Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28060931-20160918203623/@comment-28266772-20160920154543

This Journal has been found at the bottom of a ravine in the Ural Mountains. Bodies of two mountaineers, Bill Horten and Henry Conaway, have been found scorched and irradiated next to the bedraggled journal. An autopsy revealed substances of unknown origin within the mens [men’s] systems. The ravine in question was nothing as described in Henry C.'s journal. Upon further inquiry at the university where these men studied and upon interviewing their close relations, we found out these men were both celebrating their newly acquired M.A.'s, from the aforementioned university, by going on this week long expedition through the Ural Mountains.

Journal Entry #1; Ural Mountains, 1987, November 15th

"How much [many] bullets do you have in the Remington?" I said.

"Three. How 'bout your Colt?" Bill asked.

"Full cylinder. But no spare ammunition."

'[typically you don’t see dialogue in a journal entry. It’s not impossible but it’s more important that you establish who is writing the journal entries and frame it in an authentic manner]'

The expedition began six days ago. Three days passed without excitement, but on the third night, we saw an army of red eyes staring at us from the darkness. Wolfs [wolves]. Starving ones. Their numbers proved too big [this feels awkward]: they forced us back to the edge of a forest. '[I assume this is a survival situation which we’re being plunged into. That’s fine, but again, you need to find a way to frame it authentically]'

"We have to do something," Bill said, [.] " The wolfs [wolves] are getting hungrier. We don't have any more logs for the fire, and I'm not risking my life by going out there."

"Let's set fire to the tent. Then we can run out back and kill the wolfs that get too close." I offered.

"Fuck no; I am not going to set the tent ablaze and shoot wolfs [wolves]. There has to be better way! I'm not gonna kill anything if I don't have to." '[so let’s get the obvious out the way – wolves wouldn’t be stopped by a tent. Nor would they really even attack humans like this. They would need to be desperate, or extremely pissed off. Bears pose a more realistic threat to humans]'

I opened the tent and stepped out into the blizzard '[this needs to be established early on. It’s important to the scene]'. You could barley [barely] see them in the darkness, [a] few even risked approaching the fire so they could get warm, but I sent a hail of flaming coals at them.

Bill stepped out with our backpacks and said, "Okay. We'll scare 'em off and run into the forest. No killing though." '[I thought this was a fucking stupid thing for him to say given the extremity of the situation. It downplays any sense of urgency]'

I agreed. I took a twig from the fire and threw it at the tent; bill kicked the fire, and a hailstorm of flaming coals, twigs and leaves assaulted the wolfs [wolves – I’m gonna stop correcting this now but it’s a mistake you repeat so bear it in mind]. Bill send [sent] a bullet into the air, and the rest retreated further. We turned around and ran into the forest. The army of savages behind us were halted by the flaming tent. '[this behaviour just doesn’t strike me as right. Wolves are pack hunters that circle their prey and don’t really fuck about]'

We heard vicious snarling coming from the darkness all around us as we maneuvered our way through the forest. The blizzard extinguished the blazing tent and the wolfs were upon our trail. When they came too close to us, I shot the closest ones, but their hunger exceeded their fear, and they charged at us like a stampede. I emptied my chambers [ambiguous wording] into them. Bill was using the butt of his gun as a club[space](he did not care anymore). [why include his silly no kill rule if he breaks it moments later?]

Fear diverted all our energy into our legs: we ran so fast that all we could see was kaleidoscope of colors, it was a miracle we did not trip and fall onto the ground. But nothing can outrun a starving wolf for ever [forever; also a quick google shows their top speed to be between 30 and 40mph so I don’t think these guys would be outrunning them for even a minute]. We could hear their jaws snapping savagely, soon their breath warmed our thighs. By some lucky miracle, when I brought my foot down It [it] did not meet the ground. My momentum sent me flying forth into a hole in the ground.

