Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24933431-20140512150400/@comment-24077689-20140512180908

Just to let you know about my review style: I write as I read, so this is reviewed paragraph for paragraph.

Why did you title the thread “untitled” if the title of the story is “it”?

First thing that really makes me not want to read this is your inexplicable usage of 2.1 ellipses in the beginning of the first sentence. The dash at the end of ‘radio static’ would have been sufficient to express a differentiation in beat. Actually, just glancing over this whole thing you misuse ellipses a lot. So much, it’s actually hard for me to press on, even without having read it or knowing what the content is. That’s how fucking annoying it is; the ellipsis is not a replacement for commas, periods or least of all, spaces. It is not an automatic tension builder; it actually disrupts the flow of your story pretty immensely. I’d suggest you do a little bit of research on how to use these; my personal rec is to look up the Quick and Dirty Tips on Ellipses.

Now for the story: you start off with a pretty massive and awful cliché, “It”. The ridiculous and overused horror trope, eldritch abomination, disgusting body-horror crap, and then you throw out statements like this: “It doesn’t appear to have a mouth, oh but does it ever.” Seriously, read this out loud and let me know if that even vaguely resembles something that makes sense.

“it doesn’t have any eyes…” Don’t you mean “It doesn’t have any eyes, oh but does it have a bunch of eyes for sure, man! Like a hundred of them or something!”

If you were writing a professional paper on urban legends why would you include Slenderman and the Rake just as a joke? They’re modern examples of highly influential and very relevant urban legends. Oh! I get it, you’re trying to be meta or whatever. Haha, mentioning creepypasta monsters in your creepypasta in an attempt to create atmosphere is totally original and not trite at all!

Really, read this over out loud, you have a ton of sentences that just read absolutely ridiculously. And obviously, no one is going to immediately associate the word “it” with Pennywise the Dancing Clown or anything.

WHY THE FUCK WOULDN’T YOU CARE!? You’re doing research for a project. That would make all of this overwhelmingly relevant. Wait, wait, wait. So, you’re telling me it was a local legend that you were finding in books, then about the time you’re doing the research about this creature all the sudden “more and more” stuff just happens to get posted to the net?

“Oh, ha, ha, mister funny man” because people totally talk like that; your dialogue set-up needs a ton of work, as far as readability goes, this is very lacking.

Your story-telling is also pretty lacking. “He ran out of the school; oh by the way let me add this amendment that he’s the captain of our track team.” Structurally, my suggestion would be don’t start out with the description of the monster. You kill immediately all chances of me caring enough as a reader to continue on. What’s the point? This is obviously an H.P. Lovecraft inspired story, I kinda already know what’s going to happen. Next suggestion, introduce things gradually, in the beginning you would have been better of starting with “This is what’s happening, this is when it happened, school project with my buddy, he’s the captain of the track team, local legend.”

I’m just trying to wrap my head around why exactly this blog, written by some random fucking town resident is making him so uneasy. As far as I can tell there’s not much there. And, I mean, you make it pretty clear that he doesn’t really care because it’s “just a local legend”.

OH MAN THERE YOU GO AGAIN APPARENTLY HE JUST HAPPENS TO HAVE A WEAKENED IMMUNE SYSTEM. Again, this revelation should have come much earlier than it does.

Do you honestly expect me to believe that this kid just watched his family get massacred and he gets online to type this up. Including taking the extra time to type three periods every other word?

You almost vomited? Nah, man. Most people would vomit.

Yeah, the amount of ellipses in this is way too high. I almost want to stop reviewing this.

Oh, thank God, it’s almost over anyway.

<p class="MsoNormal">So this wasn’t interesting AT FUCKING ALL. You know why? Because you set up a massive cliché, you characters aren’t developed in the slightest. The way you handle the story is just terrible. I like the idea of the eldritch abomination; we typically don’t see a lot of that specific trope around here. But keep in mind Lovecraft’s ENTIRE BODY OF WORK is based almost exclusively on this trope. Treat it with some respect. Your grammar is mostly pretty ok, with a couple of mistakes here and there, but the biggest most annoying this for me personally is the ellipsis. I don’t know why people think that it’s a great idea to use the ellipsis, which should be used sparingly, to try to build atmosphere. It’s not creepy. It’s not suspenseful.

<p class="MsoNormal">I’d suggest you keep practicing, maybe revisit this idea. But once again, if that’s what you choose to do, do so more carefully.