Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24359178-20141010183018/@comment-24077689-20141013061857

Why? Why me? Why did she have to pick me? I have no idea! But I don’t really care to find out. This story starts off approximately as about a hundred others do. Some vague melodrama and implied agony and fear; you’re not even a paragraph in and you’re already painfully misusing the ellipses. Rule of thumb: when you’re thinking about using ellipses, don’t. The ellipsis is not by any means an automatic suspense builder. Please refer to my writing advice blog and the writing advice blogs of our various admin to learn why this is a crutch shouldn’t for the love of Christ ever be used in professional writing.

It’s implied that you’ll never forget the first words as you’re recounting them.

Enter: superfluous details about daily life. It’s implied that you’re renting when you say you’re living in an apartment. We don’t need to know about you brushing your teeth. Perhaps try something along the lines of “I had just woken up, I walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth and I heard the voice in the back of my mind saying ‘Hello, I’m Mary”.

But I would suggest you go against the whole pseudo-innocent “hello, I’m ____” because it’s a bit hackneyed.

OH HO BUT WAIT THAT’S NOT EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS OH HOHO I SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING.

You’re startled, fine, you’re wondering if there’s someone in your apartment, fine. But the way you’ve written this has no finesse. There’s nothing here that makes me give a holy fuck about your protagonist nor does it really pique my interest into her relatively fucking problems.

NOTES FROM MY GOOD LADY FRIEND SASHA:

 A)   A)    These aren’t paragraphs, they’re lines.

GOOD NOTATION THERE SASHA, I TOTES AGREE

 B)   B)    If you want to make it into a narrative, you should use the structure of a narrative.

BUT SASHA, WE ARE JUST AMATEUR INTERNET WRITERS WE DON’T WORRY ABOUT PESKY THINGS LIKE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE.

 C)   C)    The whole line about not hearing Mary for a week then leaving work and all that, too many things are happening at once, it should be combined into one thought.

YOU’RE RIGHT AGAIN, SASHA. PERHAPS EVEN USE THINGS LIKE PARAGRAPHS, WHICH ARE MADE OF SOMETHING LIKE 5 WHOLE FUCKING SENTENCES. YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD WORK GREAT HERE? A FUCKING SEMICOLON, LIKE YOUR THOUGHT ISN’T DONE YET BUT YOU NEED A PERIOD.

<p class="MsoNormal">[/NOTES FROM SASHA]

<p class="MsoNormal">So your protagonist is so blissfully unaware of their surroundings they just don’t notice that the square is completely devoid of other people? And pranking them? That’s totally the first thing I say when I’m pranking someone.

<p class="MsoNormal">Again, stop using the ellipses, it’s unnecessary, it’s ugly, and it’s seriously giving me a goddamn headache. The wind answered you? Nah, bro. Nah. It’s like you’re trying to really hard to add some sort of stylistic element to this story, which just hasn’t had any fucking form of metaphor or image or even vaguely descriptive writing.

<p class="MsoNormal">You could communicate how uncertain the narrator feels, and you could communicate how uneasy this makes them a whole lot better. Like, describe some body language, describe some feelings of paranoia. Anxiety. Do some goddamn research; try to get out of the comfortable little bubble that makes you so uneasy to put some extra flourish.

<p class="MsoNormal">So, a mysterious voice causes you a great amount of stress and anxiety, even causing to glance over your own shoulder on the way home, and you just forgot about it? And what about the therapist? You explicitly state your intention to go visit the fucking crazy doctor about this specific issue. That doesn’t seem like something you’d just forget.

<p class="MsoNormal">So, it’s good to know that the narrator is a female. Halfway through the motherfucking story. Rina. That would have been nice to know, I don’t know, somewhere near the fucking beginning. Like, you want us to sympathize with a character you don’t even give a fucking name or gender identity. Why should we give a fuck about a blah?

<p class="MsoNormal">Seriously check your punctuation.

<p class="MsoNormal">The voice never said they have “many secrets”, just the immensely vague statements about some secrets.

<p class="MsoNormal">NOTE FROM SASHA: the grammar her is bizarre, perhaps try “I have many secrets” or “I have many secrets” or “there are many secrets I know”.

<p class="MsoNormal">What the fuck is going on with your punctuation? It’s like you just stopped caring halfway through.

<p class="MsoNormal">And again, this is such a blah of a story. There’s no style to this. It’s just kinda there.

<p class="MsoNormal">OH HO HO LOOK AT HOW TRENDY BRINGING DIRECT ATTENTION TO A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP. WAY TO ADD SOME LEGIT CHARACTERIZATION FINALLY.

<p class="MsoNormal">How the fuck do you just keep forgetting about the fucking audio hallucinations? Like, when I was a kid due to the medicine I was taking I had a lot of audio hallucinations; it’s not something you just shrug off. It’s scary. It’s terrifying. It makes you scared to move, it makes you cry and it’s something that I haven’t forgotten since I was fucking 6. I’m a grown fucking man now.

<p class="MsoNormal">The voice is familiar? I thought you’d forgotten about it 4 fucking times.

<p class="MsoNormal">PLEASE STOP USING ELLIPSES.

<p class="MsoNormal">I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that you’d either A) never actually been to a bar or B) you’re genuinely really bad and/or have never picked someone up from a bar. That has to be the most horrendous pick up line I’ve ever even fucking heard. Like, gross, bro.

<p class="MsoNormal">Being a heterosexual male, perhaps I’m unfamiliar with how lesbians pick each other up. Apparently approaching strangers and making highly inappropriate comments gets you laid.

<p class="MsoNormal">Seriously, what happened to the punctuation? Like, you went from having punctuation to suddenly not really using it. Also, Sasha wants to know what happened to the fear? Like the unease? The paranoia? The anxiety? You know, the fear.

<p class="MsoNormal">Anorexia means you don’t eat. Bulimia might work better because a direct symptom of bulimia is weight gain. While, anorexia can cause weight gain, that’s not typically the first symptom.

<p class="MsoNormal">You could totally make this so much sadder. Right now, I don’t care that she’s gonna kill herself. There’s nothing about this character that makes me give a crap. Why the frick did she fucking pill herself then hang herself? Ugh. There’s just so much going on. This story is meant to be a mindfuck and it’s meant to be depressing. But it’s neither. At no point do I actually care what happens to Rina.

<p class="MsoNormal">The sort of twist thing you do at the end is interesting, although played out. It’s been done, which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t use it. But take a bit more care when you do.

<p class="MsoNormal">I’d say take this story back to the workshop. It’s juvenile, it’s hackneyed, it’s trite. But, you could potentially make it a million times better with some more practice. Go check all them blogs, the style guide, and get back to writing, you crazy fucking literary larva.

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