I slid on the ice that covered the walls of the hole [you might wanna use the imagery of a tunnel by here]. Suddenly, I felt myself leave solid ground and fly down into a cave [this imagery is also ambiguous]; snow softened the impact, leaving me with only a few bruises. Bill hit the ground face down.

"Shit," he said, "where are we?"

<p class="MsoNormal">"A cave, perhaps, but whatever this is, it's better than having those savage beasts tear you to shreds." I said.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Spare me the imagery."

<p class="MsoNormal">He took out a flashlight and illuminated the cave. It was vast. The stone walls had fissures in them, and there was a tunnel leading further into the cave. We were cold so we preceded deeper into the cave. [third time you’ve used the word cave in this paragraph – consider chasm, cavern, enclosure etc.]We reached an opening after about sixty minute [an hour], the first thing we noted was the miasma '[you use this word a lot but it’s quite outdated. In this specific instance it certainly makes more sense to say ‘smell’]'. It smelled like rotting corpses, mixed with ozone. I just figured some animals found their way in and died.

<p class="MsoNormal">The tunnel continued through an aperture in the opposite wall, but we were too tired to go any deeper, and the aperture was a steep fall, with stalagmites and stalactites protruding everywhere.

<p class="MsoNormal">We had some spare firewood and twigs in the packs in case of an emergency. We lit a small fire and set up sleeping bags on two flat stones in the corner. The ground was like a stony beach. One thing we noted when we settled down to sleep was a mist filled the room.

<p class="MsoNormal">It's not opaque, so we are fine. I think I will sign off here for the night.

<p class="MsoNormal">Journal Entry #2; Ural Mountains, 1987, November 16th

<p class="MsoNormal">I woke up at midnight. The room was dark and misty, but I fancied a faint toxic-green light coming from the aperture in the wall. I stretched down and fumbled around for my shoes; my hand searching blindly in the dark, then I felt something solid. The thing suddenly twisted and seized my hand; I felt slimy fingers tighten around my wrist with crippling strength [strength]. My lungs stopped functioning, sweat squeezed through my pores, and when my eyes adjusted to [the] darkness, I saw a poison-green hand holding my own and I unleashed a strangled scream.

<p class="MsoNormal">I broke its grip and scrambled back frantically. I did not dare move a muscle for two hours. When my fear was overpowered by curiosity, I reached into my backpack with a shaking hand and took out a flashlight. The second the beam lit up the room was the second I pulled my hand back and swung the heavy object at the foot of my makeshift bed; using all my momentum and strength I crashed the flashlight into the place where the hand was.

<p class="MsoNormal">The flashlight broke the second it hit the stone... there was nothing there.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Hey, what are doing![?]" Bill yelled.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Where are you?" I asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Where do you think? I didn't move from the bed. What is all the racket about, did you have an aneurysm?"

<p class="MsoNormal">"Give us a light, will you." I said.

<p class="MsoNormal">When Bill flipped on his flashlight, I told him the whole story. He look [looked] at me gravely and shook his head,

<p class="MsoNormal">"It was in your sleep, Henry, look at the ground: there's no marks. Beside [besides], who in the world would believe such a thing? Was it like the bogeyman under your bed? My mother used to tell me those stories, I believed them. But now no responsible adult would believe in that kind of bullshit.”

<p class="MsoNormal">"People believe in god, what's the difference. [?] The bogeyman, cthulhu, god. All of them are things beyond the realm of understanding, each of them have a cult following, and each of them have a plethora of stories about them. So I ask you: what's the fucking difference?" I said. Bill shook his head and opened a can of beans.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Breakfast." he said.

<p class="MsoNormal">I have no idea what I am supposed to make of this. Was it really a dream, was it just an overactive imaginations [imagination], or an illusion? I wish I had an answer.

<p class="MsoNormal">Journal Entry #3; Ural Mountains, 1987, November 18th

<p class="MsoNormal">With full stomachs, we headed back the way we came. There was no exit. The ice was too weak, the walls too smooth and the hole too deep. When we returned to the opening, we pondered on the issue and finally decided to take our chance with the aperture.

