Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5614678-20170626125502/@comment-28266772-20170627142106

[Right off the bat the name makes me very happy]

Seventy years of life, I'd thought I saw everything. But, as it turns out, no matter how long you get in the tooth, life can still throw you for a loop. My name is Dale, and I've got one hell of a tall tale for you.

[hooked]

Every ides of the month (that's fancy-talk for "the middle of the month" [gotta wonder why you write it one way if you’re just gonna define it a second later]) me and a couple of hunting buddies [buddies and I] go out into the woods to hunt varmints '[voice; the tone so far seems pretty well educated. Seems a bit of a mismatch for words like varmints]'. Gophers, moles, rabbits, sometimes even foxes [redundant; even I know what varmints are]. Anything the state has declared a "nuisance animal" is fair game. Deer season is usually months away whenever me and the boys feel like heading out, and just hunting deer for years on end gets boring. Varmint animals are a lot more fun. They're usually much smaller, so they're more of a challenge to shoot, and there are all sorts of different species to look for. Sometimes me and the gang [the gang and I] would have a contest where'd we make a list of animals and see who can bag one of each the fastest. I could count the times I've won on one hand, but I can't complain. A bad hunting '[bad hunt…? I must admit I’m not sure but “a bad hunting” sounds… off]' beats the hell out of a good day working.

'[gotta wonder why you’re pissing time away like this. This whole paragraph basically says “in the middle of the month my mates and I go out and hunt varmints cause it’s fun. I’m not great at it, but it’s still a good way to kill time.”]'

Our hunting party consists of about five people. There's me, of course. There's also Jim, he's from West Virginia, but all the rest of us are from southern ohio [Ohio]. He moved here about fifteen years ago and still hasn't quite gotten used to the place. Jim's a nice guy, but about as smart as a rock. There's Hank, he's a weightlifter, could probably pick me up over his head and bench with me if he wanted. There's Jack, he's kind of a shifty fellow, spent a few years in prison, but we don't mind, he's a good friend. Finally, there's "Buddy." Now, his name isn't really "Buddy." It's actually Dale. But I'm also "Dale" so, ergo, we all call him Buddy. He's a sweet guy, but real weird. He's the youngest member of the group at the of age of 30. He hardly ever leaves the house and has a couple pet rats.

Now, this is where our story really begins.

'[Right, so every word before this, and after the first paragraph, can be deleted or massively compressed. A lot of it is repetitive, meaningless, uninteresting and rambly]'

So pay close attention, because you sure as hell ain't gonna here a story like this anywhere else. It was a really boring day up until that point. While most days, the woods are so full of runts that it seems like the ground itself was moving, today was as dry as the desert after a fire. For a hunting party of five people, we'd nabbed about six critters all together before sundown. It was downright depressing.

So there we all were, demoralized, demotivated and just plain de-sappointed '[eh? You’re suffering from some tonal whiplash here. You’re clearly trying to sell this narrator as an old wisened country folk sorta guy, but to the immediate right of this bit of folksy quirkiness is a semicolon ->] ; [The least folksy of all punctuation signs] sitting around a campfire burning out [our] 'way through the alcohol we hoped we'd be saving to celebrate our glorious victory, telling tall tales and bad jokes to try to cheer ourselves up. Out of the whole group, Jack probably told the best stories. Either him or Buddy. Something about being locked up in a tiny room for years makes your imagination run wild - of course, in Jack's case, it was a prison cell and it wasn't voluntary. Buddy was just a shut-in. Anyway, Jack's stories were the best because, being a character of questionable standing, his stories would always be messed up, violent and terriftying. Which is just the way we like 'em! Jack had a great story for us that night, the story of "The Rat King."

Now, when I first heard him say "Rat King" I just pictured a giant rat. But the real thing is a whole lot different than that. See, supposedly what happens is a large group of rats living out of a nest get all this gunk and filth (and shit, don't forget shit) in their fur and on their tails, and they start to get stuck together. Their tails get tangled, their fur sticks together, and no matter how much they struggle and fight, they can never escape. By the time people find 'em [tonal whiplash again], their dead bodies are all clumped together in a fossilized lump. They spend so long stuck to each other that their skin kind of melts and heals together until their bodies have sort of melted through, like a siamese [Siamese] twin.

It was a terrifying tale, perfect to tell in the middle of the night when everybody's half-drunk. But Buddy, being an actual rat owner, pointed out a few discrepancies with the story. Firstly rats apparently groom themselves as much as cats. Makes sense rats and cats are so similar, since their names rhyme. '[I can see your attempts to characterise but you’ve made a few missteps. It just doesn’t work. Your vocabulary is eloquent and doesn’t fit so when you stick folksy quirks in, it just reads all wrong] 'Like any prey animal, they groom themselves so their smell doesn't stand out to predators, and so all that gunk doesn't slow them down.

