Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27602619-20160113082012/@comment-27614308-20160115115238

At the risk of being picky, the first thing I'm going to point out is that half-way into your story you start indenting paragraphs. The first three aren't, and from what I've read here, don't need to be.

Moving on:

"Isn’t it funny how people are so afraid of spiders? Phobias are known as irrational fears, meaning there’s no actual good reasoning behind them. Arachnophobia is actually more prominent than the fear of death itself.  Sure it isn’t the number one fear in the world, but it consistently comes close. It’s believed that about half of people have arachnophobia, and after that there are still those kind of people who can’t stand their roommate’s tarantula. Personally I never had much of a problem with them. I never really had a soft spot for them exactly, but I could handle capturing one and letting it outside. After all, hate them or not they’re essential to the world’s ecosystem."

 "Phobias are irrational fears, meaning there's no actual good reasoning behind them."

 Defining "phobia" and then defining "irrational" seems unnecessary. Again, I could be just picky, but the meaning of "phobia" is fairly common knowledge -- in my parts, anyways. I'd be surprised to meet somebody who didn't know what a phobia was.

 " Sure it isn’t the number one fear in the world, but it consistently comes close."

 There is a comma left out after "Sure." The sentence would be grammatically correct as "Sure, it isn't the number one fear in the world, but it consistently comes close."

 "Personally I never had much of a problem with them."

 You left out the comma after "Personally." Also, it would sound better if you used the contraction "I've" rather than simply "I." Your sentence here should be "Personally, I've never had much of a problem with them."

Now that a couple of the specific sentences I caught in the first paragraph are out of the way, the phrasing is awkward in some places. Pro tip: Read your story out loud. Does everything roll off your tongue correctly, or do you stumble in places? Part of this is coming from your sentences being long for the sake of being long. Example: "It's believed that about half of people have arachnophobia, and after that there are still those kind of people who can't stand their roommate's tarantula."

One way this can be phrased better is by splitting it up and changing a few words here and there: "It's believed that about half of the population has arachnophobia. Then, there are people who aren't arachnophobic, but can't stand their roommate's pet tarantula."

Not all sentences need to be compound sentences. If your writing comes out better by doing simple sentences, I'd recommend starting there.

The second paragraph has a few of the same problems. Left-out commas, a couple of awkward areas that could be phrased better, etc.

"Nowadays, I can't bear to even look at a picture of one." What would help this sentence is to remove "bear to." Like this: "Nowadays, I can't even look at a picture of one." It reads so much easier without "bear to."

<p style="font-weight:normal;">"You could call me an arachnophobe because of that, but I personally disagree."

<p style="font-weight:normal;">I would call you an arachnophobe because of that. I totally agree. ;)

<p style="font-weight:normal;">"Like I said I used to not even get freaked out about them."

<p style="font-weight:normal;">Ugh. This sentence. Just. . . ugh. Alright, there needs to be a comma after "Like I said." Also, that phrasing is. . . very awkward. Here: "Like I said, I didn't always have a problem with them."

<p style="font-weight:normal;">Now, to get into the real meat. We're in the second paragraph. I've spent a large amount of time on your grammar and phrasing, but I think you've got the point. So, I'm going to move to your plot points and progression. Why are we still talking about arachnophobia? Jesus, we get it. The story's about spiders. Okay. Alright. Move on. Gotta start somewhere, buddy.

<p style="font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-weight:normal;color:rgb(212,212,213);font-size:14px;line-height:19.32px;">"I had recently earned a pretty solid amount of money. I’ve never liked working under people, so I had a tendency to freelance as a web designer. Typically it doesn’t actually pay that great, not bad, but definitely not something that’s likely to make you rich. I had been contracted with a local big startup mall however, and they found it in their budget to give me a handsome payout. The job took a while working alongside some other freelancers to get done, but in the end I had a good chunk of cash and no other jobs to start on. With all this extra money and no pressing work to be done, I decided it’d be a good time to take the family on a vacation. Of course then you gotta figure out where you’re going to go. I talked about it with my wife, she definitely liked the idea, but we still had to answer the question of where. We layed on the couch together and tossed around some ideas."

<p style="font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-weight:normal;color:rgb(212,212,213);font-size:14px;line-height:19.32px;">I never liked working under people either. I had a tendency to freelance as a bandit, but then I took an arrow to the kne- yeah.

<p style="font-weight:normal;"><span style="font-weight:normal;color:rgb(212,212,213);font-size:14px;line-height:19.32px;">"Typically it doesn't actually pay that great, not bad, but definitely not something that's likely to make you rich."

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Great sentence structure. Here's mine: "Typically, it doesn't pay that great. It's not bad, but it's not something that's likely to make you rich."

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Now that I've got that out of the way, I'll intercede my critique here to point out that the grammar is abhorrent. That sounds harsh, but the sheer number of these errors in structure is distracting. It makes it exceedingly difficult to really get into the story.

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Moving on - ooh, a vacation! Can I co- oh.

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Work on your dialogue. I think I saw something on that writing advice page dealing with it, but I haven't read it quite yet - that might be a good place to start.

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> That said, we don't need to read about the indecisiveness of where a person vacations. It reads like an old Stephen King novel - long for the sake of long. Not that Stephen King is bad, but you get the point. Now, get to the point.

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> The wife seems to go from sarcastic to submissive in the space of three paragraphs. At one moment she's saying "Well, what do you suggest?" and then she's seemingly saying "It's your choice, hun!" A vacation seems like something a couple would talk out a little more than a "Go think about it!" "Okay!"

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Also, letting the kids know? No shit. Don't know what world this girl's living in, but it's not exactly legal to leave minors by themselves for days or weeks at a time. Especially if you're going to a tropical rainforest in a horror story.

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> The email. "I don't usually do this, especially not for families, cause reasons. But, I'll do this for your family cause I'm coincidentally there and cause reasons."

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Now, I'll attempt to finish this up in another reply, but at the moment I'm using wifi at a cafe. And my computer is dying. But here's the biggest problem I've noticed - with the exception of the bad grammar and sentence structure. It's boring. It's long for what seems to be the sake of being long, the plot points are few and far between, and it drags. so. far. out. It's not necessary. Sometimes it's better to go short and simple than long and excessively descriptive. You're throwing in a lot of things we don't need - nor want - to know about. Then again, I could just be getting picky with it.