Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-36095001-20180827035500/@comment-36095001-20180827050830

EmpyrealInvective wrote: Here's my reply:

"First, filler. It's just flat out boring and uninteresting to read, and I don't but them in my pastas because of that." You're right, filler that doesn't advance the plot or build characters can be boring/isn't necessary in a story. Detail that enhances the story on the other hand is not. Without creating an engaging story, it is incredibly uninteresting and weakens the overall plot. Take this line from your story for example:

"I hesitated for a moment. ... ... ...and then I jabbed it into my eye. Blood was everywhere, I was whelping (sic) in pain and fell to the floor holding my eye. "What a shame." He (he) said... then he stabbed me in the stomach."

This is rushed and does nothing to create any real sense of horror as the plot can basically be summed up as a person forcing their way into an apartment and telling the protagonist to stab themselves in the eye before stabbing them in the stomach. It comes off as extremely anticlimactic and uninteresting for a story to begin and conclude its rising action, climax, and conclusion in the span of 4-5 sentences. To put this into context, it would be like watching a supercut of a horror movie with only the jump scares left in and assuming that since it includes the basic scares that it is superior to the original film which (hopefully) builds up to those scenes with interesting characters, plot, and tension.

It should be noted that that scene is the climax of your story and instead of building tension you just add ellipses to denote a pause without adding anything thematically like what was going through their mind at the time. As this is written as a first hand account of events, it comes off as hastily created and unrealistic for someone to describe a traumatic event without any real detail or sense of what the person is going through. Also in addition, whelping, here's a basic definition: "(a female dog) give birth to (a puppy)." The word you're looking for is yelping unless there is quite a lot of information you're not telling us about the protagonist.

I was going to go through Red Ink as well and point out the numerous capitalization, awkward wording, tense shifting, and plot issues (a relatively generic plot that comes off as bland due to listing off events without building up the story), but I noticed that other people have commented on your writer's workshop posts with that information which you're conveniently ignoring (See: TheWizardOfTheWoods and Squidmanescape's posts in particular) so I'm just going to wrap this up.

A final note I'd like to address is your line: "I am saying, i'm quitting this wiki. It's where creativity, and all inspiration dies, because the rules are too strict and people take these imaginary stories WAY too seriously." If by taking imaginary stories way too seriously, you mean bothering with basic grammar, spending time to create atmosphere/tension, and an engaging plot in an effort to write something that can be enjoyed by an audience, then I'm afraid you're in for quite the rude awakening when you find out other sites are focused on quality. The ones that aren't have a tendency to go dead after a few weeks as it turns out people really don't want to bother spending time reading stories that the authors themselves don't want to bother with.

Best of luck in your writing endeavors. This comment woke me up alot.

Thank you. I will continue trying.