Talk:Silent Forest/@comment-1216259-20131231191257

Alright, interesting idea, but the grammar really, really took me out of the mood. Some examples:

"Convinced that they saw something, but nobody has ever actually seen it."

They see things, yet they don't.

"When the Romans settled and established Manchester, the forest was there still."

Still usually denotes future tense, this is about the past. Cutting it off at "was there" would suffice, or changing "still" to "even back then." But overall, we don't really need this sentence, we would assume that the forest was around in the past, especially when we start hearing about the Romans' experiences with it.

"Sometimes raped women would flee from the town into the forest, screaming in terror, only for the soldiers to come to a halt at it's edges, and hear her screams stop abruptly, as if she suddenly lost her voice."

The biggest issue in here isn't a grammar thing, but why we're specifically talking about raped women. Was it common for soldiers to rape their own townsfolk? Why? Why are they the only people who would have to flee the town? These questions are all very distracting.

Minor grammar issues are that the sentence is kind of a run-on, "it's" is a contraction for "it is," & that there should be a comma after "sometimes."

"A scout party sent in while it was away and coming out with nothing, and it was forgotten, but it always returns to it's home sooner or later, in Manchester."

We don't really need reminded that its home is in Manchester. If you wanted to say that it could move to other areas, it would be better to say that the rumors say that it can move very far away, or something like that. Also, it helps to remove specifics from a sentence, to see if the tense still makes sense. In this case, we get "a scout party was coming."

"Ultimately, one thing you must always remember, intrepid traveler, strong-legged hiker, or capable camper. If you ever find yourself in a forest and it becomes totally silent, do not, under any circumstances, move."

I actually quoted this one not because there's something wrong with it, but because it's an example of what this story has going for it. I could complain about comma overload, but in this case, I think it's acceptable, because drawing out the sentences like this highlight the eerie tone of the narrator. It also has good word choice; this whole thing could be said with something like "if everything goes silent, don't move," but this way is more interesting, & comes across as a reputable source--someone who isn't trying to scare you with one of those "don't turn around" one-liners. Finally, it ties everything together--clearly, there is some monster that makes everything around it silent--but also leaves out just enough to end on a nice note of mystery.