Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-33409403-20180116110415/@comment-28266772-20180116211859

No one believes me, no one. Maybe I’ve lost my mind, maybe it was a dream, no that doesn’t make sense '[Comma splice. This is when you join two independent clauses together using a comma'. 'Independent clauses are clauses that make sense as standalone phrases. “I went to the shop” is an independent clause. “So I went,” is a dependent clause.”' It was too real. What happened on the night of July 2nd 1994 was real.

I was seven years old. I loved to swim but we couldn’t afford a swimming pool. Although our home didn’t have a one of its own it was only a few houses away from a community pool.

My mom would take me almost every other night that summer. I would swim for hours on end without ever getting bored. Every once in a while right before closing a maintenance guy with overalls, a dirty white shirt and a small nametag that read “Samuel” would seemingly appear out of nowhere to lock the doors and coax everyone out of the pool.

He had long gelled back hair which he had to have used a bottle of gel a day on '[this is wordier than it needs to be. There are snappier ways to say this.”', a long face with a large hairy mole on his left cheek and brown eyes so dark they almost looked black.

Every night as if on cue he would [missing word] around the back of the restrooms and up to the front and watch us swim for a few minutes, his back slouched over and his beady black eyes following me. Occasionally he would look up at the clock. Then finally once it was 10:00 PM he would waltz up to the edge of the pool and with a crooked smile ask us to leave.

 This was the only time he would smile. Every other second he had a pale almost dead expressionless face. I preferred this to his smile. When he smiled his whole face looked like it was about to tear apart, his lips quivering with happiness or simply the tension his contracting muscles created.

[efficiency]

“It’s time to go,” my mom would say, walking towards the exit.

 Then, right afterward, once my mother was out of earshot “Samuel” would lean in just a little bit closer to where his whole upper body was slanted over his legs and whisper [in] a loud hissing whisper [new line] “Yes, Time [time] to go”.

[redundancy/wordiness]

I would run out of the pool [comma] my heart racing, the water clinging to my skin as the wind blew past me making me shiver. When I caught up with my mom we would go home like every other day. He terrified me, but like I said, I loved to swim.

[description/wordiness]

One night my mom wanted to leave early because she was tired. I, of course, wanted to stay till the pool closed. So I told her that I could walk home alone once it was 10:00. It took some convincing but she caved in. Thinking back on it she wasn’t the greatest mother, even if it was only a hundred something feet from my house. I was seven years old. '[this is a little contrived. There are easier ways to get where you want to be i.e. the kid is alone, without having to tell us his mother is terrible while stretching believability]'

Me being the dumb kid I was wanted to stay as long as I could. Once the clock read 9:50 or so I went in the bathroom to hide. I wanted to stay past closing. Right before 10:00 Samuel came around the back and locked the door. There was a small crack through the stall where you could see through the bathroom to the outside. I could’ve sworn I saw him glance back at me a few times, but after locking the door he walked out of my sight. He left, I was free to swim for the whole night, and that’s what I was planning on.

I swam in the shallow side of the pool for a while, but I wanted to go to the deep end. My mom would have never let me swim farther than 5 feet without her. It was only about ten to twelve feet deep at the lowest, but for a seven-year old that was the Marianas Trench. I started towards the end of the pool. My toes leaving the solid concrete below me. I didn’t panic I just kept going. There was no one there, so if I drowned, no one would save me '[try to think of a more interesting way to convey the loneliness. Don’t tell us he isn’t safe. Show us that he feels unsafe.]'. I had come to the edge. I started to test how long I could float. Two minutes maybe three I can’t remember.

There was one thing I hadn’t tried, diving. I knew how to dive, but what I really wanted to do was reach the bottom. The task took over my whole conscious '[conscious is an adjective. If you want the noun it’s ‘consciousness’]'. I would jump into the pool with all the force I had, again, and again. Hours went by and my legs were shaking, I should’ve gone home, God I should’ve gone home, but I was determined.

