%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 Review #4641591 |
 | The Blackout Butcher  [18+] When a small coastal town loses power, a serial killer stalks the streets.  |
| (4.5)  Welcome to WdC from the "Newbie Welcome Wagon" Good day to you, MysteryBox , and I hope it finds you well. It is with great humility that I come before you with this review. I am certainly no one to be telling anyone how to write, having myself successfully managed to avoid fame and fortune for over sixty years, but I flatter myself that I have learned a thing or two in my decades of chasing the dream. Given that you have placed this item on the Please Review forum, I take that as my invitation to offer my opinion. And make no mistake, it is nothing but an opinion for you to use or discard as you wish. My reviews are thorough and honest, and while I hope we can be friends afterward, my greater hope is that you become a better writer as a result of our having crossed paths.For the record, I am an occasional hobbyist writer of fantasy, horror, and steampunk (hence my handle) who tries to review in a wide variety of styles and genres. I should explain that I use this review template in which I discuss my views on the important areas of quality storytelling, then compare your work to my own beliefs on the matter. As I said, I'm no authority, but hopefully my comments will give you some ideas to take your writing in directions you hadn't previously considered. Let me just drop a warning here, and we'll get started. THIRD-PARTY READERS TAKE NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD PRESENTATION: This aspect deals with the first impression your story makes when a reader clicks on the title. Call it the cosmetics. I'll be looking at abstract items from text density to scene dividers in an effort to ferret out any unfortunate habits that might cause a reader to move on without actually reading anything; before you can dazzle him with your show, you have to get him into the tent!  Your presentation is spot-on. You've expanded the tiny default font into something positively pleasurable to read, and there are no half-paragraphs dangling from their parents like some errant bits of text that lost in a game of musical chairs. But speaking of paragraphs, I'm going to offer a point for you to consider. Double-spacing paragraphs is a long-honored technique on WdC, but they look more professional when they are indented, as they are in virtually every "real" book you've ever read. You indent paragraphs by placing {indent} at the beginning of each. Sounds like a slog, I know, but there is a shortcut key at the top of the creation box that isn't functionally much different than hitting the Tab key in Office. Just a point to consider; this already looks great!STORY: But those are things that can be fixed with a few mouse clicks. Now we come to the heart of the issue. This is really the basic element, isn't it? If you can't tell an engaging story, it doesn't matter what else you can do, because nobody's going to read it anyway. I try to explain aspects from characters to grammar, but I don't know how to teach someone to have an imagination. The fact that I'm here writing a review is proof that you've done a pretty good job with the story. Let's examine the individual parts of the whole and see what works to make it successful.  Let me first commend you on a chilling tale of horror inflicted by Evil Incarnate. I hung on every word, and relished every twist. I immediately questioned the wisdom of putting a lone female officer on patrol, given the nature of the victims, but I've never been a cop, and imagine that temporarily partnering her with a man might have triggered gender-discrimination complaints. That's all backstory that we the readers can't know, but the fact is that she's put out on patrol by herself and pays the ultimate price for the decision.But you probably want to know the source of the half-star deduction. I could be mistaken on this – I've never work for a phone or power company – but you make it clear that "The phone service - never reliable in such a small, out-of-the-way town where the nearest cell tower was nearly fifty miles away - had gone out with the lights." But then only a few paragraphs later, Joe Higgins, the lineman, is killed by being "...thrown into the active powerlines." This-here's what you call a Plot Hole: The power is either on or off. You can't have it come on for a moment to kill one character, then it's off again. That's a bit too deus ex machina for the modern audience. The ancient Greeks loved that stuff; not so much today's readers. That said, this is a wonderful story, and I question whether the disclaimer is needed. The violence is described in the past tense, and without a whole lot of detail. Probably better safe than sorry, but you don't describe the attacks in excruciating detail as they're happening, and I don't think it will offend anyone who signs up for a horror/crime experience. MECHANICS: Whether you're writing fact or fiction, prose or poetry, the "holy grail" that you're