Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-32764586-20170806214502/@comment-26475800-20170807034247

This is a pretty damn good idea and one that I haven't seen that often, so good job. It reminded me of that Twilight Zone episode where the aliens take control of a streets power. It also reminded me a little bit of Cell by Stephen King.

I agree with what Rainbow said about looking out for redundancies, and taking out the filler. However, it's really well done with the way it's written. It's almost like something you'd read in a wikipedia article and the detachment give is a pretty cool vibe. If you want it to be stronger, you may want to focus on one person and go through what they experienced with it, and in that sense you'd want to show and not tell, but as it's written now, and that this site doesn't care if the story is character based it can pass how it is.

Try making some of your sentences longer, it would be pretty easy to do with reading aloud and stopping at each period for a full second. You'll see what I'm talking about. Also, when you're reading this again, you'll catch other little things that should be there, there's a period somewhere that doesn't should be towards the end for example.

Another problem this story has is if the power had gone, including things that run on a battery, how are the clocks still working? Address that in the story so there isn't such a glaring plot hole.

The final thing that I wanted to mention, which would be better if you followed someone through the story (the more I think about that idea the better it sounds and you should think about rewriting this to have it focus on just one person. When he realises the clocks start acting up, him witnessing the looting and hearing the screams. He can make out what they're saying. The dread he has when the house/apartment next to him is broken into and he hears the screams for help by his neighbors. What are the thoughts going through his head at that time? Sorry went off on a little bit of a rant about that, but it would really make the story amazing.), would be the ending. What exactly happens at the end of the countdown? It seems like nothing did, but make it clearer. Did the power come back one? Where the people who had died left rotting in the streets? What happened. You had such a great buildup but a huge letdown of an ending. Even if nothing happened, the power didn't come back on, what happens next? Does Johnny Law start patrolling the streets again? Or, do the gangs take over and the protagonist hiding for his life? There's a lot of ways this could go and it would be wonderful. Monsters, aliens, the government, a religious ideology, anything could be behind it. You could even end it in a very vague way, have a television broadcast something from the government thanking the citizens for their participation in their experiment, or an UFO taking the wholesome few to another world. Which then you can have them end up in an even shittier situation. The possibilities are endless with this one, you have a great start, and you should think about it for a little bit find where this story wants to go and end it that way.

Sorry for that last paragraph being so long, but I wanted to give you a few ideas of things that could happen with this story. Don't give us an ending like the giant spider in IT. Yes, I know it's because the human mind can't comprehend what IT really looks like, but it was still a buzzkill of an ending.

I hope to read this one again, let me know when it's edited and back up.