu blah blah” retorted the LT. You don’t have to denote exactly who’s saying what every fucking time. It’s irrelevant who these other placeholder characters are. We don’t need to know them. We need to know LT.

Pt. 5

Again, great opportunity to cleverly omit sections of the letter, there’s so much crap on it, it’s hard to read. It’s not a stretch to assume that parts would be obscured. This would be an excellent opportunity as well to introduce the being, introduce paranoia in the ranks of the men. Say, “hey, I saw a thing and others saw this thing I saw”. Something that wasn’t there before. And YESTERDAY!? Why the fuck is he writing every day? Even my close friends in the military didn’t write that often. Give it some time. Let things build in the absence.

Pt. 6

Once again, your dialogue needs work. It doesn’t flow like actual conversation. “Hey, shut up and let’s get some chow!” sounds like a line out of The Room that Tommy Wisseau would say. The action seems rushed, don’t say things like “as if on cue”, that’s so ridiculous. It takes away from the immersion. Lock your style down. Describe the being a bit better. All the sudden it appears and starts carnage? Nah, son. Need more suspense than that. And you’ve got this whole eldritch abomination thing going, where people are going mad and shit. It doesn’t really seem, the way you describe it, as if the laws of physics really have anything to do with the creature. It’s just a menacing thing.

Pt. 7

<p class="MsoNormal">Professionalism

<p class="MsoNormal">Pt. 8

<p class="MsoNormal">Dialogue. Grammar. Sentence structure. “A large African and a Russian”, really?

<p class="MsoNormal">Pt. 9

<p class="MsoNormal">Again, barely legible, remember what Hemingway said about good writing. Don’t divulge all the details right off the bat. Especially in horror writing, a bit of vagueness or mystery can help the suspense.

<p class="MsoNormal">So… It’s a shadow… With depth. And purple flaming eyes? Why does it have eyes at all? This is just silly. So he’s writing this in duress and he’s talking about how they were joking around and shit? I don’t fucking think so. The rest of this is ok, I guess.

<p class="MsoNormal">Pt. 10

<p class="MsoNormal">“Not before I emptied my bladder”. Don’t try to be cute. Stop dressing it up: he pissed his pants. Say that.

<p class="MsoNormal">Fresh corpses wouldn’t “reek of death”, perhaps describe the smell of iron in the air. Shit wouldn’t start stinking and rotting that fast, even under the sun.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Makeshift spears” out of tire irons? Dude, so they have limited time, there’s this monster after them, they presumably don’t have food or water, and they use their energy to straighten out tire irons? This is a military base, if not guns then there would be many other resources. Have you ever been on base before?

<p class="MsoNormal">AND HE WANTS TO GO TO THE ARMORY AFTER THEY SPEND HOURS MAKING FUCKING SPEARS!?

<p class="MsoNormal">The stress of the situation would be weighing far more heavily than you’re giving it credit for. They wouldn’t be cracking jokes and sarcasm and shit. Your descriptions are juvenile “his sarcasm cut deep”. Holy crap, bro.

<p class="MsoNormal">Pt. 11

<p class="MsoNormal">Really? Fat oaf who yells at people is the way you start this? Com’ on, man.

<p class="MsoNormal">Again, why does it have eyes?

<p class="MsoNormal">The whole fight scene is silly.

<p class="MsoNormal">The dialogue after the fight scene is even sillier.

<p class="MsoNormal">Pt. 12

<p class="MsoNormal">So is the FTL travel doing this to the subjects? Because you’re talking about other subject entirely. This adds a new dynamic that you didn’t prepare for.

<p class="MsoNormal">Pt. 13

<p class="MsoNormal">Well, that’s that I guess.

<p class="MsoNormal">The creature’s dead.

<p class="MsoNormal">Pt. 14

<p class="MsoNormal">Super abrupt ending. Unsatisfying. Rushed, silly, laughable. This actually gets worse the longer you read. That being said, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever read. It’s got some clichés, and some kinks to be worked out but if you fix this up you might have a decent story on your hands.