writing So I write short stories.(Critique Required)

[Hastur 505]

Alright, here it is. These ones have not been shared outside a few close friends.

The Remastered Guilt is based on an old story I wrote at sixteen, it's still unfinished. a dive into psyche is going into how I am and exploring four out of the six dimensions(because of the nature of this one it is not as organized as I'd want it) I have made for my continuity. Hope you guys like it. ^^

Just in case you wanna know, a Dive Into Psyche is shorter

A Remastered Guilt.docx

Dive Into Psyche.docx

Edited November 6, 2016 by Hastur

[Tilgoreth 1,915]

Sorry I'm on moble right now so I might try later.

[Widdershins 9,955]

Just got done reading A Remastered Guilt! I get a sort of Lovecraftian esoteric feel to it, the prose & way you take your time for a scene reminds me of older writings & something that is sorely missing of media these days.

And yes, I am aware I am sounding significantly hipster right now! Lol!

 

There's a few bits and pieces here & there that are a bit askew in grammar and maybe a few sentences that don't really add anything and could probably be taken out entirely. But then again there's published authors who get a few good inches of book that way. Of the few problems I came up with: when he finds the mask & likens it to the one from the dream, the only other one mentioned was described as "pallid" and I think that means pale, right? Not black and bejeweled?

 

Also, I kind of feel that his wife's SPOILER!!! death kind of came on a bit too quick. Though I like the air of ambiguity you gave it, as we don't really know what caused it much in the same way these things can snowball in real life.

All in all, rather thought provoking of a short story!                           Will come back and edit in my thoughts of the second story once I get around to it!

[Hastur 505]

Just got done reading A Remastered Guilt! I get a sort of Lovecraftian esoteric feel to it, the prose & way you take your time for a scene reminds me of older writings & something that is sorely missing of media these days.

And yes, I am aware I am sounding significantly hipster right now! Lol!

 

There's a few bits and pieces here & there that are a bit askew in grammar and maybe a few sentences that don't really add anything and could probably be taken out entirely. But then again there's published authors who get a few good inches of book that way. Of the few problems I came up with: when he finds the mask & likens it to the one from the dream, the only other one mentioned was described as "pallid" and I think that means pale, right? Not black and bejeweled?

 

Also, I kind of feel that his wife's SPOILER!!! death kind of came on a bit too quick. Though I like the air of ambiguity you gave it, as we don't really know what caused it much in the same way these things can snowball in real life.

All in all, rather thought provoking of a short story!                           Will come back and edit in my thoughts of the second story once I get around to it!

Oh yeah, I forgot to take put the word pallid xD

Thanks for reminding me~

And thank you for the feedback , it's really something that I ahem been wanting for such a long time

And I have read a bit of lovecrafts work, as well as Chambers, ^^

All-in-all, I'm glad you enjoyed that segment of my story, can't wait for the next one ^^

[Widdershins 9,955]

  Hoh...wow...uh...       Well, first off, sorry about that Hastur. Completely forgot there was a second story to read!

.....

 Huh...boy howdy did I need the space between them... Uh, how do I put this?...Well...I can see you like the older way of storytelling, of being descriptive and taking your time to weave your words, its quite an enviable trait I can see you pursuing. Your first short story worked that aspect quite well! Focused very well on its own artistic merits...your second...Well, to be blunt. Is a good example of why we don't write that way anymore...It...it just.../sigh

 

   If I can hazard a guess? Is it based off a few consecutive dreams you had? Its rather quite...indecipherable. Judging by what you said above, that may be something you were aiming for, but it doesn't seem to have come across. It has creativity & effort, I'll give you that. I like the notion of the Narrator, but you didn't really speak of him and he sort of just got buried under everything else. With all due respect, I kind of have difficulty even calling this a story. Everything moves so very fast, shifting so uncontrollably that we move onto the next setting so fast as to make the previous one entirely moot. I know it is usually said as an exaggeration but this story really did get worse as the longer it went on.

