Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-9041013-20161017195353/@comment-28266772-20161019160236

 “Hunger.

 Hunger is one of the essential needs for existence. Every animal consumes some kind of nutrient. From the tiniest, most inferior Fly [fly] species [I don’t think ‘species’ is helpful] to the big [big is a basic word that doesn’t fit the tone] supreme species of humanity, they all have to eat. Most beings have some restraint to their sense of hunger; however, there are some, who cannot control their sense of hunger [repetition]. They would eat all the time; they would eat everything that they come across.

 They must eat.

 They must devour!

 Sometimes, even their own kind.

 I’m one of those…”

 My name’s Matthew Williams, and I am about to tell you my story. My life was pretty much your typical vanilla life before it happened. I used to work as an editor at a local gazette. I was married, and I had a four-year-old daughter. Like I’ve said, your typical middle class vanilla everyday life.

 That was so until the day it happened. [it happened – you use this phrase twice closely together, also it’s not very subtle to begin with]

 It was just another workday at the gazette, well at the beginning of it anyway [that last clause is ambiguous and consequently hurts the flow]. I was drinking my coffee and reading the articles I [<-erroneous I] that I had received, wondering what should I [I should] include in that day’s newspaper. [think carefully; an editor won’t be working on the same day’s paper he’ll be working on the following day’s paper]

 Frank was walking around in the hallway screaming at his phone, “What are you, a God damned idiot?! Sell it to him for no less than a hundred thousand.”

 After he said that he shut [slammed] his phone down and turned to me, he realized I was staring at him and shouted at me, “What are you looking at, moron?”

 “Nothing, sir”, I murmured. [I thought editors were a senior position in newspaper companies?]

 “Good”, said Frank

 “Now get back to…” Frank froze in his tracks, his eyes flickered for a moment and then went completely white, and his irises were gone. His eyes did not roll to the back of his head they simply disappeared. Once his eyes went white, his body came crushing and burning towards the floor. '[this descriptive passage is weak; the phrase ‘once his eyes’ makes it feel as though the process is patient and calm. You include details such as his irises disappearing for reasons that I can gather are solely for mystery. What you describe sounds like a seizure, but it doesn’t sound like one. The writing is patient, slow, and awkward. The experience is a surprise to the protagonist so it should be written like one with fast and rapid descriptions that vivid and interesting – you need to work on sentence structure and vocabulary to improve this]'

 “Frank!” I shouted in shock, he was already fallen, lying there, motionless on the floor. [same applies to this sentence – ‘was already fallen’ is a particularly broken piece of phrasing]

 We called an ambulance; '[ambulance. By the time..] 'by the time medics arrived, it was too late. Frank was already dead. All the doctors could do was exanimate his body and find out what was the cause of his death [earlier you say his body came ‘crushing and burning’ which distinctly makes me think of fire; I can only assume this is not the case given what you say next]. They’ve [they] tried, I swear, they’ve [they] tried, but they could not find any possible explanation to Frank’s death. No matter what they did, it was all pointless. [It takes a long time to assess cause of death and it’s not actually that weird for people to just drop dead, between aneurisms and hemmorages and just plain bad luck most EMTs would be aware that, to put it simply, ‘shit just happens’] It could not be said he died of old age; Frank was thirty-seven at the age [repetition; try ‘time’] of his death. He had a healthy diet and on top of that, he was into fitness [into fitness a bit too informal for the tone of voice you write in]. One bright day on God’s green earth Frank’s eyes whitened and he just fell dead on the floor.

<p class="MsoNormal"> The whitening of his eyes bothered me no less than the unexplainable [inexplicable] cause of death. During the following day after Frank’s death, back at the office, I could not concentrate on my work so I’ve gone [I went] on Google and typed “Unexplainable death, whitened eyes” into the search bar. I’ve [I] found a blog page that described something similar to Frank’s death scenario; Walter Underwood, a young man, twenty six years of age convicted of a few drug offences, fell dead on the ground in the middle of a street on the fifteenth of May two thousand and nine [2009; you can write dates in numerical format]. His eyes went white. Pedestrians present at the time of his death noted he was threatening someone over the phone, shouting he would kill the person if he did not get his money.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Now I was knee deep in this story. I came to find out that the blog I have [had] found recorded dozens of other occurrences just like these.

<p class="MsoNormal"> People fall dead on the ground, white eyes, no explanation.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Maria Jackson, a real estate agent who was selling people unsafe housing units. One of those sells [sales] ended up with the death of a young couple. They were standing on the balcony of their new apartment on the sixth floor of the building; the balcony simply fell down… The couple fell to their premature deaths with it. This story did not stop Maria from keeping on selling unsafe housing units to unsuspecting people. She was about to sell another dangerous unit to someone and her eyes whitened, and suddenly she fell down on the floor of her office – dead.

<p class="MsoNormal"> After reading about some more of these strange deaths, I began to notice a pattern; apart from the whitening of the eyes and great health, all the people who died this way – they were a terrible folk. This could not be the reason of their deaths, could it?

<p class="MsoNormal"> I’ve [I] became obsessive about this.

