Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35373506-20171110073426/@comment-28266772-20171110172105

Everything around me is black. Pitch dark black. I feel ropes twisted around my hands and legs. I feel them pushing into the wooden chair. I begin to sweat. Where am I? What am I doing here?

"Hello!" I scream. The words taste like chamomile tea. "Where am I![?]"

I was diagnosed with Synesthesia '[capitalisation; also you don’t get diagnosed with synaesthesia. Actually, your entire conceptualisation of synaesthesia is fundamentally incorrect] 'when I was 6. One time, at school, the teacher was teaching us about abacuses. Out of nowhere, I screamed out in pain. Pure hellish pain '[<- this is not a sentence. Sentences have, at the absolute minimum, one noun and one verb]'. I screamed and screamed [repetition doesn’t help here]. It only lasted a few seconds, [<- delete comma] because before anyone knew what was going on, [delete this comma too] I fell unconscious to the floor. I was rushed to hospital but I was declared unhurt '[declared unhurt? Unhurt…? Think about what you’re trying to say and say it clearly and rationally because ‘declared unhurt’ is not that.] '   when I got there. It turns out I had Synesthesia [stop capitalising], and the words 'abacus' or 'abacuses' would give me a horrible stabbing pain in my side.

Everything remains silent and dark. Nothing moves, nothing speaks. Nothing happens. '[so much redundancy. Try to keep your writing snappy and efficient]' The only things are me, the ropes and the chair.

I decide to wobble the chair a bit. Perhaps it'll fall over, and somehow that could be beneficial to my escape. [is this a question or statement?] I wobble harder until eventually I tumble down. Amazingly, the ropes come undone. [acknowledging something’s cheesiness doesn’t magically un-cheese it] The floor is made out of stone, or something like that [just say concrete]. Its got a rough texture to it. [just say concrete…] I stand up uninjured. I put my hands out and walk straight ahead, hoping to reach a wall that I can move across.

"Please be an exit, please be an exit." I say to myself desperately. The word exit [‘exit’] feels soft on my skin.

I hit a wall. I turn left, put one hand on the wall and one in front of me, and walk. I walk for what feels like an eternity until finally I reach a door. [you’re doing a lot of telling and very little showing]

"Thank god!" [God] I yell a little too loudly '[you’re using a lot of rote and uninteresting phrasing. You can just say ‘yell’ you don’t need to clarify that they yelled loudly because that’s fundamentally part of ‘yelling’]'. I open the door and walk into a room, the complete opposite of the room I was stuck it [why tell us this when you can just show it]. It was small and brightly lit. It takes a few moments to get my eyes to adjust to the light [for my eyes to adjust], and another few moments to realise that I had [have; remember, this is all present tense] been locked in this room.

Once I can see, there is a table with an abacus on it '[what is the subject and object of this sentence? Just say ‘I can see a table etc.’]'. It was all different colours and made out of wood. [you’re just telling us what an abacus is and we already know that.] I stare at it in horror. My mouth is locked in an everlasting silent scream. My body is frozen. I cannot move. I just stare and stare until my eyes begin to water. Stare and stare [,] until they start to hurt. Stare and stare [,] until someone bursts into the room wearing a horrifying '[don’t state something like this. Dig deep, there are nearly infinite adjectives to use. A mask can be rugose, rubbery, distended, inhuman, bizarre, cockled and that’s just the texture. What of the colour? The shape? The elongated nose? The inhuman black-eyed stare of the eyes?] 'horse mask. [extra space] He pushes me to the ground.

"Pathetic." He spits at me. The word tastes like bay leaves. He grabs the abacus and slams it into my stomach. I wheeze, my breath cut short. He looks at me for a bit longer.

"How do you like your abacus Gabriel?" he says. The pain hits. I yelp but I try to retain most of my fear from showing. '[retain doesn’t fit this sentence. The word ‘keep’ is a-okay] 'I grit my teeth. He spits on me again.

"What are you trying to do?" I ask. I can't see behind the mask but I can tell he is smiling. He knows I hate it.

I stand up, grab the abacus and slam it on Horse Mask's [not a proper noun] head. He moans and falls to the ground. I hit it with him [I hit him with it] over and over until he bleeds. Until his fingers are shattered '[this is a fragmented sentence. It either needs to be attached to the prior sentence with a comma, or rewritten so it makes sense on his own]'. Until he can barely speak. '[exact same thing here. A dependent clause on its own is a fragmented sentence. A dependent clause occurs when a sentence doesn’t have an object and doesn’t express a complete and independent thought. For example, ‘until he arrives’ is a dependent clause which on its own is a fragmented sentence. But it can be attached to the independent clause ‘she is unhappy’ to create the sentence ‘she is unhappy, until he arrives’.]'

