Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-29076144-20170602060324/@comment-28266772-20170612133026

The branches of the tall pines and maples swayed back in fourth in the powerful wind. They reached out over the water, leaving a nice shadow for us to park our little fishing boat under.

“Damn it! Almost had him!” Jerry shouted aloud [redundant; shouting tends to be done aloud].

“That’s the third bite you’ve had today, yet you still can’t catch anything,” I laughed in response [also redundant; it’s clear from the context it was in response] pulling my rod back before whipping it forward to send the bait flying. It was a nice and sunny noon, aside from the dark towering clouds rising over the horizon. We only had one bass in the cooler in the middle of the boat, one I had caught about 40 minutes earlier. The wind was growing more and more powerful, making it hard to cast and making the waves rock the boat. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Jerry turned to me with a frown.

“We better get back to the cabin, we don’t want to get stuck out here in a bad thunderstorm,” he said to me, his shaggy brown hair waving around like a flag. I laughed at the sight and nodded my head in agreement; as Jerry started up the trolling motor.

We were decently far from his house, so it took about 15 minutes to get there from our fishing spot. It was sunny in the direction we were heading; but behind us, darkness loomed. [a good rule for semicolons is this, if you can use a comma instead, use a comma.] Once we arrived I saw Jerry’s brother Robert relaxing on the porch in front of the cabin, reading a book. This surprised me, as I had always known Robert as the less intelligent one, and not one to read books. He set it down and came to help us dock the small vessel in a little slip.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“The only bite I had was a nice bass. Your brother on the other hand, had three bites but couldn’t reel one in,” I responded.

“Oh well, we can still skin and fry that bass for some food tonight.”

We got off the boat and Jerry and Rob headed up the stairs into the porch, whilst I stayed down on the porch to clean the bass. As I worked, I watched the almost-black storm grow and take over the blue sky. The storm moved quickly, and seemed to come out of nowhere. This morning there hadn’t been a cloud in sight. I had never seen anything like it before, and it felt unnatural. I hurriedly finished and headed back up into the cabin. The cabin was old and small, and a little dirty inside. It was red-bricked with a brown wooden roof. The red on the bricks had faded into a more brown [browner, not ‘more brown’] color, which made the cabin really blend in with the environment around it. It was hard to see from [far] away.

Jerry and Rob where [were] in the kitchen cleaning up, and our other friend Sal and his girlfriend Olivia were on the couch watching a funny television show. We had insisted on Sal not bringing his girlfriend, telling him it was going to be a guy’s trip, but he brought her anyway; saying he hardly got to spend any vacation time with her like this. [Again, I’m sure you can find some specific example of how using semicolons like this is grammatically correct but if a comma does the same job it’s just being obtuse]

None of us really liked her, as we thought she was too controlling in Sal’s life, but we wanted to hang out with Sal and he wouldn’t come without her. Jerry had a little weather alert radio on the kitchen counter, and he was playing it now.

“The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunder storm warning for the following counties…”

It named almost every county in the state, and then followed to say the storm was also in a multitude of other states nearby.

“Be prepared for strong winds, heavy rain, flooding, and lightning. There is also a slight chance of hail and tornadoes.”

“Jesus, we are going to get slammed,” Jerry’s eyes had widened as he listened.

“Yeah it looks like the damn apocalypse is coming out there,” I laughed. We debated driving back to town, but decided not too, as we would probably get caught by the storm in the long ride back. More and more [try not to use ‘more and more’, it’s a weak use of repetition] thunder rumbled, and I stepped out unto [onto] the porch to watch the dark clouds engulf the sky above us. Lightning flashed around the cabin, and it was starting to rain now. The wind was making the boat bounce back and forth between the sides of the dock. I just hoped our knots would keep it attached. The slanted rain began to shoot the screen covering of the porch, soaking me and the furniture. The wind pushed it hard, and it was painful getting hit by it. It felt like little pricks or air-soft bullets. I heard [headed] back inside, with little red dots on my arms and face. The wind was so violent it began to shake even the thick oaks surrounding the land around us. This lake and the area around the cabin was heavily wooded with big trees. Now all of them were shaking, and I was afraid one would come crashing down on us any second. The rain grew so heavy that I couldn’t even see past the porch. Sal and Olivia were cuddled up on the couch, and me Rob, and Jerry [Rob, Jerry and I] were discussing the storm in the kitchen.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before, this could cause some serious damage to the house. Hell the dock is probably broken off by now. Dad is going to be pissed,” Jerry laughed. His laugh was interrupted by a bright flash and loud clap of thunder.

<p class="MsoNormal">The flow of lightning and torrential rain continued throughout the day. The power would flicker constantly but never entirely go out. The weather radio just continued to repeat itself, updating with new tornado alerts for new counties every now and then. It showed no signs of slowing down so we just put in a funny movie and all sat down to enjoy it. It was hard to hear over the thunder and wind, and we would be constantly interrupted by the power outages. By the time we finished, it was around 10 at night and we all decided to go to sleep. There were only 3 rooms, so Jerry had been sleeping out on the couch. The noise of the storm made it easier for me to drift off to sleep easily.

<p class="MsoNormal">I awoke to sunlight beaming through the windows.

<p class="MsoNormal">Hmmm, the storm most have worn off over night, I thought to myself as I climbed out of bed. I flicked the light-switch, but the light didn’t come on.

