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So I've written a story that I would like to submit (somewhere, anywhere), but I worry there is still something wrong with it. Be it characters, pacing, or simply the general tone of the piece. Synopsis: A man stumbles home, critically injured and awakes in the hospital feeling mysteriously well. His doctor and fiancee reassure him, but he wonders if it might have been supernatural. Thank you to anyone reading. Link to gDoc
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Oct 12, 2014 07:47
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 10:58 |
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I'm gonna be honest, this piece has a ton of problems. Everything from plot and pacing to basic mechanics. There are lots of grammatical errors and oddly-structured sentences, a lot of poor word choice, and the dialogue feels incredibly stilted. As the basic level, nothing really happens in this story until it's 3/4 of the way over. You start out with the aftermath of an attack when we should have seen the attack itself. Then he wakes up in a hospital and the worst doctor of all time talks at him for a while. There's a frankly ridiculous twist, and then all of the conflict that you hinted at but didn't show us just dissolves into thin air. If you'd like, I can do a line by line here on in the GDoc, but I think the best advice I can give you at this point is to find some short stories in the same vein by authors you enjoy and pay attention to everything they are doing. Your prose has a lot of fat to be trimmed and a lot of clarity issues, so you kind of need to go back the basics with short, declarative sentences that all contribute directly the plot or characterization. You could tell this same story with a third of the wordcount without losing anything. These are the questions you need to be asking yourself and answering within the story: What does your protagonist want? What is stopping him from getting it? How does he plan / try to overcome those obstacles? Does he succeed? This is what is missing from your story. Your protagonist has no agency, no characterization. Things just happen to him and he (barely) reacts.
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Oct 13, 2014 18:28
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Thank you so much for the honesty. I felt the premise was possible, but I'm glad to hear how poorly I was/am going about it. You're right, the piece is ridiculous. I think a line by line won't be necessary (unless there's bigger crime I should be yelled at for) because it sounds like I should deconstruct the entire thing back down to the simplest of sentences, rework the 'characters' making them actual characters, then make the drat story character-driven.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:29
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Abundant Atrophy posted:Thank you so much for the honesty. I felt the premise was possible, but I'm glad to hear how poorly I was/am going about it. You're right, the piece is ridiculous. Sounds like you've got a good plan of attack for a rework! Speaking from experience, it's always tough to have to gut something, but doing rewrites and coming at it from a different angle can really improve the end result. Hell, you might end up with a completely different story when you're finished. Definitely post the next draft you put together.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:59
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