Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-2175012-20191204162348/@comment-28266772-20200102124347

This is the night of the Great One's birth. '[which night? Tonight? Or the night this was written? Is this story present tense or past tense because moving forward you write in past tense] 'In the town of Cherryshrub, Mississippi, there was a married couple desperate for a child. '[passive voice, reads wrong. You can make it active by changing “There was a” to “lived a married”] They [had] tried multiple tips that most couples who have been married for a long time catered to [how do you cater to a tip?]', but none of their attempts proved fruitful. The woman's womb remained barren [think carefully about your choice of words, this doesn’t work]. This [what?] lasted for the first five years of their marriage. Their bond gradually broke [tense: breaking] down as the two took to arguing over who was to blame.

"You know I have already told you that I had a narrow urethra," the husband argued fervently [this is unintentionally hilarious]. He had received the bad news during one of his prostate exams three months ago. He kept it a secret from his wife for a long time, straddling [wrong word] her along in their attempts of coming together in union to have a child '[Put. The. Thesaurus. Down.]'. When she discovered the truth, their relationship eroded ever so delicately because neither could trust the other anymore. [you’re telling me this, not showing]

"I'm not mad about that," she said, [full stop] "I'm upset because you deliberately withheld that important information from me for months!" [you literally just established this in the prior paragraph when you explicitly told us their relationship problems.]

They ceased their interactions with each other not so long afterward [your timeline is all over the damn place]. They took to sleeping in separate rooms or woke up early so they could leave the house without the other being any wiser. One day when the wife was buying groceries in town, she browsed the conception aisle without much thought. She already spent hundreds purchasing products claiming to be miraculous cures for barren women [again, poor choice of words], but they were the very definition of snake oil. As she scanned the different medicines, she couldn't help but feel that she was being watched. She turned around seeing [saw] nothing. She continued walking until she heard a tiny voice call out to her.

"Are you lost? Are you desperate?"

The wife darted her eyes [Her eyes darted], finding a door manifesting before her. It was an ancient door made of millennia-old bark from an oak tree. It possessed an inexplicable aura that was calling out to the wife. In the center of the door was a rusted lion head knocker comprised of an assortment of otherworldly metals '[how are they otherworldly? Do they shimmer? Undulate? Effervesce? Glimmer?]'. She went to the door and tentatively knocked on it with the lion head. A creak drones [tense: droned] out from the door '[so the creak leads to a tunnel? Or the door does?] 'leading to a strange tunnel way. The wife looked at the tunnel with the utmost curiosity. The voice called out to her again.

-

I think there’s enough to work with here.

Mechanical issues: tense swaps are a big problem. You’re all over the place and it makes this impossible to follow. Just write a simple story going A-B-C-D etc. You have grammatical errors here and there but those are actually minor. Anyone with access to Grammarly or MS word can fix them. But you need to actively present a coherent story with a good beginning, middle, and end and you need to stick to a consistent tense, only changing when absolutely necessary.

Stylistic issues: You also have a bad habit of using the wrong words or words that just don’t read right. Tunnelway? ''Tunnelway? Do you mean a tunnel''? You should use a big vocabulary to have fun, describing us and showing us things we’ve never heard of or imagined, not just to create a generic effect. Barren!? Do you mean infertile? Difficulty conceiving? Words you choose will conjure emotions in people's minds but they'll notice you doing it if you go overboard like this. After that it stops feeling natural and feels forced. Tone it down.

Story issues: The absolute cardinal sin here is that you just keep telling us stuff, instead of showing it. You should start the story with the woman in the shop browsing fertility treatments. Who needs fertility treatments and supplements that help with fertility? People who can’t conceive. That’s it. That’s all we need to know. Problem solved. No narrow urethras or barren maidens. Want to show us devolving trust between a couple? Show us a conversation where their interactions demonstrate damaged trust. You don’t need to specify they started out trusting each other by the way, that’s an implicit starting point for most couples in love. Also don’t have the characters declare their problems in dialogue. Show us their inner thoughts instead. Show us fertility problems + difficulties communicating and that’s the audience good to go. No need to for some floaty narrator in the sky to try describing this poor couple like Dickensian landlord.

Overall, you clearly have a good vocabulary and a strong desire to write, but you need to develop a lot of early skills first. You've got a good premise, revisit and rewrite it starting with a clear cut scene of the couple that demonstrates their problems in real-time, then move onto the other stuff.

You've got a lot going for you, you just need to work at it. That goes for every writer on Earth, so don't be disheartened. Just put the time in. I look forward to seeing more of what you write.