Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-31375374-20170223144849/@comment-28266772-20170223154512

Quick overview – I was on the fence about deleting your story. I’ll get into greater detail below but the gist of it was this: it’s original but lacks closure in the ending, and there are enough mechanical errors to bring it down.

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Year 2746

''It took em  [‘em]  50 years of research,  [and]  150 years of building it  [don’t use it as a pronoun if it isn’t clear what ‘it’ is] . But they did it. After more than 200 years of work, we, the human kind ' [the human kind – this reads weird. Mankind is a better replacement, and don’t preface it with ‘the’] , had a way of transporting humans through the whole universe  [this is kinda clunky] '. They’ve created  [they created] a machine that warped space time, which allowed for the traveling through dimensions  [<-clunky wording; ‘which allowed for interdimensional travel’ is simpler] . Dimensional fucking traveling  [travel] . Nobody expected that it was possible, but they did it. ''

''We found civilizations, we founded new colonies, we swapped techs  [technology]  with the new civilizations. With the dimensional traveling  [the dimensional traveling sounds positively awful; like I said, ‘interdimensional travel’ is a much simpler phrase that means the same thing] , new problems rose  [arose] . Intergalactic crime. That’s where I come in. My name is Steven. I am what you call an intergalactic detective, police officer, what you want to call it  [is he intergalactic, or interdimensional, because you’ve gone crazy with the whole traveling through dimensions business so suddenly changing it to intergalactic is kinda confusing] . My job is to solve crimes in  [throughout]  the whole universe. ''

Lately, there has [have] been a murder spree of 5 kills [murder spree of 5(five) kills; redundant, no need to say both ‘murder spree’ and ‘5(five) kills’]. The details are listed down below. [down below is also redundant]

We found the body at 7am. There was blood everywhere. On the street, on the walls, hell, the blood was spread out over the whole fucking alley. It was gruesome. '[you need to use creative language to create imagery. Here, you are just stating things i.e. “blood was everywhere” but that’s not enough to paint an image in a reader’s mind] 'We couldn’t recognize the body, there was no wallet, nothing. We had no way of knowing who it was. Only thing we knew was that it was a beggar, someone who lived on the street that’s it. '[Don’t preface the clue with a conclusion. i.e. it should be clue -> conclusion, not the other way around like here]'

The first clue came after a couple hours. A big ‘’A’’, painted with blood on a car down the road. After that we found an I.D. The name of the beggar was Audry. Last name unknown. '[what sort of ID lists your first name, but not your surname? Think about it.]'

A couple days later, I was asked to describe the crime scene. ‘’Blood, blood everywhere’’, I said. ‘’His heart lay a couple meters away from him, his intestines were wrapped around what was left of his neck’’. ‘’His skull was smashed in, probably with a hammer. ‘’His eyeballs lay in the palm of his hands… At Least 2 meters away from the rest of his arm’’. It was the most gruesome crime scene I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes. '[This whole paragraph is botched. The punctuation is all over the place and it’s clumsy storytelling to tell us a description of the crime scene AFTER we’ve been introduced to it. He’s not talking to anyone so there’s no point even having dialogue, you should just include these details in the original murder scene description]'

The beggar was the first of five.

The second kill was in the Alpha Centauri System, you know, with the triple suns. '[systems. You know? With the triple suns.]'

The victim was hanging from a meat hook. The hook was inserted in her… anus. Her legs were dangling from a bit of flesh '[dangling from where? Her pelvis? If so, be clear]'. Her head was all fucked up [how?]. Her hair was wrapped around her neck, tightly. We suspect [suspected] that the cause of death was from a stab [a stab wound] through her heart, but looking at her body.. [ellipses are either three dots, or none, but never just two] Everything is [was] fucked up. Yet again [there] was blood sprayed around the whole alley. We found her I.D. in her stomach. Her name was Ophelia. Last name unknown.

Since I need to list everything that we saw at the crimescene… Here it is: Her hair was wrapped around her neck. The meat hook was inserted in her anus, which was dangling from a rope tied to a wooden beam. Her legs were dangling from a bit of flesh. [All of this is redundant, we literally just heard it] Her heart was pierced with a sharp object, probably a needle. Her arms were stuffed in her boots. Her stomach was opened, her I.D. stuffed inside. Her face was fucked up. We also found, in the mess of blood and intestines, a [an] ‘’O’’, made from blood.

She was the second.