"That's my abacus. [comma not full stop]" He [he] says quietly before he falls [falling] unconscious. I collapse to the ground in agony, but it only lasts 10 seconds. I get back and open the door. '[this doesn’t work. He collapses and gets back up? So what? Why? Every word you write needs to contribute to a story. This sentence only seems to exist so that the events remain self-consistent (i.e. they follow the rule you established earlier that the narrator collapses every time he hears the word ‘abacus’) but on its own it just hurts the writing]'

It's locked from the outside.

I freak out. I look around the room for any other escapes '[<- escapes? Again this is technically correct but it just sounds wrong. Do you mean ‘route of escape’ or ‘exit’?]', but there is nothing. Just the table, the abacus and the almost dead man lying on the floor.

I curl up into a ball into [in not into] the corner of the room and cry. I know, it's crazy. A 20 year old man crying. But I do. I cry and cry until I have no more tears. I cry until the ground is a puddle. I cry until the door opens again, and two more men come in. They look at the body, they look at me. They look angry.

<p class="MsoNormal">"What the hell have you done![?]" One of them said. [says.]

<p class="MsoNormal">The word 'hell' tastes like ash.

<p class="MsoNormal">He lunges at me. The other one grabs the abacus and slams [it] into me. I get [am] beaten over and over, just like what I did to Horse Mask '[why is this a proper noun? It doesn’t work]'.

<p class="MsoNormal">Eventually they stop. [because…?]

<p class="MsoNormal">They gather around me and stare at my wounded body. They look at each other. They look at me. One of them whispers into the others ear. He nods.

<p class="MsoNormal">They start chanting the word abacus over and over again. I scream. I yell for help. But they won't stop. They [just] won't. They can't. They didn't. '[present tense, remember? Also why ‘can’t’ they? You establish no reason for them being unable to stop.]'

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal"> Over and over and over and over again. '[repetition is like a fart. The more you force it, the more likely it is to be shit]'

<p class="MsoNormal">The pain is unbearable. I cannot stand it. But I must not let myself fall asleep [unconscious; being asleep and unconscious are radically different things and cannot be conflated like this]. I must not fall unconscious.

<p class="MsoNormal">They laugh with each other and begin to leave. The pain wears off. They shouldn't be laughing, because they don't know something. '[what? This sentence is… weird]'

<p class="MsoNormal">The pain isn't real pain. It doesn't affect my body, unless I pass out. That aside '[aside? Again it’s just… wrong. Do you mean, ‘Besides that?’]' I am fine.

<p class="MsoNormal">There is a loud snap followed by a groan as I slam the abacus into   [the neck of ]one of the men 's neck. They die instantly. Just like that. '[really? Keep it believable]' The other one cracks. He begs for mercy. He tells me that he will show me the exit. That he means no harm at all. He was just doing want [what] his boss told him to do.

<p class="MsoNormal">Being a merciful person, I let him go. I let him show me the exit. He does exactly what he promised. He says sorry. He says it repeatedly. It's great. It tastes like an iced coffee. I leave without saying anything. I leave from a big metal warehouse in some industrial area. I manage to catch a bus and go home. Its 6:27AM when I get home [repetition]. I live by myself. Nobody would've wondered where I went. And I want to keep it that way.

<p class="MsoNormal">On the way home, I have a memory. I remember the time after the abacus incident when I was 6, after I was diagnosed with the disorder I currently have, my parents both took me out for a special treat. I could have whatever I wanted. I had a massive iced chocolate that made me sick, but I loved it.

<p class="MsoNormal">The word 'mask' tastes just like it.

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">Mechanical issues – so many. MS word’s spellcheck would have caught a lot of them, and the rest of should have been picked up by a proof read. A few mechanical errors are fine but you show a systematic tendency towards the following problems.

<p class="MsoNormal">A) Sentence structure – sentences have subjects, objects, and actions (or verbs). A sentence can only ever be an independent clause, or an independent clause attached to other clauses (dependent or independent) via punctuation (for dependent clauses only) or conjunctions. Remember, a dependent clause doesn’t make sense on its own and will often look like ‘When she comes home.’ or ‘Bigger than a house.’. They always reference a subject or object from a previous clause (what happens when she comes home? What is bigger than a house?). Another common error writers make (admittedly not one you make but it’s on the topic of sentence structure so I’ll chuck it in) is to stitch two independent clauses together with a comma, which is called a ‘run on sentence’. For example, “It rained yesterday, I went to the shop anyway,” is a run-on sentence. I can’t use a comma to put those two clauses together. What I can do is use a conjunction like, “It rained yesterday, but I went to the shop anyway.”