Another thing is, as dumb as rats are, they aren't completely stupid. [no one thinks rats are dumb] If their tail gets caught in something, they'll chew it off. Like how a fox chews off its own leg in a bear trap. Sure, it ain't the smartest means of self-preservation since they'll probably bleed out five minutes after they escape, but it's a much quicker death than slowly melting into a pile of corpses.

Still, despite those glaring, oozing plotholes, we all agreed it was a damn good story. An hour or two later, we were all gettin' tired and ready to hit the hay. So, all five of us crawled into our individual tents, turned off any sources of light [redundancy; sources of light -> light sources] we had with us, and tried to get some shut-eye before the four-hour commute we'd have to take in the morning.

But in the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of one of some kind of horrible screaming. As I shuffled out of my tent, I saw everyone else was waking up too. Nobody was quite sure what it was. We knew it was some kind of animal, but after forty years of hunting, I'd never heard anything like it. It was kind of like a large bird mixed with an angry dog. Sounded like some weird animal remix or something.

Me and the boys figured it must be coming from one of the traps. The first couple we checked had absolutely nothing in 'em. But the last one - hoo boy! - it '[you want an em dash. Em dashes are typed using two dashes (--) but MS word will convert that into a proper em dash like so   – vs -   Also you don’t use a space with an em dash. It goes “last one—hoo boy!—it…”]   'had something in it alright.

In the dark, it looked like a confused, shambling mess. We thought for a minute that a rodent must have gotten trapped under some mud or something. When we shined our flashlights on the thing, we wished we stayed ignorant. It was a big, muscular rodent about as big as a small dog. It had large antlers like an antelope, it had piercing red eyes that almost seemed [almost seemed; not only do these two words fulfil a similar purpose, but they’re also filler words] to glow in the night, and the damn thing looked almost [almost; again, it’s just a filler word] like a zombie with the way it was wasting away.

<p class="MsoNormal">But the worst thing about it were the holes on it's [its] back. Large, gaping, covered in pus. For a moment there, we thought whatever this weird thing was had gotten into an accident and was maimed until he saw what was coming out of those holes.

<p class="MsoNormal">Tiny little things, we almost thought they were insects, but upon closer inspection, they looked like little naked mole rats. They were chewing and clawing their way out of the holes, and the creature seemed to scream in pain and bleed a little as it wrapped it's ugly, mangled claws on the outside of the cage. The little beasts were small enough that they could slip through the holes in the cages.

<p class="MsoNormal">'[the above descriptive passage is a bit of a wasted opportunity. You use very few adjectives. “Large, gaping, covered in pus” is a good place to start but it’s pretty much the end of it. You use almost no descriptive language] '

<p class="MsoNormal">They ran around at our feet making little squeaking noises. Understandable [Understandably], we were just a little tiny itty-bit fucking terrified, so we jumped all around screaming like idiots and shooting our guns at nothing in particular. This made the freak scream and hiss even more. I guess it was protective of it's [its] kind, or maybe it was just scared of the loud noises.

<p class="MsoNormal">It had a look on its face that could give a mortician nightmares. So angry, so hateful, seething in rage. It's mangled teeth clenched as hard as it could manage, spittle and bile flowing down it's face. [its/it’s – you frequently make this mistake] It was like a demon straight from hell. [<-this is a bit banal, don’t you think?]

<p class="MsoNormal">Hank wanted to shoot it right away, but me and Buddy stopped him. Jim waddled over to a nearby tree and started puking his guts out, poor guy. We figured we could turn it into a science lab or the humane society and get a reward or help them discover a new species.

<p class="MsoNormal">None of us had any clue what the hell it was. It didn't look like anything natural. Jack thought it might have been mutated by toxic waste, but Buddy pointed out that toxic waste would probably just kill you. I said it might be some kind of government experiment like those things on Plum Island. Even Jim, that ol' knucklehead had a theory or two. Apparently, he saw this thing on the animal planet where these underwater frogs, "Suriname Sea Toads" give birth to their kids by spewing them outta their backs.

<p class="MsoNormal">Since none of us had a name for it, we decided to dub it after the story Jack told last night. "The Rat King." Now, since it was giving birth, it was probably a female whatever-it-was, but Buddy pointed out that maybe the female could lay eggs in the male's back. I didn't know, and I didn't care to know.

<p class="MsoNormal">We got Jim to get in the four-dour pickup truck we rode to the woods in and drive it out to the sight of the cage. [<- not much of that sentence holds together under scrutiny] All of us surrounded the cage, making sure that if that freaky thing escaped, we could easily catch it. Me and Hank grabbed both ends of the cage (it was specially designed so you can pick it up without getting bit or scratched) and we tried to lug that thing into the back. Once we were done, I'd drive us home, Jim would sit next to me, and the other guys would sit in the back. Buddy, of course, would sit in the middle. Poor guy.