<p class="MsoNormal"> It couldn’t be the reason of their deaths, simply couldn’t.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I think I thought so because I was afraid… I was scared somewhere deep inside that my moral compass might betray me as well, not that I’m a bad person or anything. [this and the last line feel clumsy]

<p class="MsoNormal"> Due to my obsession one night, I found myself inside the big archiving building of the gazette. I went through thousands of pages, papers, every tiny bit of ink. I did not know where to begin with [delete, with] – but I knew one thing, I had to find it. I had to find the explanation to this phenomenon. Luckily, the archives were neatly organized, so many categories! One of the files was named, “Death cases” [that just doesn’t sound right]. I opened the case and began reading about the death cases [‘deaths’ is a more natural means of phrasing this] from the recent years.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Two hours after starting, I was over a hundred cases and I had not found anything. I was ready to give up, ready to close the case and simply go home. Maybe if I had done so my life would look different now, but I did not and eventually I came across the case that changed my life – it seemed like a typical case with the familiar pattern; a corrupted businessman who falls to his death as his eyes whiten. However, there were two things uncommon in this man’s case; the first, he wasn’t that corrupted [corrupt]. After he was caught once doing illegal stuff, he faced his charges and changed his ways. The second uncommon thing was, his eyes returned to their normal state for a short time. Perhaps there’s a connection, I thought to myself and as I continued reading, I found that the man allegedly said, “God hesitated” during the short period of time that his eyes returned to their normal state.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I shiver ran down my spine as the pieces of the puzzle all came together.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Now the picture was clear.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Of course!

<p class="MsoNormal"> Who could kill people for being evil if not the Almighty himself? After all, it is he who judges the souls of the wicked to an eternal damnation of suffering in Hell.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “I’ve to get out of here…” I whispered, “What have I done?!”

<p class="MsoNormal"> That’s when I heard a low voice say, “You’ve gone too deep, Mr. Williams. I cannot let you walk out of this room alive.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> I looked back and saw a young man in a white suit smiling at me. It does not take a genius to understand whom I was sharing the room with. I broke down in despair; I began whimpering as I fell to my knees.

<p class="MsoNormal"> As the tears streamed down my cheeks, I began whispering repeatedly, “I’m so sorry…”

<p class="MsoNormal"> The person before me stared at me, surprised, “Why are you sorry, Mr. Williams? Curiosity is one of the fundamental building blocks of human nature.”

<p class="MsoNormal"> I did not dare to answer.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “I’m sure you’ve a lot of questions, so go on, don’t be shy, and ask away!” said the person with a smirk smeared all over his visage.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I have come across a few people in life, unfortunately for me [this sentence feels incomplete]; I knew that smirk of his was merely there to hide incredible cruelty and maddening blood thirst.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Okay…” I raised my voice slightly, changing my tone from whispering to normal.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Why didn’t you punish those people after they died of natural causes? Why did you end their already short and pathetic lives yourself?” [this question doesn’t make a lot of sense]

<p class="MsoNormal"> The person’s smirk grew larger into a satisfied grin, “A reason, you want a reason? Why didn’t I wait until these people died of natural causes?”

<p class="MsoNormal"> Hunger is one of the essential needs for existence. Every animal consumes some kind of nutrient. From the tiniest, most inferior Fly species to the big supreme species of humanity, they all have to eat. Most beings have some restraint to their sense of hunger; however, there are some, who cannot control their sense of hunger. They would eat all the time; they would eat everything that they come across.

<p class="MsoNormal"> They must eat.

<p class="MsoNormal"> They must devour!

<p class="MsoNormal"> Sometimes, even their own kind.

<p class="MsoNormal"> I’m one of those…”

<p class="MsoNormal"> I was shocked, “You mean that… you… you devoured them…”

<p class="MsoNormal"> The deity nodded in sickening approval.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Then it hit me, the last part of his explanation...

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Even their own kind” I repeated in a whispering tone.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “You are clearly a smart one!” he chuckled happily.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “You’re the God… that’s not… possible” I uttered.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Well, I am now, technically, the God, but in the past I used to be just a god. So, what do you conclude out of this?”

<p class="MsoNormal"> He used to be a god.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Now he is the God.

<p class="MsoNormal"> He used to be god.

<p class="MsoNormal"> god…

<p class="MsoNormal"> Not the God.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Just god.

<p class="MsoNormal"> That means there were more of them, more gods.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Even their own kind”

<p class="MsoNormal"> I stared at God frozen with terror.

<p class="MsoNormal"> He is going to kill me

<p class="MsoNormal"> He is going to devour me. [you’re switching tenses all over the place by here]

<p class="MsoNormal"> It was all in front of me, the puzzle was complete in front of my eyes, but the sheer fear I’ve [I’d] been drowning in clouded the answered from my mind.

<p class="MsoNormal"> God noticed my sudden uncertainty, “Let me help you” he said.

<p class="MsoNormal"> “Why, do you think humanity transition [transitioned] from Polytheism to Monotheism all of the [a] sudden?” '[Also just because I’m one of ‘those’ guys but humanity didn’t transition from one to the other at all. Numerous cultures retain polytheism with Hinduism being the most populous at over 1 billion members; there was no single universal shift that encompassed all of mankind.]'

<p class="MsoNormal"> -

<p class="MsoNormal"> Mechanical issues – primarily wording. Some of the choices feel unnatural and strange. Other problems include spelling and, worst of all, tense changes. Try to keep it consistent.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Style issues – I addressed your issues with description already but there are other issues. One of the big ones is that your paragraphs and broken up too often near the end with most of the last half of this story just being single lines one after the other. The next problem is that the content of the plot is delivered in a basic and over the top way. The delivery is too clunky and just way too cheesy. I’m not sure it could ever work. Those lofty goals end up falling short.

<p class="MsoNormal"> Plot issues – So this God eats other gods? That’s interesting, to be fair, but you don’t clarify why he eats these particular people. Are we to believe that they themselves are actual Gods? Or is there another reason he’s just being a dick? This plot simply relies on some weak logic; God kills random people because he’s hungry. I find it cute he’s making meals out of greedy real-estate agents when rapists walk free the work over, but regardless if you’re going for a lofty, heavy, plot with religious themes then you need to think the plot through a bit more. As it is this is the sort of story that really requires you not to think about it for it to work on the most shallow of levels.