<p class="MsoNormal">B) Syntax – hard to say why but your word choice is ever so slightly… off. This leads into stylistic issues which I’ll deal with later but for now it’s enough to say that you should avoid overly complex words like ‘retain’ when a word like ‘keep’ does the job and you should try to stick to linguistic convention (so you can say “I looked for exits” or “I looked for means of an escape” but not “I looked for escapes”).

<p class="MsoNormal">C) Mistakes of carelessness – I’ve already mentioned it and I won’t labour it but let me tell you what I think, and what many people think, when reading a story littered with errors of carelessness.

<p class="MsoNormal">“If you couldn’t be bothered to read your own work, why should I?”

<p class="MsoNormal">Think about what message you send when you don’t properly proof your own work. Most people won’t bother to call you out on an error. They won’t correct it. They won’t even stoop to bitch about it in a comment. They’ll just click off it and go do something else with their time.

<p class="MsoNormal">Stylistic issues – Show, don’t tell is the lesson of the day.

<p class="MsoNormal">But you also need to take greater effort to use language to create a descriptive scene.

<p class="MsoNormal">You also need to make an effort to present the world in interesting ways.

<p class="MsoNormal">You need to write economically and efficiently. If each and every word doesn’t 1) move the plot forward 2) tell us about the characters 3) tell us about the setting 4) establish mood or atmosphere or 5) contribute to a theme or motif, then delete it. At the same time, you need to actually write more. You’re economical in all the wrong places. You need to take the action scenes and other interesting things and inject a bit of description in there while going over all the weird instances of strange syntax and over-the-top repetition and delete those. A lot of your prose is snappy to the point of being dry, but at the same you litter it with useless filler words and unnecessary repetition.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Everything remains silent and dark. Nothing moves, nothing speaks. Nothing happens.” <- I mean look at this. Why say ‘remains’? Why not ‘is’? Everything is silent and dark. Boom. That’s it. That’s all you need. Everything afterwards is useless and tells us nothing new. Those are words you should be using to tell us about the state of panic, or what he can hear (like his own heartbeat, his breath, a throbbing in his skull), or his attempts to remember what happened to him. This story is simultaneous too simple and too complex at the same time.

<p class="MsoNormal">Plot issues – just everything. First off, ambiguity means an excess of valid interpretations. It’s not the same thing as having no valid interpretation. If two people read a book and one person finishes and says, “What a fantastic story about a woman’s murder,” and the other person says “What a fantastic story about a woman’s accidental death” that’s ambiguity. If you write a book and both people finish it by saying “what the actual living-fuck just happened?” that’s not ambiguity. Those illusions where you can see a duck or a rabbit? That’s ambiguous. A kaleidoscope? That isn’t ambiguous. It’s just a mess.

<p class="MsoNormal">This story? It is not ambiguous. So don’t even go there as a defence. It’s just a mess. Plots need clear sequences of events and forward motion. You ain’t David Lynch so don’t try and write Twin Peaks. Start off writing a story with a single valid interpretation and after years of practice you can start lacing in ambiguity. But ambiguity is NOT the same thing as stripping a story of all logic and meaning until nothing makes sense.

<p class="MsoNormal">So, what is this story? What is it? Because the only thing that happens is a guy is kidnapped and he punches some other guys and leaves. The end. A common mistake in early writers is ambition. Tone it down. Write a simple story and work towards grander stakes as you develop as a writer.

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">Positives – I’m not a (total) dick so I’ll end on a positive. You have a stylistic aim that emphasises simple language and punchy action. Punchy actions make for good action scenes. The fight scene? That’s good. You clearly know when less is more and it pays off in that scene. Remember that when the story is slow you wanna insert lots of atmospheric and moody language but when things get moving you actually wanna keep your writing punchy and snappy the way you try to in this story. A frightening monster chase should move quickly and offer simple easy to understand descriptions. Lots of writers, myself included, find it easy to spew endless adjectives about a spooky house but when it comes to a fight or chase scene we struggle to just shut the fuck up and keep it simple. You already seem to be ahead of that problem, so now you just need to bring it back around a little and try to include some fleshier descriptions when the story is slow.