  I consider myself a pretty loving guy, heh...I don't take to hating anything particularly quickly, but man...this came awfully close there, heh...

  Right out the gates, first paragraph, you hit us with Astral Projection. I think, that maybe alot of people consider that a sort of magical power of sorts. Immediately stating a character has suddenly gained surprising new powers before we even know anything about her other then that she keeps a messy room. That's...that's just sucker punching your reader there. Heck, don't think the story ever goes into detail of what she looks like, responds to things or any other personality traits; we don't even get a name until the story is more then half over! Are we supposed to sympathize with this character or is she just food for the scary things she comes across? In fact, this whole Astral Projection calls into doubt almost the entirety of the story. She keeps describing things she feels when we know she can't be feeling pretty much anything without her body.

   I don't want to go into too much details or go over trifling details like spelling errors, at risk of saying far too much and coming across nitpicky. Don't want to go about pelting you with a list, so I'll just mention a handful of things about the actual writing.

  Firstly, you could do well to add a bit more variety in punctuation. Think you did pretty well in your first story, but in a tale like this one where its centered around her reactions to her surroundings a few exclamation marks sprinkled here and there would add a bit more emotion to your writing. As it stands with so many short sentences ending tersely with a stubborn little dot, it kind of comes across a bit like your just bullet point listing off how things look. First two sentences for example can be combined with a comma, or even less like: "I awaken in the center of my bedroom, finding it odd that..." That short, blunt little eight word sentence you start off sounds a bit like your demanding a response out of your reader. Like, "I am here." That thought sort of seems to carry though the story, behaving sort of like we put our character on a roller coaster and just watch as things happen to her. I find the "do nothing of it" in the first line rather clunky & odd. All we know so far is that someone is off their bed, what is there to do about that? Should she be scared about that fact? Are we, as the audience supposed to find that ominous? From the first line it already feels like your telling us we ought react to something.

  In the scenes of the paintings whizzing past our heroine decribes her "ultimate fear" and being afraid of others finding it out. Yeah...think most of us are afraid of being torn to shreds. Don't think she needs to worry that much about being judged for that.

  Top of the second page. You know, I do say, take my criticisms with a grain of salt, I watch far too many over-reacting YouTuber reviewers so I too am likely to over-react maybe. But they do bring up solid points, I feel. Was watching one reading over internet meme-creepypastas and that seems to be a thing bad creepypastas do, is over-explain things. Your character enters a new room, looks down to see a crowd of people and instantly knows there is exactly 125 people in that crowd. I would really suggest against using specific numbers, especially when its supposed to seem like the observer ought be panicking too much to be able to tell things with that much accuracy.

  I think, perhaps, that is where this story sort of went askew for yew. You went and decribed a bit too much.

If I may quote directly: "They were almost normal; to me they seem as a threat with the possibility of not being so." I'm rather lost as to what that line is supposed to mean. That they have a threat of not being a threat or that they may not be "normal" and in that is something that threatens you?

  It's mentioned that "heat" is felt coming off this crowd, but we've already stated that she's astral projecting, what she's encountering clearly can't be real as she's already seen herself leave herself behind. What I mentioned before, ruins the story a bit if we already know that she can't be affecting her surroundings, but her environment is what's reacting around her. If she's real enough to feel the heat of these phantasms, then that tumble she takes later on in the story should have snapped her spine!

  Probably the third biggest mistake I caught, is when she meets the..."Tribunal". When she enters it is mentioned there's four other beings in there with her, then after seeing the second, she's all the sudden surprised to see "two more." One of those lines ought be omitted, likely the first so that the second line does catch the audience by surprise too.

  Do love the pantheon you've set up, does cater to the imagination well. But one of these beings you describe as being made entirely out of shadow...while also having shadow come out of it. That's...sort of like pouring a glass of water into a pool of water...how can you tell?

