Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24776950-20170615185529/@comment-28266772-20170621135055

You are lost for several days in the woods when you suddenly stumble upon a seemly [seemingly] deserted stone cabin. As you slowly approach you notice that the cabin is emitting a hazy, yellow glow that appears to be constantly flickering.

You suddenly collapse to your knees when a pain rises up from your empty stomach. Desperate for food, you tread carefully toward the cabin. '[sequence; fall to knees -> tread. Try to be a little clearer. There’s a step missing here that involves getting up.]'

As the cabin grows in the distance you notice that the cabin [repetition; cabin] is now covered in total darkness. Curiously, you forcedly '[forcefully; also, consider whether this is redundant. You might gently bang a person, but not a door.] 'bang on the stone door several times while keeping your head down.

When the door surprisingly opens with a loud moan you look up. There, standing in the doorway is the love of your life. Her long black hair flowing in the wind. Your heart starts beating rapidly as her gorgeous sparkling blue pearls gaze upon you.

She asks you in a charming and sweet voice if you would like to stay the night. Unable to refuse, your eyes start to forcedly drape '[forcedly… drape. Forcedly needs to become something else, but drape. I don’t know what it is you’re trying to say so it’s hard to say but drape definitely doesn’t sound right.]' as you follow her inside.

She leads you into a small bedroom the size of your closet '[the key to second person is not getting specific. I don’t have a closet. Maybe say “a” closet but definitely don’t attribute anything to the reader that you don’t know for sure]'. You stare in amazement at the marvellous queen sized bed that lies before you.

She hushes you with, “Go to sleep, child.” Before you can think of a response she has already left the room. As you stare blankly at the stone ceiling your mind fades and you start to enter the dream world.

You suddenly wake up in the middle of the night, [comma splice] your shattered mind struggling to remember the reason for the disturbance. You decide to go outside to get some fresh air and to organize your thoughts.

As you arrive at the living room you can start to see shapes in the darkness. Your heart starts to beat rapidly [keep it snappy; ‘your heart beats rapidly’ is just as effective as ‘your heart starts to beat rapidly’] before you realize that the shapes are actually the cabin’s wooden furniture.

Your eyes suddenly gaze upon a shape [there’s a lot of ‘shapes’ being thrown around here] on the floor. As your wearily eyes [weary eyes] start to gain focus [keep it snappy; ‘eyes start to gain focus’ -> ‘eyes focus’] you realize that it’s an ancient wooden trapdoor. The stone handle looks brand new. You look closer and see that the wood has small shapes climbing all over it. You bravely pull the trapdoor open with a creak and climb inside.

You arrive in a small room. The walls are made of stone and so is the ground. You rub your eyes, now fully awake. You stare in shock at what lies before you. The remains of several human corpses hang on the walls. The smell of blood and death hits your nose and you resist the urge to vomit.

The shelves on the walls are filled with many potions, all bubbling in different colors '[this a major lost opportunity for description; what shapes, what colours, what do they look like? Bring the image to life and use creative language]'. You know now that she isn’t who she says she is. Your heart speeds up as you try to ran [run] for the exit.

As you enter the living room you notice that the beautiful and charming woman from before is blocking your only exit. Upon seeing you she shouts, “You fool, no one may know my secret.”

She lunges forward and seizes you by the wrist. You try to struggle in her tight iron grip but you can’t manage to escape.

She drags you into the trapdoor and before you can glimpse the cabin one more time, she grabs a key from her pocket and locks the door, covering you in total darkness. She chuckles in a high pitched laugh, [new line for new speaker with dialogue] “another subject [Another], let the experiment began again. [<- forgot the closing quotation marks here]

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'''Mechanical issues – enough. I think Dupes does a great job of pointing them out (he’s very dupin-dable on these things) but the main issue comes from odd vocabulary choices (wearily eyes/draped/etc.) You can proof to catch these kinds of things but, ultimately, nothing but practice will teach you what phrasing does and doesn’t work so there’s not much else to it other than to keep writing. '''

<p class="MsoNormal">'''Style issues – Kinda liked it. You do a lot with little. You successfully employ second-person present tense which is hard but you make it work with few mistake and it actually helps the story’s effect, so it’s not just some pointless addition. I’d say your biggest problem is you just need to make a general effort to try and catch phrasing that you can shorten without hurting the description. And you can take more effort to employ creative language to create mood and atmosphere. Most of your descriptions were quite basic. A stone door, a queen-sized bed, a trap door with wriggly shapes on the handle – you include detail but that’s not necessarily descriptive. Your description of the woman (Sparkly blue pearls) is a good example of creative language (i.e. blue pearls, hair flowing in the wind), and a great example of where you could have employed similar techniques was the bit with the potions. Colours, shape, texture, motion – these are all things you could have brought to the reader but instead chose to go with a basic account of what was down there. '''

<p class="MsoNormal">'''Plot issues – well to be fair it’s a simple enough plot and, for the most part, it works. Like I said earlier, I liked it. '''