<p class="MsoNormal">We hammered two nails into the stone beneath the aperture. We wrapped rope around the nails and placed our feet on one of the stalagmites, as we looked down the vertical drop [I feel like there’s something missing at the end here].

<p class="MsoNormal">We rappelled down, maneuvering between the sharp, jagged rocks protruding from the walls. When our boots touched the ground we sighed in relief. We were staring into a dark tunnel; the floor was littered with bones of small animals and the walls smeared with blood.

<p class="MsoNormal">The air was thick. And there was this weird sensation, it was unexplainable [inexplicable]: it was this feeling of impending danger, but it was vague and distorted. Bones of small animals crunched under our boots as we stalked down the dark tunnel. It was cold, very cold. Halfway down the tunnel I searched for Bill's hand and squeezed it. A few minutes later, I saw a flicker of green light further down the tunnel.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Did you see that?" I asked Bill.

<p class="MsoNormal">"What?"

<p class="MsoNormal">"The green light. Look, there it is again."

<p class="MsoNormal">It was more distinct this time: a venomous green light rising and waning from deep down the tunnel. Bill fumbled for his flashlight. It shattered on the ground when his grip failed. That was when a shrill scream rose from somewhere in front of us. Our hands squeezed so tightly that I felt my blood stop circulating.

<p class="MsoNormal">"W- Wha... What was that?" Bill mumbled.

<p class="MsoNormal">A shuffling started somewhere far away; it steadily grew louder and closer, [;] it also grew faster: [no colon] like something was charging at us. I was breathing frantically, my hands shook, and I tried to scream but my lungs failed.

<p class="MsoNormal">When my self-defense mechanisms kicked in, my eyes darted to Bill. I saw a flare attached to his belt. The shuffling was getting louder. Since we had no flashlights, I quickly ripped the flare of Bill's belt and removed the cap, striking the end of the flare against rough end of the cap. A fireball of sparks erupted from the flare, and I threw it into the tunnel.

<p class="MsoNormal">It landed about three feet away. When it settled on the ground, a shrill hissing echoed in the tunnel, and we saw a vague figure flee, [no comma] in the dim red light. The panicked running turned into banging, which turned into shuffling. Then, silence.

<p class="MsoNormal">Bill fumbled in his pocket for a cigar, and brought it to his mouth with trembling hands. He took out his matches but could not strike one alight with his shaking [repetitive] hands. I took the match, lit it, cupped my hands around his mouth, and burned the paper encasing the tobacco.

<p class="MsoNormal">"You fine?" I asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">Bill shook his head, "Wh- what was that... thing?"

<p class="MsoNormal">"I don't know. A rat?"

<p class="MsoNormal">"Six fucking feet tall, running 10 fucking miles per hour?"

<p class="MsoNormal">"I don't know what I saw. Maybe it was... Bill? Hello? Are you okay? Bill! Shit, what happened to you?" I said.

<p class="MsoNormal">Bill suddenly became pale, and his facial features seemed to contort into a grimace. Then he collapsed.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Brandy. Please." Bill mumbled.

<p class="MsoNormal">"I don't have any; water must suffice. What happened?"

<p class="MsoNormal">"I'm not sure. I got a bad headache, it seemed like my brain expanded and was pushing against my skull. Then my vision became distorted, kinda like TV when the wind is messing with the lines. Then I heard a voice, it said something incomprehensible -- the verbs sounded different, but the consonants were the same: if it said 'cat' it would sound like 'K-hap-t.' "

<p class="MsoNormal">When Bill felt better we continued down the tunnel, using flares to navigate ourselves. The tunnel expanded, both vertically and horizontally after a while. There was a hole in the side of the tunnel, like someone set off dynamite there. But instead of a small niche, there was an opening onto a large abyss. All we could see was blackness.