   Another big mistake I caught, was that when she attempts to escape from this tribunal she claims she can't because the crowd is blocking her way...despite having left them behind when the big doors clamped shut behind her when she entered. 

  Another line I don't get is the Eye's second line of "She is aware that it will never come and this breeds hatred for those who do."

 The previous line only stated that she was jealous, not of what. So what is "It" that won't come? Who does what? She hates those that "do" the thing she is jealous of? The focus of the first half of the sentence is on this "It" while the latter half is about "Those" and I'm just rather lost again...heh...

   Later on, you mention the phrase "My lungs feel a form of drowning" ...there's...different ways of drowning? Don't they all end up doing the same process & results? Aren't the lungs always involved in restricted breathing? Sort of seems like an afterthought of a descriptive term that could have been better melded into preceding descriptive sentences.

    

   Sigh, and the fifth paragraph of the third pages is where the ball started speeding up as it went downhill. I mentioned earlier how fast the scenes changed, and this it where it hits the hardest. You go from falling, touch down in a field, barely before your on your feet long enough to gain barings, you black out into a blackish landscape, fall again, and wind up in a Greek Library! That's three scenes covered, double that if you count the falling, in less then a paragraph! I do realize your aiming for dreamscape here, but if such little time is spent in each scene, why bother even paying attention to them? Any or all of those could have been cut out entirely to have her just drop straight into the library! And hoh, the library!...

   Didn't like the library either, she's uncovering books of her life, realizes they're about her, information likely no human ought be able to tell, states that its unnerving & scary, then keeps reading them. Why?!!?

  Sure, here we do get some details about our character. Too late in the story, and none of it in any way pertains to how she got where she is now, or anything about how she reacts, just trifling details that even in the hands of some unknown being, would still likely not be enough for them to do anything to her.

  I know I mentioned trying to not mentioning typos but... top of the fourth page, the entire back half of a sentence is lopped off and likely the remainder of the paragraph too.

   The last book she reads, tells of her death. Yet you imply of her "possible deaths." Each of the previous cases was incredibly specific, almost first-hand accounts, meant to imply these books somehow wrote themselves so to speak. Therefore, her future is just as present here as her past. The details of her death ought be just as exact as her birth.

   "Sky me away?" I tried googling that phrase just now & couldn't find anything. If that actually is an actual word, then you sir, have gained a noble prize in something that has never happened in my life. You've actually found a phrase more archaic then what I typically use!

 

  I somewhat get the feeling you were building up to this character of the Narrator. But...that's sort of the issue, describing something as featureless isn't really describing it. All we're left with, is maybe the Slenderman with pretty eyes. And other then its capability to kill, Mister Slender isn't exactly scary to very many people. Simply not knowing isn't enough to entice or to fear, not to me anyway. It's more about potential. Which... do think you play on rather well too.

  Which is something I'd like to get in an argument with Mr. Lovecraft over. If you call the unnameable the Unnameable, then you've named it, haven't you? But anyway...

 

 

  There's a certain phrase among writing: Show, don't tell. But I don't quite get that, its storyTELLing, you kind of tell everything you do anyway. But I think that's what went wrong with this story. You focused far, far, far too much on describing what happened rather then what interacted with our character. There's a reason everyone gets so upset when the movie ends with a "It was all just a dream!" revelation, that just mitigates the entire time spent watching all of it. After your story is done & over, what are we left with? That this one lady just got really scared one night?

  There's a reason we forget dreams so easily. They don't follow any discernible path or impact us after. So we simply don't.

 

 

 

 

  Wow... over eight thousand letters for this post...New Record!

[Hastur 505]

I have read every word of that. All I can say is: thank you, I will use that information to get better.

 

I will probably end up rewriting that one, as I have with "Guilt" to "A Remastered Guilt".

Anyway, these scenes were all reoccurring dreams, you got me there.

And yes, it is riddled with flaws, that's why I posted it. Thank you for pointing them out, now I'll have a better idea what to do with the final draft of it. ^^