I walked back up to the side of the pool after resting for a bit. I had to reach the bottom. I readied myself to jump and then my feet left the ground as I pushed all the energy I had left into my legs. My body was an arrow, as my fingers pierced the water I knew, I knew I was going to reach the bottom.

<p class="MsoNormal">My small frame flew through the water. My momentum stopped before I felt the dark, cold base of the pool. I reached my hand out slowly downward, knowing that I was close. What I felt was not the cool cement that my feet had felt so many times before. What I did feel was thick stringy strands of something. Thinking impulsively I pulled on the strange fibrous substance. That’s when I heard it breathe. The sound was like a small whirlpool sucking in water.

<p class="MsoNormal"> When you’re underwater you can’t make out sounds, but you can still “feel” the noise. It’s like trying to listen to a conversation through a thick wall. You can hear the voices, but can’t make out what they’re saying. It was like this except the “conversation” was inches from my face.

<p class="MsoNormal"> [description] 

<p class="MsoNormal">My hand let free of whatever I had grabbed and I forced my eyes open, the chlorine [filled water] stinging them and blurring my vision.

<p class="MsoNormal">There at the bottom of the pool, just lying there, was a body. I wanted to scream but maybe for not fully understanding what was happening or simply pure shock I just stared downward straight into its lifeless eyes. They seemed to stare back, black dead eyes. [<- sentence structure feels weird here]

<p class="MsoNormal">That’s when his lips moved, the rest of the corpse entirely still. They spread across his face like cancer until they began to shake at the ends. His bright teeth illuminated in the bright light of the moon along with his dead black eyes.

<p class="MsoNormal">I could feel my chest tightening screaming out for air. I turned my body upright and began to swim. The clear surface of the water just out of reach. My hands reached the top, then my head. I gasped for air with such force that a decent amount of water forced itself into my chest as well. After a few deep breathes I quickly swam to the edge of the pool pulling myself out, pure adrenaline rushing through my veins. I sat there breathing stressed breathes which forced me to cough because of the water in my lungs.

<p class="MsoNormal">Most kids, no everyone would have run. I didn’t run I had to know if what I saw was real. Sitting there panting I quickly pushed my head under the water to where only it was submerged. I didn’t want to see him, but I did, his cold eyes moved to my very position. That was when I ran.

<p class="MsoNormal">I arrived home at 4 A.M that night, with no recollection of running back. I woke my parents with my sobbing. I didn’t understand what I saw, to this day I don’t. My mom covered me in a warm towel and told me that it was just a bad dream. Water was dripping off of me, and I had my swim trunks on, how could that have been a dream?

<p class="MsoNormal">She told me I had fallen asleep in the bathtub. I believed her, but all these years I had forgotten, I didn’t take a bath that night, I had come in the front door. '[this twist doesn’t work. You aren’t subverting audience expectations.]'

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">Mechanical issues – you need to work on sentence structure. As a problem it permeates the work and causes problems further down the line. But at a basic mechanical level it hurts readability. I’ve already mentioned comma splices but you have a tendency towards awkward word choices (I let free) and sentence structure that doesn’t scan very well (They seemed to stare back, black dead eyes).

<p class="MsoNormal">Style issues – What descriptive passages does story have? A few turns of phrase, maybe? He grabs something “stringy”. Samuel has some nice description. But there’s no sense of atmosphere or mood. Throughout your story I’ve underlined some sections so let’s look at them now.

<p class="MsoNormal">''This was the only time he would smile. Every other second he had a pale almost dead expressionless face. I preferred this to his smile. When he smiled his whole face looked like it was about to tear apart, his lips quivering with happiness or simply the tension his contracting muscles created.''

<p class="MsoNormal">So the major problem here is efficiency. Every word you write needs to do something. It needs to move the plot, build character, establish theme, or mood or atmosphere or tell us about the setting. The main problem here is you can just be… snappier.