<p class="MsoNormal">We were tired and frightened so we set up camp here. Bill immediately fell asleep. I sat up and ate some crackers with a bottle of water. I became drowsy soon, and when I began undressing I saw a flash of cyan light from the abyss below. I crept to the edge and crouched down. The light flashed again, this time more to the right. It happened again, and again -- in fact -- it appeared at regular intervals, each time changing position in one general direction. Something was moving down there. Our flare supplies were depleted. The only possible light source was a box of matches. I sat down. I was too scared to sleep.

<p class="MsoNormal">Suddenly, my hand jerked upwards in an involuntary, spasm-like motion; then my leg twisted and kicked uncontrollably, my head writhed violently in every direction. I fell to the ground while my limbs went completely berserk. Foam spewed from my mouth, and a ringing started in my ear. Bill woke up and ran to me, dismayed. He tried to restrain me, but I was stronger.

<p class="MsoNormal">Eventually, the manic flailing subsided, and I sighed in relief. Bill was exhausted from the exercise.

<p class="MsoNormal">"What was that shit?" he asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">"I dunno: I saw some bright blue light from down there and, in a moment's notice, I was flailing around like fish on land."

<p class="MsoNormal">"Blue light from there? Shit. I had a dream where I was a sneaking around in a dark room, ice covered the colossal walls. There were some kinds of relics scattered around: old pots, tiaras, crowns, and bricks with some kind of... Hieroglyphics [no capital] etched into them. I saw a light blue glimmer in the distance. I followed it. The light shone brightly then dimmed again. I was following along an array of pipes, all leading the same way. When I came to a hole in the ground, I saw the pipes drop down there. When the light rose I saw the shape of some kind of plane without wings. It was a cylinder, nineteen feet by twenty, add or take. It's [Its] side was broken off and lying on the ground, sparks flying from some blue-colored chips attached to some wiring.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Then the blue shined [shone] again... It shined [shone] to my left, about six inches to my left [It shone about six inches to my left is much easier]. I heard a screeching which transformed into your scream, that is when I woke up."

<p class="MsoNormal">Journal Entry #4; Ural Mountains, 1987, November 19th

<p class="MsoNormal">We decided to continue down the tunnel. The air in the tunnel was heavy [repetition]. And there was something in it -- some eldritch horror hidden in the blackness; there was this feeling of... Radiation [no capital]? Bill felt it too: he kept looking back as if to confirm that a monster was not stalking us.

<p class="MsoNormal">After about an hour we reached a natural stairs [a natural stair/natural stairs/some natural stairs]. There were stone slabs leading down somewhere. Since we hit a dead-end, we went down. We ran out [of] flares, so we made makeshift torches out of twigs and cloth. When we reached the end of the staircase we emerged into a colossal ravine.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Shit," Bill shouted. "This is the place I saw in my dream!"

<p class="MsoNormal">I looked around. The place was true to my friends [friend’s] description: collapsed buildings, broken pottery, and royal jewels, with strange symbols engraved on them, littered the place. The architecture of the buildings was mostly Mesoamerican with vague suggestions of Gothic or early Roman. The pottery was larger than normal pottery and was made out of some reflective marble I have never seen before. The jewels were made of solid gold with real diamonds (about 120 carats), these were authentic minerals, no doubt about it.

<p class="MsoNormal">We heard a rustling nearby. We jumped up and became motionless as if rigor mortis had set in; we stood in the silence -- enshrouded by darkness -- listing [listening] to the stealthy shuffling. The miasma from earlier came back with the force of a snake launching itself at its victim. A glint of light flicked in the distance, it got closer, closer again, and it flickered even closer to us. I could make out a [an] amphibian shape crouching in the distance. The shape became obstructed with a huge bulb of light, followed by a swishing sound. Then, we blacked out.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Ah!" I yelled in agony when a haze of colors breached the darkness which swallowed me. I awoke in a room. A peculiar room. The walls were a rusty metal with wires and cables running along them. I heard Bill scream. I jumped to my feet, fully alert.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Bill? I said. "Hello? Bill?" A scream answered me.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Bill!" I shouted.

