Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28862560-20160627172357/@comment-28266772-20160628135932

Hi, I've annotated the first part of your revised story to give you an idea of the sorts of changes you should make in the next draft.

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In 2010, 5 [numbers less than 10 should be spelled out fully] climbers from China decided to scale the Nanga Parbat Mountain in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. They were expert mountaineers with many 8000ers [this might be a common mountain climbing term – I’m not sure. But I think it would look better if you found another way of writing it such as “8000 footers”] under their belt. They had left with a Pakistani guide and cook from Islamabad and were aided by the Alpine Club of Pakistan who also organized their mountaineering expedition. On their way they stayed in Chilas for a day before continuing their journey deeper into the Askole district. They arrived in the Nanga Parbat base camp on July 5 and stayed there for a week during which they were joined by a German mountaineering expedition which comprised of two persons.

[This first paragraph contains a lot of detailed information. You should consider whether this is necessary. Everything you write should contribute to the characters, setting, sequence of events, atmosphere, or themes of your story. I think you should ask yourself – is everything above necessary for the reader to understand the events of this story?]

Members of the Chinese expedition left to climb the mountain on July 12 [July 12th], for two days they maintained radio contact with the base camp where the two German mountaineers were present along with the cook, the guide had left with the Chinese expedition [is it necessary to staple these three clauses together into one long sentence?]. On the third day, satellite phone communication with the climbers was lost. Attempts to make radio contact ended in failure, so the two Germans decided to go after the Chinese in hopes of making contact. They also told the cook to stay at the base and try contacting the sponsors via radio communication equipment present at the base. [two instances of ‘at the base’ here – this is repetition. You can simply remove the last bit.]

On July 16[th], attempts to ping the base camp were made but there was no reply so a party of two persons [this reads awkwardly because of the inclusion of ‘persons’. When you say a ‘party of two’ there’s no need to clarify what that party is made of – the reader knows] was sent to investigate. The party reached the base camp on July 17[th] and reported that the whole camp [camp is repeated hear close to another instance. Try to avoid repeating words close together. In this case you could say ‘place’ or something else similar] was empty and trashed as well [‘as well' is not used correctly here. You can fix it by adding ‘as having’, and removing ‘with’, so it reads ‘as well as having broken…’] with broken windows, doors and stuff scattered all over the place. Three days later a search and rescue team arrived at the camp and they began looking for the climbers and the Pakistani cook and guide as well [you don’t need to describe the party in such detail. You can just say ‘they began looking for the missing people/party/etc.]. Even though [the] Pakistani army kept local terrorists and militias under control, many were speculating whether it could be an insurgency since local militias had been gaining a foothold in the region recently. Many people speculated that it could be a violent storm but the nature of the damage suggested otherwise.

[Again – there’s a lot of detail here when what happens is basically “there was no reply from base camp, some people investigated, they found the place smashed up. Could have been insurgents, could have been a storm. You include a lot of extraneous detail that just slows things down].

On July 21, the search party got a lead to [on not ‘to’] one of the climbers, they found some safety equipment lying around near the mountain base and away from the camp. They found marks in the snow which appeared to be from mountaineering boots [you can just say “footprints”]. There seemed to be only one pair of tracks and following them led to a pair of mountaineering [do you need to say mountaineering again?] boots submerged in snow. Further search attempts yielded no result as [everything before ‘no sign of…’ is also unnecessary] no sign of any other living person could be found. After about three weeks the search was called off and the mountaineers were pronounced dead, probably [‘assumed to be’ – not ‘probably’] killed by an avalanche. The German and Chinese embassies were notified of their respective loss. Local news channels in Pakistan picked up the story and kept airing it for about a month before moving on back to local politics. The incident was soon forgotten as a terrible tragedy.

[so far so good]

Approximately four months later a video emerged on YouTube which appears [appeared] to have been published by a channel called wagey. The first video was simply titled MOV_10710 and it showed video footage from a bad mobile camera. The footage was badly pixelated, without any audio and mostly shaky but showed a hilly area with snow and [‘at’ not ‘and’] night time. The minute long video appeared to be random footage of the outside except for the last 10 seconds where it zooms [zoomed] in to a cabin in the distance with the lights on. It’s [it was] hard to make out exactly who and how many people can be seen in the cabin.

This was soon followed by another obscure video uploaded on the same channel a week later, this time of much better quality as it appears [appeared] to be taken using a different mobile camera. There was still no audio and the video was titled MOV_17710 [do we need to know the title of these videos?]. The footage showed [the] inside of the same cabin [‘that was shown in the last ten seconds of’ – all of this is unnecessary, you can just say ‘from’] the previous video. The video is mostly of the [a] person going around [inside – no need for this] the cabin [and] rummaging through stuff present there. The last 15 seconds focused on a piece of equipment on a table which appeared to be some sort of communication equipment [repetition of equipment – you need to find another way to word this sentence]. The person who was recording the video took the walkie talkie [see, now you identify what the equipment is definitively, so why tease it in the last few sentences?] in his hands for a moment and appeared to be willing to answer it [‘but puts’ – should be ‘before putting’] it back again. [Then] The video ends.

[So again – a lot of detail, only a few actual events. Cabin – guy – rummaging – walkie talkie].

A week later another video is [was] uploaded named MOV_19710. This time the video showed the exterior [shot – no need for this word here] of the same cabin but this time with other people going around [‘the cabin’ can be swapped with ‘it’– repetition] apparently searching for something. The camera quality was much better as [‘and’ not ‘as’] the footage might have been recorded using the mobile camera in the previous video. The footage is again only a minute long and the entire footage shows a zoomed in view of the cabin with the [don’t need ‘the’] people frantically moving inside. There was again no audio but in the last 5 [words not numbers] seconds the video blacks [blacked] out and a heavy voice could be heard in the background. It was someone speaking in Pashto, the language most commonly spoken in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern parts of Pakistan including Gilgit-Baltistan. [– While I’m not familiar with ‘Pashto’ I immediately recognize this story as taking place in Pakistan, so it’s not necessary to go into detail about where this language is spoken because all that’s relevant to the story is that Pashto is spoken in Pakistan, where the story takes place] The Pashto in English roughly translated to “Yes I’m coming”.

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From here on in you repeat these same few mistakes over and over. There is an excess information that does not contribute the plot, setting, atmosphere, themes or characters. You need to be ‘economical’ when writing – that means that you need to think carefully about each sentence, and the value it has for the reader. You need to make each word count.

I would also like to address the story format. You essentially take one half of the story and focus on the missing mountaineers, but in the next half you spend numerous paragraphs detailing what happens in a series of videos. You should ask yourself whether there is a different way to present this information? You present your reader with the mystery of the missing mountaineers, and then present them with a gradual breadcrumb of information about a series of youtube videos – but really all we find out from the youtube videos is that someone is committing a series of brutal murders. The next part of the story elaborates on those murders, and explains their connection to the missing mountaineers. Is it necessary to dedicate so much time and space to the youtube videos just to establish that ‘someone is killing people’? I think you could afford to trim this section down.

Finally, the final twist is spooky and good, and you write with a high level of competence. You clearly have a very strong grasp of English. But I think this story would benefit from a slimmer narrative. It has three parts, the mountain, the youtube videos, and the killer’s capture – you should balance these parts out better and keep your writing free of unnecessary information to help shorten it. Ultimately it’s a good story, but it requires the reader to do too much work reading about all sorts of weird details before they finally get to a good reveal/twist.