Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24714617-20140509060756/@comment-24077689-20140509205801

I have to say, this pasta is better written than a lot that are posted here. You grammar is, for the most part, spot-on. It’s formatted well, making it fairly easy to read. However, there are some problems, here.

So, your protagonist rushes over to his house with a carefree attitude? That seems contradictory and removes the sense of urgency that you set up. You were beginning build up, and then drowned it. The dialogue here is also a little unbelievable. In my experience with drug-users, they don’t tend to speak so formally as in “I must see you at once!” that sounds like a line from The Great Mouse Detective. That’s not a good thing.

You should be trying to express a since of unease when your protagonist enters the house, it’s in total disarray for God’s sake. For most people this would create a sense of urgency and unease, which is not communicated at all by your main character. There’s not even a sense of urgency in your character when they walk into the room and found that their friend had butchered their entire family.

Again, the dialogue is super dry. It’s overly formal. There’s no humanity in it, people don’t talk like this.

You started this out rather promisingly; there was a semblance of buildup. You almost immediately rid your story of the buildup. Your dialogue is difficult to read because there’s no emotion in it. This story is devoid of any sort of visceral elements. It’s so unrealistic it’s mind-boggling.

While the subject is fairly cliché, I feel like this premise has some promise. You’re following the common formula of evil possession, murder, disappearance and news report about the incident. This story could be much longer; it could have much more detail. As it is, I don’t give a fuck about your characters, I don’t care what’s happening to them and it doesn’t create any sort of unease because the atmosphere of the story is immediately squashed under overly formal writing, banal and boring dialogue, and almost no description. This story has a lot of potential to create an air of paranoia. The execution doesn’t do it justice.

It’s nice, though, you seem to have put some effort at least into editing it. It’s far more readable than most of what’s posted here.