<p class="MsoNormal">I saw a metal door. I regret ever approaching that accursed thing. I choked and lost my footing when I saw that fucking abomination. It had small, gleaming eyes. It's [Its] body was rough and contorted: each rib pointed [in] a different direction, its body was red, and its legs resembled ones that a horse-frog hybrid might have.

<p class="MsoNormal">It was covered in a blue armor which gleamed light blue at regular intervals. The miasma was coming from that thing, [;] I was sure of it. Never has it molested my nostrils as bad as when I was near that hell-thing. [this is a weird sentence]

<p class="MsoNormal">Bill stopped screaming now [delete: now]. I saw a kaleidoscope of colors flash somewhere behind the bars. The ugly fuck outside the cell door opened its hideous mouth and manged [managed] to say "You're next."

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">Right so I’ve offered feedback on a lot of your stories lately but I’ve noticed a few trends coming up. I’m going to avoid specific feedback and will instead focus on these recurring problems citing from this story as an example. I’m going to go into extremely detailed feedback on your writing with reference to this, and other stories.

<p class="MsoNormal">1) Your characters sound infantile and adolescent.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I'm not sure. I got a bad headache, it seemed like my brain expanded and was pushing against my skull. Then my vision became distorted, kinda like TV when the wind is messing with the lines.” – Here is an example of what I mean with certain words bolded. Some of these words are filler – “seemed, like, kinda, not sure”. These types of words stunt the flow and show a lack of confidence making the character sound childish.

<p class="MsoNormal">Others are basic, simple, words typical for someone with a small vocabulary e.g. “bad & then”. ‘then’ is a dangerous word for a writer because people are trained to identify it as a filler word. Bad, and its counterpart ‘nice’ are words you should, generally, avoid.

<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, you use a simile – “like TV when the wind is messing with the lines”. People tend not to use similes in day to day speech, and when they do it’s quite sparingly.

<p class="MsoNormal">All of these things, when brought together, create the sense of characters who aren’t talking realistically. They are, on their own, not necessarily the end of the world. It’s just that when they’re all put together they start to cause issues.

<p class="MsoNormal">Let’s take one more example but this time focusing on how your characters seem to state their own feelings, without directly addressing one another. This is also a hallmark of adolescent speech.

<p class="MsoNormal">"It was in your sleep, Henry, look at the ground: there's no marks. Beside, who in the world would believe such a thing? Was it like the bogeyman under your bed? My mother used to tell me those stories, I believed them. But now no responsible adult would believe in that kind of bullshit.” – everything that’s bold is a statement addressed to the other person. Everything else are statements regarding the speaker’s beliefs, but they do not communicate his emotional state or his attempt to calm his friend. People don’t really talk like that – they try to convince, to argue, to charm, to humour. Every word has an emotional, pragmatic, purpose. Stating thoughts and feelings with no specific aim is, like I’ve mentioned, typical of adolescents.

<p class="MsoNormal">"People believe in god, what's the difference. The bogeyman, cthulhu, god. All of them are things beyond the realm of understanding, each of them have a cult following, and each of them have a plethora of stories about them. So I ask you: what's the fucking difference?" -> this follow up line has the same problem as before.

<p class="MsoNormal">One final issue is the lack of flow. Below I’ve taken samples of dialogue from yours and broken it down into clauses.

<p class="MsoNormal">Shit.

<p class="MsoNormal">I had a dream

<p class="MsoNormal">where I was a sneaking around in a dark room,

<p class="MsoNormal">ice covered the colossal walls.

<p class="MsoNormal">There were some kinds of relics scattered around:

<p class="MsoNormal">old pots, tiaras, crowns, and bricks with some kind of...

<p class="MsoNormal">Hieroglyphics etched into them.

<p class="MsoNormal">I saw a light blue glimmer in the distance.

