Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-17724348-20160401172657/@comment-17724348-20160401194156

EmpyrealInvective wrote: There are quite a lot of issues here that need revision like punctuation, capitalization, wording, and story issues. As there are quite a lot of issues here, I may gloss over or ignore some mechanical issues so please don't treat this as a comprehensive list of errors in the story. The initial story also had formatting issues and this rendition also has some issues as well: "„WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE.“,

the demonic voice replied ragefully". should really be on the same line.

Punctuation: Quotations are missing from dialogue. "(")„Dead end, Mr. Jakob.“, "(")„Wh-what do you want from me?“, (")„WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE.“,", etc. Punctuation left outside of dialogue. "WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE.“," Not spacing after punctuation: "Not even a moment later,a sound" Capitalization: "state. 9 (Nine) days later, he woke up in a hospital room"

Wording: Run on sentences. "As he was getting further from the last cluster of houses of the village where his uncle's house was, he began to question whether he should take the long and exhausting main road back to town, or the shortcut by the old quarry on the left, which indeed was a bit less desirable due to all the debris, nails, or even old shotgun shells noone bothered cleaning up and what not simply lying on the old asphalt road, therefore presenting a risk of damaging the tires or causing similar problems."

Wording issues cont.: Awkward wording. "the demonic voice replied ragefully" 'Ragefully' really isn't a word and feels out of place. "With no apparent reason, Jakob honked, possibly in a vain attempt to alert somebody of his state.", "From people, at least, (Let's face it, you wouldn't expect a sober person to drive through that forest shortly after midnight without any exclusive reason, such as this one) as there have barely been any cars there ever since the quarry was shut down in 1997 after an unpredicted fire took the lives of 4 workers.", etc. I would suggest reading the story aloud to yourself to catch awkwardly worded or stumbling areas.

Story issues: The asides really detract from the story. "(Let's face it, you wouldn't expect a sober person to drive through that forest shortly after midnight without any exclusive reason, such as this one)" Additionally the story could use quite a bit more description. Lines like: "an eerie, twisted version of the old folk song 'Turkey in the Straw' started playing" and "a sequence of demonic screams heard in the background of the still present static" could use less generic descriptions. How is "Turkey in the Straw" distorted? Is it slowed down, high-pitched, garbled, etc.? A high-pitched rendition of the song comes off as more comical than terrifying. As for demonic voices, it should really have a bit more detail as that description is overused in a lot of stories.

Story issues cont.: The dialogue of the demon also feels out of place. "Dead end, Mr. Jakob.“" Jacob hasn't hit a dead end, in fact he's still driving around. "WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE" What reality is the demon trying to make Jakob realize? These lines feel like they were taken from another story/game and used out of context.

Story issues final: I would suggest looking over the cliche list as you use quite a few overused tropes. ("The numbers 6, 13, and 666.", ""No escape" either written or said constantly. I really wish I could 'escape' all the pastas that use this...", distorted music, etc) I also wonder why you used "Turkey in the Straw" as it's a pretty upbeat and comical song. It would be like using a distorted version of "Yakety Sax or "Anaconda" to try and inspire fear. It really doesn't work in context as there are a lot of other songs from the 40's that have less comical undertones. I'm sorry, but there's quite a lot of work to be done on this story and the premise isn't exactly the most original. Thanks for the advice, as you can see I'm not a very good writer so I'm a bit slow sometimes, but I am sure this will help me in the future. Even I now realize that what I've written isn't quite understandable, so I'll do my best to fix it. Thank you once again.