''We had no clue who the killer was,  [we know this]  but it was someone who accessed  [access]  to a way of teleporting through dimensions, since the first kill was just a couple days before and there is no way that someone can fly 20 light years in a couple days  [you seem to be confusing interdimensional and faster-than-light travel a lot] . I asked around a bit at the research facility  [what research facility?] , at  [and] they gave me a huge lead. They were testing dimensional teleporting on animals. Mutated animals, to be precise. One of the mutated animals escaped, a really important one, since he was infused with the teleporting goo stuff ' […eh? Where does the goo come from? Why is the animal mutated? You introduce plot concepts as you use them, which is bad storytelling] '. His tracker  [what tracker?]  broke down, so we had no clue where he was. He is our number one suspect.'' [also, why is all this paragraph in italics?]

The third murder and fourth murders were in the Kepler system. The murderer fused the two bodies together, with a tiny but strong thread. Their I.D.’s [IDs] lay on a stone, a couple meters away from the bodies. Their names were Helena and Reinard. Last names unknown. They were family. They died hand in hand, literally, since their hands were sown together. The line of thread started at their mouths, and ended at their belly buttons. [buttons.] Again, the legs were torn of [off], their arms were in a weird position, sown behind the back of of [repetition] the victims. Cause of death: A huge hole, [no comma] through their stomachs. This murderer really was creative with his ways of killing and torturing. Blood was everywhere, and again, we found an ‘’H’’ and an ‘’R’’, drawn in blood.

''After a couple days staying in the Kepler system, I went home. I sat down on a chair with everything I had from this case. The first murder on a beggar called Audry. The second, the murder of a maid called Ophelia. The last two murders, on two, what we suspect, 17 years olds, called Helena and Reinard. All four murders had a couple things in common. The letters, drawn in blood. The gruesome murder scene. Legs torn of  [off] . All four had pierced hearts and bite marks. ''The letters intrigued me the most. A, O, H, R. I couldn’t form a word from it. I jumped up when I heard my phone ringing. They [They’d] found a fifth body.

<p class="MsoNormal">It took me a couple seconds to travel to the correct system. They found the body in the sewers, or at least, part of the body. We found both legs, with an I.D. in one of the pockets [try to be as simple and as short as possible in your choice of words; for example instead of saying ‘in one of the pockets of the pants’ you can just say ‘in a pants pocket’] of the pants. Her name was Katie. There were bite marks on the legs, near the thighs. There was no blood at [the] scene, which was weird.

<p class="MsoNormal">One of the officers came running from another part of the sewers. They found the rest of the body.

<p class="MsoNormal">This time, it was the typical bloody crime scene. Her head was smashed against the side of the sewers. Her heart was inserted in her mouth. Her intestines were wrapped around her neck, and tied to a guard rail. Her fingers were stuffed into her ears, and her arms were inserted in [into] her cut open lungs. Her teeth were smashed out, which was a first timer. We still had no clue who the murderer was, and we haven’t [hadn’t] found the escaped mutant from the research facility. There was a big ‘’K’’, made from blood, on the side of the sewer. One of the officers went home, after saying he felt like he was watched by something.

<p class="MsoNormal">''Again, I stayed a couple days in the system before returning home. I took all the information I had, and went to the galactic databank. I am almost sure who the murderer was. It all started when the officer said he felt like he was watched. I had this before, a couple years before. Murder spree of 6. At all of the 6 crime scenes officers went home because they felt like they were being watched. A door was slammed shut, down the hallway. Probably a secretary or something. I searched in the databank for ‘’the invisible killer’’. That’s how we named it. The drawing of him instantly popped up. A dark hooded figure, with red eyes. We had one without the hood. Red eyes, huge grin filled with teeth. His murder spree stopped… Dammit, this fucking recorder is messing up. He’s close. I know it. I’m fucked. If anyone finds this recorder, my name is Steven. He is ba---.''

<p class="MsoNormal">They found Steven’s body… Or what was left of it. A big ‘S’’ was drawn on the wall with blood.

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">So just to overview – a story must be original and literate to pass quality standards. That means that it must have relatively few mechanical errors.

<p class="MsoNormal">Mechanical errors include things like repetitions (the the cat), redundancies (the fat man was very fat), missing words (the big black barked at me across the lawn), misspelt words, homonym substitutions (she was the air to the throne/his voice was very course), incorrect punctuation (it’s voice was loud) and other related grammatical problems. There are quite a few mechanical errors in this story, most of which I’ve marked out. You can find guides and blogs on this wikia on under the writing advice header at the top of the site which provide a lot of support and guidance on grammar. Your stories don’t have to be perfectly written to be accepted—we all make mistakes—but when a story has frequent and persistent errors it becomes too much to leave it up without some fixing from the author.