<p class="MsoNormal">Power must of  [must’ve]  gotten knocked out by the storm.

<p class="MsoNormal">I walked into the living room, seeing Robert down on the dock, observing the damage. I went out to meet him. A huge pine had fallen into the lake, and another one was leaning on an oak tree. If that oak hadn’t had been there, it would have crushed the cabin. Luckily the dock was hardly damaged, and the boat was still attached.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I might as well call Dad, and tell him we’re alright. Here let me see your phone…” Rob spoke.

<p class="MsoNormal">I had the best carrier out of everyone here, so my phone was the only one with barely enough data to call anyone. I handed him my phone and he turned it on.

<p class="MsoNormal">“That’s weird, it says you have no bars,” he handed it back to me.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah… maybe something happened from the storm. I’m going to make breakfast.”

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">'I think there’s enough to get dug in right here and now. '

<p class="MsoNormal">'First off, formatting. You can’t paste into the wikia normally. You have to paste into the source mode which you access by clicking “edit” on your story and clicking the drop down menu to the left of the ‘cancel’ button. When you paste into the source mode you will lose all paragraph spacing and italics. In other words, if you have a line space between two paragraphs it will disappear. A good way to get around this is to paste your story with twice as many line breaks as necessary (so each paragraph is separated by TWO line breaks). A quick fix for this is to go into MS word and use replace+find to find ^p and replace with ^p^p '

<p class="MsoNormal">'This will replace all single line gaps in your story with double line gaps. When you paste into source mode it will remove one of those line breaks. You will still have to go through and reinsert any italics. '

<p class="MsoNormal">'But, and here’s the big thing; while I appreciate that it’s difficult to work with the wikia’s editor for these reasons, this is the way it is. And the solution is to not lazily paste the story into the editor and let other’s fix the broken formatting. So the first requirement to keeping the story on the wikia is to correct the formatting. You can do this my way, or you can go through and manually correct each broken paragraph spacing (this is going to be difficult for a long story), but either way, it needs to be done. '

<p class="MsoNormal">On to the overall review.

<p class="MsoNormal">'Mechanical issues: Enough to send MS word into a spasm. Homonym substitutions (where/were), missing words (from away), incorrect word choice (unto/onto), repetitions (as as), common errors (must of/must’ve) and other grammatical mistakes (it is always Tom, John and I – never me, Tom and John). Stick your story in MS word and use the review tool. I can’t justify going through a 10,000 word story just to pick up mistakes that people have taught machines to identify.'

<p class="MsoNormal">'So the above issues are a must. I’m not reviewing the entire story just to identify common errors that, honestly, you should have picked up before posting. They are, 100%, mandatory to the story staying on site. It can’t have basic errors popping up every other paragraph, and it can’t be formatted like a Matrix screensaver. I don’t think these are unfair impositions and I hope you don’t think they are either.'

<p class="MsoNormal">'As for the rest? '

<p class="MsoNormal">'Plot issues – 1300 words in and nothing has happened. Normally a slow starting story which builds atmosphere relies on the prose to sell what’s happening. It needs style, mood and atmosphere. So let’s look at how you creatively use language to engage the reader by examining a descriptive passage…'

<p class="MsoNormal">More and more thunder rumbled, and I stepped out unto the porch to watch the dark clouds engulf the sky above us. Lightning flashed around the cabin, and it was starting to rain now. The wind was making the boat bounce back and forth between the sides of the dock. I just hoped our knots would keep it attached. The slanted rain began to shoot the screen covering of the porch, soaking me and the furniture. The wind pushed it hard, and it was painful getting hit by it. It felt like little pricks or air-soft bullets. I heard back inside, with little red dots on my arms and face. The wind was so violent it began to shake even the thick oaks surrounding the land around us. This lake and the area around the cabin was heavily wooded with big trees. Now all of them were shaking…

<p class="MsoNormal">'There’s not enough creative imagery here. A storm is building up and it’s leading to something big so you give us rumbling thunder, dark clouds engulfing the sky, flashing lightning, wind bouncing a boat, slanting rain, and violent wind that shakes trees. This is pretty basic imagery. It’s not imaginative, it’s not immersive. It’s actually bordering on redundant. If you asked anyone alive to describe a storm they’d refer to things like dark clouds and rumbling thunder – you’re not giving the audience anything new or interesting to work with. There’s no personal spin. It’s rote. It’s dry. It’s not interesting, there’s no mood or atmosphere; it’s devoid of creative language. '

<p class="MsoNormal">'Not that there aren’t attempts at creativity. The bouncing boat and the red welts are unique insights into the storm and they stand out as half-decent attempts but the vocab lets them down. A boat “bouncing” just doesn’t sound right and there are better descriptors to use, and when you bring an interesting image in like “air-soft bullets” you spoil it by saying “I heard back inside, with little red dots on my arms and face”. This is interesting imagery let down by basic word choice (e.g. “little red dots”). There are infinite word combinations to describe any one thing and lots of tools and techniques recruiting similes, analogies, metaphors, and just genuinely novel descriptions and word choices to use, so use them; nobody is saying you’ve got to write like Lovecraft with ridiculous over-the-top vocab choices, but you do have to be interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention. '

<p class="MsoNormal">'So those are my final points on what I’ve read so far. Take or leave the last part on creative language but just to reiterate – fix the formatting and put it through a spellcheck. '