<p class="MsoNormal">I followed it.

<p class="MsoNormal">The light shone brightly

<p class="MsoNormal">then dimmed again.

<p class="MsoNormal">I was following along an array of pipes,

<p class="MsoNormal">all leading the same way.

<p class="MsoNormal">When I came to a hole in the ground,

<p class="MsoNormal">I saw the pipes drop down there.

<p class="MsoNormal">Blue light from there?

<p class="MsoNormal">-

<p class="MsoNormal">100 words. Average of about 7 words per clause. Your longest clause is 10 words Next up is some dialogue from MikeMacDee’s entry to Whitix’s competition – The Laughing Desert.

<p class="MsoNormal">"You'll like Prosperity. Nothin' to do but drink beer and occasionally break up fights between feudin' families. Three different feuds across two hundred people, goin' back about a hundred years. The summer heat gets everybody agitated, makes 'em fight over the slightest bullshit. More 'n usual, that is."

<p class="MsoNormal">Longest clause here? 15 words. The next after it? 14. Mike’s dialogue has a more natural flow than yours. He still averages about 6 words per clause but the distribution is way different to yours. He oscillates between short clauses ‘more ‘n usual/that is/You’ll like prosperity” and much longer ones “Nothin' to do but drink beer and occasionally break up fights between feudin' families”. Compared to yours where you have a very uniform and consistent tendency to stick to about 6/7 words, over and over and over. In other words, your characters speak like this –

<p class="MsoNormal">I saw a man. Then I said hello. He walked past me. He waved at me. I waved back. He was very tall.

<p class="MsoNormal">When they should talk like this,

<p class="MsoNormal">I saw a man yesterday and I said hello to him as he walked past me. He waved quickly and I waved back, and I noticed he was very tall.

<p class="MsoNormal">There is no simple way to address this without reading more dialogue. An effective treatment will also include studying other peoples’ work to find quirky techniques they use and to, put it simply, steal them. This is called ‘critical reading’ and it basically means carefully identifying parts of other peoples’ work you think is good, and then thinking very hard about why they’re good. Mike, if you’re interested, is fucking good. He’s a good starting point.

<p class="MsoNormal">2) Plot

<p class="MsoNormal">Your plots aren’t cohesive. This means that the moving parts don’t complement each other. You have, however, gotten way way better at handling this. So I’d like to give you credit for your enormous progress. And in this story you have one major issue which is the introduction with the wolves. The story doesn’t need that section. It contributes nothing to the plot, harms credibility, distracts, and features some of the weakest dialogue and storytelling.

<p class="MsoNormal">But it’s not the only problem; another issue is the ending which involves the man being jailed and threatened by a talking monster. Why can the monster talk? Why can it speak English? Why has it trapped them? Is it torturing them?

<p class="MsoNormal">Similarly: The buildings, the monster, the cave, the ice, the hand – these things exist to scare us but they don’t seem to relate to each other in any meaningful way. They just exist for effect and it’s very obvious that they’re part of a fictional world created specifically for us. You don’t have to be super specific but try to keep things consistent in a way that makes sense. Looking back at your last story I had a similar problem –the mist, the woman who drove the car with the messed up face, the intestine monster – what was the relationship between these things? They felt artificial, like they’d been put in the story exclusively because they are scary.

<p class="MsoNormal">Let’s look at a comparison though, because I know I’m being vague.

<p class="MsoNormal">In Mike’s story there is one threat – the ants. Everything that exists trickles down from that one threat. Empty town? Ants ate ‘em all. Smashed up car with keys inside? Ants ate the driver. Strange freaky bird noise off in the distance? Actually a giant fucking ant. Houses with walls missing? Those damned fucking ants again. No dogs barking? Ants at them all.

<p class="MsoNormal">Everything that exists comes back to one basic idea – big ants ate everything. Every part of the story has a direct and obvious relationship with the other pieces which includes the characters, the settings, and much more.

