Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26011836-20170701180236/@comment-32461413-20170702200827

The grammar has been addressed by another person, so I'll simply just dive into the content.

Writing short stories like this can really enhance the feeling of creepiness due to the mysterious of having so little information to go off of. The problem is that executing both a super short story and having it be well written is rather tricky. By design, a story like this is meant to be short and to leave out much of the detail such as the whole backstory and obviously what happens next. I feel however you have far too little detail. As someone mentioned, there really is no motive for the artwork to be observing the protagonist. While there doesn't have to be huge paragraphs of detailed explanation, even just some subtle details to why the figures may take interest in the protagonist will help in large amounts.

I would like to see you spice up the word choice more. For instance: "Alex then heard a loud thump and everything went black." This sentence is a bit bland and seems cliche. Words such as "loud thump" "everything went black" seems to be the first impulse and are weaker. Perhaps instead of "loud thump" you could try to be more specific. "Loud" is vague, so try to be more descriptive such as using words like "thunderous" or "rattling," words that carry more impact with them. "Everything went black" is too obvious. Something such as "the world around him faded into darkness" sounds better and more descriptive, albeit still the "everything went dark" cliche. Find other ways throughout your writings to incorporate stronger and more descriptive words. They do go a long way in making your work more interesting to read. A thesaurus is a great tool to have on you.

I'm a bit confused about why the fact that Alex doesn't make eye contact is important. My impression is that you used this in order to establish that Alex is different, however this particular description seems a bit awkward. The fact that he doesn't make eye contact doesn't serve any relevancy to the story; there is no parallel to that and the objects watching him. I would try to find another way to establish that he is different. Just even a little bit of description to seemingly small details can help tie up some uneeded confusion. Why is Alex breathing heavy? How did he get separated? Even just a tiny bit of explanation for this would offer some resolution to these intrusive questions. He could be breathing heavily because something was unsetteling him, or he was separated from the group after using the restroom, etc.

Overall, I think you have a good idea. The execution just needs to be expanded on a bit to tie up some questions that serve as nothing but impediments to the whole reading experience. Just be sure to vary up the diction and adding some extra detail. I understand that you don't want a huge amount of detail, but even just some small subtle hints would improve this piece vastly.