<p class="MsoNormal">But something went horribly wrong. Another rat erupted from that thing, and it scurried down Hank's leg. He screamed and dropped his end of the cage, and the thing broke out. Everyone was in a panic, running around like nitwits with no clear goal in mind. I was the biggest nitwit of the bunch, because I tried to grab the damn thing with my bare hands and it bit me in the arm. Now, I've been bit by plenty of animals before, but nothing like this. It was like two sledgehammers smashing a bunch of nails down into my skin '[that’s a simile, that’s good description. It feels like, as you become more comfortable with the character, you start to become more consistent with his tone and voice and the whole voice becomes more believable]'. I screamed so loud it nearly tore my vocal cords.

<p class="MsoNormal">The thing jumped out of my grasp and I went down in pain. The other guys started shooting at it as it sped away. Jim and Buddy managed to tag the sucker in the leg and shoulder. It let out a shriek that could break glass as it jumped into a nearby stream. It sank right to the bottom, perhaps swimming down on purpose. As it disappeared upstream, it left a trail of green blood. The only evidence it had ever been near.

<p class="MsoNormal">I rolled up my sleeve and observed the wound. It looked like it was already infected, with the opening and the veins near it glowing green. I don't remember much of what happened afterward because I fainted, but I heard some chatter about dumping peroxide on the wound and getting me to the hospital, and then it all went dark.

<p class="MsoNormal">I thought for sure I was gonna turn into a zombie, or at least lose my arm. Turns out, a little anti-septic and some bedrest can work wonders. I spend about four weeks in the hospital and was discharged only a few days ago. The wound hasn't completely healed up yet, but it's getting much better. The doctors say I had some kind of poison similar to something a spider or a rattlesnake would spit out in me, but they managed to fix it right up.

<p class="MsoNormal">I'm glad I lived through that ordeal, but I couldn't help feeling a bit depressed we didn't catch that thing. Now, nobody would believe our story. It was just another tall tale told by a bunch of hunters who were so drunk at the time they could light a fire by coughing. A great story to tell to friends, but nothing concrete to prove anything to anyone.

<p class="MsoNormal">To this day, none of us are sure if the Rat King we caught actually died or managed to survive. It certainly looked like it'd been through worse, after all. Once I'm healed up and the 15th of next month rolls around, me and the gang will be out in those same woods, hunting like nothing ever happened. If we find that thing again, it'll be a damned miracle.

<p class="MsoNormal">I just hope that whatever that thing was, it was the only one of it's [its/it’s] kind. God help us if there are more out there.

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">Mechanical issues – it’s and it’s. Seriously. You must make this mistake almost every time. Proof, use spellcheck, whatever. Just try to catch it. Other than that you have a problem in that your character starts off sounding formal and well educated but increasingly degenerates. Certain bits of phrasing don’t suit a well-educated character “’em/me and the gang/hoo boy!” and which are grammatically incorrect and should be fixed. But, if you go back and make the characterisation more consistent then by all means you can leave little errors like “me and the gang” in and it’s perfectly fine. If a narrator is uneducated then they’ll make those sorts of mistakes. You’re allowed to be authentic. But you still shouldn’t be putting anything out there that you haven’t read over and checked yourself and the sorts of mistakes you have here suggest that you haven’t actually done that.

<p class="MsoNormal">Style issues – I’ve covered the characterisation. I’ve discussed the issues with description (use it). I’ve also covered the rambling prologue. Put simply, you don’t build mood or atmosphere. You need to if you want to write horror.

<p class="MsoNormal">Plot issues – first off, if a story is less than 3000 words then don’t include more than three named characters, at most. Hank, Jim, Phil, Bill, Bob, Rob, Tom, Dick, Derek blah blah blah. They blend together. Skip it. I was mixing the friends up most of the time, nor I was not at all interested in their backstories (why would I be? It’s a story <3000 words, I’m not going to be spending time with them). Sometimes a short story can litter itself with cheap uninteresting characters if their purpose is to die horrifically but that wasn’t the case here either.

<p class="MsoNormal">Second… huh, wait. I guess that’s it. I actually liked the overall idea. Rat filled with mini-rats like that gross fucking toad thing you mentioned? Cool. Antlers? Cool. Hunters catch it, get bitten, drop it and let it go? Cool. Yeah, that’s all cool. You have a solid imagination for this stuff and I liked the content. The Rat King reigns.

<p class="MsoNormal">Overall though you need to focus on writing economically. You need to sit down and think about how each word contributes to mood, character, setting, themes or plot and eliminate anything that doesn’t advance those things directly. No roster of second-hand characters who don’t matter. No long rambling intro outlining the most basic of plots. No redundancies. No wasting time. Cut it out. Streamline. Go at this thing with a hatchet and take out all the stuff that doesn’t do anything, and replace it with new words that establish mood and atmosphere and setting because those things are central to a good horror.