<p class="MsoNormal">A story is, after all, made up of only a few basic parts.

<p class="MsoNormal">Characters

<p class="MsoNormal">Setting

<p class="MsoNormal">Plot

<p class="MsoNormal">Themes

<p class="MsoNormal">Mood/Atmosphere

<p class="MsoNormal">Each one of those things should have a clear, and obvious, relationship with the other things. In mike’s stories the characters don’t get on. Why? One of them is sexist, and the other is a woman. So they get sent out to work together on an easy basic mission to make them get along. This takes them to the setting – an abandoned town. The plot? They go to that abandoned town to find out why it’s empty and abandoned. Why is it abandoned? Ants. That’s fucking why. What is the mood/atmosphere? It’s quiet and abandoned because ants ate everybody. Everything relates to everything else and it makes sense.

<p class="MsoNormal">Let’s try it with yours.

<p class="MsoNormal">Characters? Two guys.

<p class="MsoNormal">Setting? A cave filled with jewels and buildings.

<p class="MsoNormal">Plot? They get chased by wolves. Then they get trapped. They get briefly molested by a green hand of doom. Then they get eaten/tortured by an angry monster. (this isn’t even mentioning stuff like the fire, the tent, the blizzard – all you need is one basic reason for them to get trapped. Don’t linger on it.)

<p class="MsoNormal">Themes – N/A (Not every story needs some theme or subtext so don’t get excited about this, but still keep it in mind when reading other peoples’ stories. You’ll be surprised what you find. Sometimes authors include ideas in their stories without even being aware)

<p class="MsoNormal">Mood/atmosphere – isolated/alone.

<p class="MsoNormal">Some things relate. So obviously your atmosphere is one of isolation, cold, fear etc. which makes sense because they’re in a creepy-ass cave. Similarly the hundreds of animal bones boosts atmosphere, and informs us about the monster plotline. But in contrast? The jewels? What do they tell us? That there was once a civilization down there? Is that where the monster came from? Why? Was it the monster’s civilization?

<p class="MsoNormal">Like I said you’ve made huge progress, but I wanted to bring your attention to these ideas to help you move forward and start integrating more and more. Try to isolate the moving parts of your stories and make them feed back into each other in a way that is cohesive, and logical. In this story you only really need to start with the characters becoming trapped. Then think about how the monster and the setting can interact. Think about the characters and how they might react differently to the threat. Think about how those characters might drive the plot forward because of their differences. Think about how the events of the plot can reveal more of the setting etc.

<p class="MsoNormal">If we re-analyze your story without superfluous stuff we have the following.

<p class="MsoNormal">Plot – two friends are trapped in a cave and are attacked by a monster.

<p class="MsoNormal">Setting – a cave filled with bones and signs of a monster

<p class="MsoNormal">Characters – two friends (do you think there’s maybe some room to improve here as well?)

<p class="MsoNormal">Themes – N/A

<p class="MsoNormal">Mood atmosphere – lonely/isolated/creepy

<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, I won’t bother mentioning this but your story doesn’t suit a diary format. Just delete all references to it being a diary format and find another framing device. It feels like you tacked it on last minute anyway. It’s hardly the end of the world. It would make more sense if you included the beginning where the authorities find the diary but have the narrator state,

<p class="MsoNormal">“I’m stuck in this prison blah blah blah I’m writing this because I want to warn you blah blah blah”. Otherwise we need to believe that this lunatic was writing a day by day account in a way that nobody would, and at a time when his life is under direct threat. The framing device I’ve pointed out is simple, classic, and has been used forever because it’s believable and easy to cram into a story without much work.

<p class="MsoNormal">In conclusion – I’ve gone into an extremely over the top analysis here because you’ve got serious talent but I’m noticing these trends coming back over and over. I think you’ll benefit from thinking very carefully about each decision you make and how it informs the bigger picture rather than having me point out specific flaws in each individual story. I hope this helps you in a more in-depth way than usual.