<p class="MsoNormal">Another important aspect of a story is style. Style comes from your choice of words, the way you tell the story, and the overall atmosphere. I’ve touched on some of this in the annotated version of your story above, but it can be worth going into specifics. So first, your use of creative language is limited. Let’s look at a quick descriptive passage from HumboldtLycanthrope’s short story The Gym Teacher (it’s on this wikia, and is very good). In it he describes a young boy struggling in gym class.

<p class="MsoNormal">''Danny struggled around the track, his sneakers beating against the hot asphalt. His thighs burned, chaffed from the coarse texture of the gym shorts that were too big for him and always threatening to fall down. Sweat stung his eyes and lacquered his nose so that his glasses slid down his face. The air felt like fire in his lungs as he panted and fought for breath.''

<p class="MsoNormal"> I’ve highlighted some of the descriptive words that Humboldt used to immerse the reader. He has a big vocabulary and uses lots of different words and images to tell you how this character is feeling, and what they’re doing. We never really see a similar approach with your imagery. Let’s compare and look at one of your crime scenes.

<p class="MsoNormal">''Her head was smashed against the side of the sewers. Her heart was inserted in her mouth. Her intestines were wrapped around her neck, and tied to a guard rail. Her fingers were stuffed into her ears, and her arms were inserted in her cut open lungs.''

<p class="MsoNormal">First, you just list things. It doesn’t feel interesting, and the vocabulary is very limited. Smashed, wrapped, stuffed, inserted; all of these are basic and just say, quite bluntly, what is being seen. Words like torn, shredded, blasted, fractured, snapped, bent, broken, rented, coiled, peeled, slathered, slithered, and many others can be used to describe a mutilated and broken body. Simply put, you need to improve your vocabulary. To do that you need to read more, and when you read something in a story that sticks out to you, something that you personally think is really good and captured your attention, read it again and pay careful attention to the words the author uses and make a note to use them yourself.

<p class="MsoNormal">Other issues with style include your tendency to write redundant sentences, to tell the reader things no one needs to know, and to just generally include clumsy phrases (e.g. the dimensional travel). When writing every word should contribute directly to either the plot, the setting, the characters, the mood/atmosphere, or the themes of the story. I’ll come back to this, but when you write a story and you include something ask yourself, does it help the reader understand the plot, setting, characters, atmosphere, or themes? If not, don’t put it in the story.

<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, you have some issues with plot. I’ve mentioned it doesn’t have any closure—what does the mutant monster have to do with anything? Who committed the murders? Why do we follow Steve only to suddenly switch around?—but other issues abound. Why the sci-fi setting? None of the plot, as far as I can tell, relies on the sci-fi travel business. There aren’t laser guns or aliens. Just sewers, alleys and police. You take so much time to set up the sci-fi premise but you don’t cash it in. The reader never gets to see that setting put to use. No hover cars, jetpacks, or even portals to walk through. Just five murder scenes that all seem pretty similar.

<p class="MsoNormal">On a similar point – throughout this story I think you mean faster-than-light travel, not interdimensional travel. Traveling to a different dimension would mean entering another parallel universe—perhaps one where donuts are square and cats chase dogs—but it’s not really the same as being able to travel to alpha centauri in an instant. A good example of interdimensional travel is the animated show Rick & Morty which, if you haven’t seen, is really good.

<p class="MsoNormal">Overall though you write functionally and I liked the original premise. Like I said, while your story suffers mechanically and has no real closure, the whole idea of an intergalactic homicide detective is interesting. It’s original, and it caught my attention. I don’t think this story needs a huge amount of work. To pass the minimum quality standards I’d like to see a better ending that offers closure to the events, and I’d like to see the mechanical errors I’ve noted in black fixed.

<p class="MsoNormal">If I was you though I’d also take the opportunity to only discuss what is new in each murder scene (for example, “this murder was the same as the last one, except this time he smashed her teeth in etc.), rather than repeating “smashed head, chopped limbs, blood all over the place” again and again. Similarly, I think you should maybe experiment with some more creative language, it doesn’t have to be a lot, but try to paint an image with descriptive words. Even just two or three per paragraph will really help.

<p class="MsoNormal">I hope this helps.