Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-33904527-20181104232254/@comment-33904527-20181105175816

NedWolfkin wrote: I agree with NoTimeCreepy.

Spelling and Grammar Issues: "I’m the last one left." could be worded better. "skin cracked and shattered like a porcelain doll" perhaps a more worthy analogy? And are you purposely leaving spaces in the middle of words? If so I thought he was writing all this, not saying it (even if he is saying it you should use ellipsis). I'm assuming by tons of misspellings in Wouldn't It Be Nice that you were just typing too quickly to care that you were making mistakes. ("nise"?). From here on this just turns into one cringe-worthy typo after another for a while. The poor spelling not only makes it hard to get through, but also guarantees that this story will be deleted within minutes of posting.

Spelling Issues Continued: Ellipsis is three periods and a space, in this story you have them as just three periods and no space.

Plot Issues: This one was hard to sit through because it is too long, it offers nothing that pulls the reader in, and is mostly just pointless thoughts. There is not much to this story: no build up, nothing exciting that keeps the reader interested, no explanation, and almost no ending.

Honestly, it feels like a Trollpasta, you have a monster in space (which is actually funny, not scary) and a bunch of typos. The continuous typos are purposely placed to make it feel like Aaron's train of thought is derailing more and more as the story progresses. Picture a slowly dying, completely alone individual clinging onto his last thoughts. They wouldn't exactly be perfectly worded or spelled (I try to explain this through the reveal that Aaron never had any paper or pens to begin with).

The fractured lyrics of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" are added not only as a juxtaposition between the happy wording of the song, and the desolate position Aaron finds himself in, but also as another way to show that Aarons thoughts are degrading quickly. He's living a fractured half-existence, caught up in a situation similar to that of a strange dream at 3:00am where you can't think straight and things seem distorted and twisted.

As for any confusion around the ending, what I was going for was an explanation purposefully unlike the one Aaron produced. The ultimate twist is that the strange vision of a star is luring out the spacemen to feed on them. This is what Aaron refers to when he says: "What. What if. What if the power is. Getting absorbed. Like, it’s all being sucked up by. An external source. Through a straw. But not just. The ship’s power. What if. My energy is being absorbed too."

This is shown at the very end of the story when Jim falls prey to the lure of the star, and is tempted into jettisoning himself, along with Harry, in order to bring the star more sustenance. In hindsight, I did rush the ending a little too much, sorry if that created any confusion.

The constant movement of the star is added to induce the horror of never quite knowing where something immediately threatening to you is. And the "build-up" of the story is pretty much the entire segment from Aaron's perspective.

In terms of "drawing the reader in" the vagueness of the initial few lines and what exactly the creature would be is what I tried to use as a way to get the reader's interest. Note: the creature is actually just Aaron's vision of Peter knocking on the window. The star is what makes Aaron's condition so bad over the course of about an hour, and also what causes him to hallucinate. This is so Aaron doesn't realise that Peter, Jim, and Harry are all still alive.

I'm not sure how the star appeared "funny" to you. Honestly, the idea of a humongous, disguised being luring people out to their deaths in the unobserved region of space sounds pretty scary to me. Especially when you consider that it isn't a star, merely something pretending to be one.

Some elements of the story are left intentionally vague, like whether Jim, Harry, and Peter were really part of Aaron's family, or whether it was just a fake memory implanted by the star.

Apologies that the meaning of this story escaped you.