<p class="MsoNormal">I can’t go through every single word and highlight some replacement. But I can point out there are four salient points here. He only smiles when he tells them they leave. The rest of the time he is expressionless and the narrator prefers this because the man’s smile always looks close to tearing with quivering lips and an underlying tension. Losing all the “about to”s and “when”s and “seemingly”s in your writing will let you use that real estate for more words like “quivering” and “tension” which “tear”.

<p class="MsoNormal">Then, right afterward, once my mother was out of earshot “Samuel” would lean in just a little bit closer to where his whole upper body was slanted over his legs and whisper a loud hissing whisper “Yes, Time to go”.

<p class="MsoNormal">So, how does he lean far enough that his whole body slants over but he still only ever leans in a “little bit”? Again, there’s just a wordiness here that hurts it. And why say “closer” if you then qualify it with explaining his exact body position? There’s just redundancy. You use “whisper” twice within five words and honestly “hiss quietly” does the job just fine. And you don’t even need “Then, right afterward”. It makes perfect sense without it.

<p class="MsoNormal">the water clinging to my skin as the wind blew past me making me shiver.

<p class="MsoNormal">So this kinda gets to the heart of the problem. You don’t trust your audience to make simple connections. Water + wind = shiver. You don’t need to state it so explicitly. You should be using this to help build atmosphere with feeling words. Does it sting? Does he shiver violently? Does he wrap his arms around himself to feel warmer? Does he feel exposed? Vulnerable? You consistently miss opportunities to use descriptive phrases, adjectives and similes/metaphors to convey a sense of atmosphere and mood and instead spend too much time saying far too little.

<p class="MsoNormal">''When you’re underwater you can’t make out sounds, but you can still “feel” the noise. It’s like trying to listen to a conversation through a thick wall. You can hear the voices, but can’t make out what they’re saying. It was like this except the “conversation” was inches from my face. ''

<p class="MsoNormal">Look at this. You can just assume your audience has been underwater. You don’t need to explain it. But you can tell us what the experience was actually like. It sounded like hearing a conversation through a wall? You can just say that.

<p class="MsoNormal">So overall your style issues come down to this – be snappier. If you can shorten a phrase, shorten it. Take the room freed up by those cut words and focus on the salient parts of the experience. What does he see, feel, hear, smell and taste during his time? You do this at parts, but not enough. And when it’s thrown in with so much filler it ends up feeling like it takes too long to say too little.

<p class="MsoNormal">Plot issues – So a story needs a few things. It needs a protagonist. It needs conflict. It needs choices. And a horror story almost always needs a threat. You’ve got a protagonist and you have a choice (he chooses to stay) but where’s the threat and conflict? It’s just an anomalous experience. It just… happens. It doesn’t chase him. Doesn’t threaten him. He doesn’t need to flee. It doesn’t impact his world view in any meaningful way. There’s no real sense of what he goes through. He just sees a corpse and it looks back at him. Why doesn’t it suddenly get up? Or build a garage? Or start trying to sell him insurance? Why does anything even happen? If you want an example of a weird story that doesn’t ‘make sense’ but still creates a story that works look at Abandoned by Disney. It’s a similar sort of weird story, but he puts a lot of work into building events up so it doesn’t feel arbitrary.

<p class="MsoNormal">Also, the mother. If you want us to believe the mother is negligent then don’t tell us, show us. Outside of that you show us a woman who’s dedicated enough to take her kid to the pool every other night but then suddenly tell us she’s negligent when it’s convenient for the plot. The kid could’ve just snuck out at the start and that’d make it more believable. That or you can show us a short exchange that clearly conveys the woman’s lazy and negligent attitude. But as it is it just comes out of nowhere and feels contrived.

<p class="MsoNormal">Summary – you write competently. I wouldn’t have gone so in-depth if I didn’t think there was a good reason (i.e. you have the capacity to put it to good use). And your style is competent enough to scrape by quality standards although you should work on the plot itself. But ultimately you just need to put a little more time into proofing to catch the excessive wordiness while putting more TLC into the descriptive passages.