striving for is immersion. This is an area that no author, myself included, ever wants to talk about: "I've done all this work, and you want to argue over a comma?" But those commas are important. What you're really doing as a writer is weaving a magic spell around your reader, and your reader wants you to succeed. He wants to escape his mundane world for a period and lose himself in your creation. Errors in spelling and grammar, typos, "there" vs. "their" issues, use of words inconsistent with their actual meanings, all yank him out of his immersion while he backtracks to re-read and puzzle out what you meant to say. This is never good, and this is the section that deals with that. There are a couple of tiny things here that need to be mentioned, but neither of them is worth deducting from the rating for.First is this simple phrase: No one from around here would do a thing like that? Wouldn’t they? I read this as a tense error, and believe it should say Would they? There are a couple of places where you've used hyphens to represent em-dashes (—). One is found early, in the example I gave above, in fact, and the other is toward the end where Suzy says, “Oh, I don’t really have any-". Readers and professional editors alike recognize the double-hyphen as an em-dash due to the fact that there is no such character on a standard keyboard, but you can place one on WdC by typing {emdash} wherever you want one. Some of these things I'm bringing up seem, and in some cases, are of marginal importance, but I want to share this notion with you: You are a young writer just beginning your journey, and if this story is any indication, you are really very good. I would recommend that you invest every effort in looking as professional as you can, and this means indented paragraphs, proper em-dashes, and above all, watch those plot holes! The old saying is, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." My take is, if you want to be regarded as a professional, act like one. I've done over 600 reviews on WdC, and this is one of the best stories I've ever read, certainly in the top-ten. Your work deserves to be polished to a high luster. Don't short-change yourself! CHARACTERS: This section discusses all aspects of the characters, the way they look, act, and talk, as well as the development and presentation of backstory. Allow me to present "Tyler's Axiom:" Characters are fiction. Rich, multifaceted characters with compelling backstories will seize the reader in a grip that will not be denied, and drag him into their narrative, because he can't abide the thought of not knowing what will happen to them. Conversely, lazy, shallow stereotypes will ruin any story regardless of its other qualities, because the reader will be unable to answer the second question of fiction: Why do I care? Every character resonates as a real and true person. The way they act and talk, the actions they are shown taking, are all quite believable for frightened and isolated people in a small-town setting. I have not one complaint to lodge here.SETTINGS: This section deals with the locations you've established for your action, the ways in which they affect that action, and your ability to describe them clearly and concisely. You could say that this aspect answers (or fails to answer) the first question of fiction, What's going on here? Setting can be used to challenge a character, to highlight a skill or quality, to set the mood of a scene without overtly saying a single thing about it, and a host of lesser impacts too numerous to mention. You might think of it as a print artist's equivalent of a movie's "mood music," always important yet never intrusive. All in all, a pretty big deal, then. So how did you do? Quite well. If I was impressed with the characters, I must admit to being even more impressed with the settings. As a young teen, I lived in Monterey, California. It was 1964, and Monterey was a dying fishing village rather than the gleaming tourist mecca it became long after I left. The storms, the traffic signals bobbing "like buoys" in the wind, the boats in the marina fighting to escape their tethers "like galloping horses." I love those similes, and in fact, all of them that are scattered throughout. They bring a familiarity, a colloquial feel somehow. I'm not explaining it well, but they lend color, and make the reader feel much more a part of the story than sterile and precisely accurate prose would. Really top marks in this area.SUMMARY: And there you have my words of "wisdom." I hope that I have presented my opinions in a way that is constructive, and that you will find helpful to your endeavors going forward. I thank you for sharing and exposing your work to the whims of public opinion, and I wish you a thrilling journey to wherever your writing takes you.** Image ID #2234711 Unavailable ** When you get a moment, consider this your invitation to join the discussion at
 My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
|
||||||
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
You have not yet responded to this review.