Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-15777822-20140418170303/@comment-24077689-20140423200529

Let me start by saying that I’m a tough reviewer. I don’t give things passes. Ever.

I’m also one of the more active reviewers on this forum. I usually have a formula: I sit down, open up a word document, turn on some form of music or other and then I break down the story piece by piece. Typically, I break it down sentence by sentence. My reviews are usually over 2-pages in length.

But I can’t do that with this story. I really, truthfully, absolutely can’t. The biggest problem I have with most stories is the dialogue. Most writers here have this inexplicable inability to write dialogue, and for good reason, it’s not the easiest aspect of writing. But the way you set up the dialogue wasn’t only neat, tidy, and absolutely correct. It was brilliant, visceral, and most importantly: characterizing.

Particularly the little spit of dialogue where he’s listening to them in the break room. That was really clever of you. Now, I spent a good amount of time temping, and that took me to office settings of damn near every caliber. You have the office feel on fucking par, man. A lot of writers can come up with a good concept but will fuck it up with obvious inexperience of lack of knowledge on what they’re writing on. Take Bound for example, also in this forum, the biggest problem I have is that I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. I know how to tan leather, I know how the process of book binding works, I know all about libraries, and books, and skinning and leather work. The author of that story very clearly doesn’t. And that’s about technical work. You do something in this story that’s possibly even a little bit harder: you visualize the experience with words. Something I don’t see very often on this wiki.

Your diction is simple. There’s a no-nonsense approach to the writing that I really appreciate. Likewise, your sentence structure is quite lovely. Again, going against my experience and my expectations, your grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and diction are all spot-on. If you make any grammatical mistakes they’re so few and far between, I don’t notice them, which is a big deal for me.

The characterization is quite alarming. You create a character in Gary who is unique, neurotic, anxious, angry, but still largely a blank slate. Certainly, he’s recognizable as a person, but with these traits he’s just enough of a blank that it allows the reader to project themselves onto him. This is brilliant for a horror story; you see similar characters in the works of Clive Barker, particularly the title story of The Books of Blood and the character from The Midnight Meat Train. You also see characters like this attempted to be used in modern horror films, this technique is prominent in the recent remake of the film Maniac, starring Elijah Wood. Less extreme examples are several releases from 2012: Daniel Radcliffe’s character in The Woman In Black, the character played by Max Thieriot in The House at the End of the Street, and finally several of the characters in the vignettes of the first V/H/S anthology film.

Your build up is good, fairly consistent throughout the story, there’s definitely a sense of dread that pervades the story, which wonderfully ties into the immersion factor I was talking about above, with lines like “Ghost or no ghost, I was definitely haunted by something.” You don’t abandon that sense of dread and you don’t abandon that idea of anxiety.

A couple of things do throw me off: the description of the branches as “thin and colorless, like bone”, now I’m assuming this is taking place somewhere in Britain, and I’m just wondering what type of trees would be white like that. I’m here in Flagstaff, AZ. We have groves of Birch and Aspen trees all over the place. Their bark is white as bone, their branches are thin and reaching and sinister in this manner. Are these common trees in the area? Other trees that come to mind are American Sycamore, or smaller and even shrub-like trees like Stewartia.

While I loved the description of the ghost, I was a little put off that first you describe her limbs as “tapering off” then you quickly correct that image. This creates a bit of a contradiction of images that is disruptive to the overall flow of the story. I definitely get what you’re attempting to do here, but I think that voice is already established. The description of her flicking here “snowy white hair out of her snowy eyes” while it is beautiful, and it is certainly very physical in the way the mind conjures up the image, I think it has a bit of a disconnect. Earlier you describe the moths as having an incandescent quality; I think it might serve you better to perhaps use words like “ethereal” in this description of her.

This ending happens very quickly. It doesn’t disrupt the pace at all, it doesn’t seem rushed. In fact, I want to take a moment to discuss the way in which she kills Philip. That is very imaginative, it’s gorgeous and best of all, it’s fucking terrifying. I’m not sure if you intended it, but it very much reminds me of insects, the ways in which many insects kill their prey, opening mandibles and cutting and killing their victims. Again, this is very clever. It reminds me of the film version of The Candyman, actually, in some weird way. While he doesn’t open up his ribcage in the same way, the image is featured prominently in the character. It’s very clever of you that her ribcage becomes a maw because she doesn’t have limbs any longer.

The reaction of witnessing the trauma is very well done. The line “The stars blinked back.” Is particularly attractive, it brings a certain cosmic quality to the story, and reminds me of the song Planet Caravan by Black Sabbath that has the line “the stars shine like eyes”.

This next section threw me off, though. I get that he’s journaling, I get that he’s traumatized. But this whole section honestly seems really juvenile, it’s disruptive, adds nothing to the continuation of the story. You could have communicated this trauma and his reaction so much better without resorting to him just hitting the keyboard. He’s immediately composed after this sudden outburst. It’s ugly. It doesn’t communicate the anxiety, it’s trite, and it feels like you gave up the effort you put forth so passionately in the rest of the story.

Also, the journaling thing isn’t really clear until the very end. While, this is a good plot point and finished up the story neatly, I feel like you could have introduced it a bit earlier, just for the sake of clarity. The ending, while very satisfying, also feels like it’s lacking. You wrap it up very nicely, but he talks about perpetuating the story and going to accept his doom. I feel like he’d want to warn people, but then again this idea could also easily go into a cliché. You may wish to just leave it as is.

I loved the story, I loved the ghost, I love well-done vengeful spirit stories. You’ve treated this masterfully and you’ve treated the subject with care and respect. I appreciate that.

What’s the deal with the moths, though? It’s an interesting image, to be sure, but I’m just curious why moths? Where does that tie into her unfortunate murder? It reminds me pretty heavily of the film Mama, which is less a direct horror film and more a romantic thriller. I like the image, again, I love the vengeful spirit aspect.

I also want to thank you, it was a genuine pleasure to read this and review it. Something I don’t get to say very often. If you include this in your final dissertation I'd appreciate you giving me an oppportunity to give you my real name, not just to use my internet handle.