Short Horror Story for Publication

[esper]

Hi everybody. I'm really rather loathe to post this here, as most of what goes into the critic's lounge is beautiful artwork, animations, or music, and anything that isn't is normally crap. Thus, by my own admission, I'm posting crap, since this is neither beautiful, nor artwork, nor audible.

I am a writer. I love to write. I would love to become a full-time writer, although this is one of the most difficult careers to have outside of as a hobby in the US. Only, I think it was somewhere around 15-20% of all writers in America live off what they make from writing.

But I'm a writer. I'm not an artist, or a musician. As such, this story is probably the best thing I will ever put on the Critic's Lounge, unless I post another story. I would REALLY like some nice, detailed responses, as I'm not just putting this here to find out what you guys think about it, but because I am going to try to have it published in a professional paying literary magazine.

Thus, I submit for your approval, "The Axe of Theseus," a short horror story.

http://www.geocities.com/espergame/axeoftheseus.doc

[Nikolas]

just to encourage people to read, it's 3 1/2 pages long. Not to big... It's worth a read...

I don't have time right now, but await comments from me...

[DonB]

I am not English, so I simply cannot say if your "flow" is good or what so ever.. but about the story;

Very exciting, it really made me think a bit at the end.. which i think is the best a writer can expect from his readers.

Spoiler

who the ... killed richard richard, the axe?, a ghost?

[close]

positive:
-good plot
-good characters
-not too difficult to read for an outsider like me

negative;
-sometimes you go to long on one subject.. like in the beginning with the axe.. it's a short story and you need all the space you can get.. don't ruin it with talking like 5 lines about the axe.. that kinda breaks the flow.

Spoiler

however.. i begin to think the axe killed richard, and it might be critical to describe it well, since i begin to think the only real love richard had wasn't for the girl, but for the axe

[close]

..so after reading that spoiler that point might not even be so negative..Ã, 

great job anyway!

[Kweepa]

Very gruesome. It works well. There are a few sloppy word choices, for example "suck", "target", "mush", but overall the voice is pretty consistent.

Spoiler

As is typical for a short horror (I'm reading some Thomas Ligotti right now) the main character is the only character with any semblance of personality, but I'm guessing that's deliberate.

[close]

[rharpe]

All in all I would say it was an entertaining read. I did get lost a bit in some of the various, prolonged, descriptions.

I was a bit confused by the the quick transitions and wondered why the main character did not have a conscience. Was he demonically possessed? Why was the weapon so dear to him? Why couldn't he remember her name? She was his object of desire, but we, the readers, knew nothing about her.

There needs to be more of a build up on the characters and their relationships with one another. The reader needs instances of hatred-build-up... and there needs to be a breaking point. (Maybe use the girl as a seductress...in a young, innocent, nieve way...batting of the eye lashes, throwing of the hair, and innocent touches that cause more sexual tension.) 

The girl needs more emphasis. She is, in fact, the reason for everything. We need to know what's going on inside his head... He was too professional, there needs to be a slip-up, sloppyness in execution, (no pun intended,) this is his first time. We need a show of mixed emotions.

Maybe it was your intent to leave the reader hanging... you did just that. I personally, love to get the answers at the very end. Giving the story closure.

It's a great start, and has some slight cliche undertones, but again, I love cliche because I can compare it with other things I've seen or read.

[fred]

Good job, keep it up.

A few things...

Spoiler

The first paragraph. For several reasons it doesn't work.

* You give away the unbelieveable, horrendous act as something that has already happened (makes it less interesting) and even say it is expected and usual (which is hardly true). Works better if you build up tension through the story.

* Is Richard's name really the most important thing about him? It illustrates his loneliness, but in a way that makes the reader laugh and think "sucker", where, since he's the main character, you may actually want to have the reader sympathise with him (for starters at least).

* Should lonely people "expect" to become axe-murderers? Or is this a joke? And why should the reader be scared by the story, when the narrator is at such a safe distance from the events that he cracks jokes about them? Works better if the narrator mimics the reaction you want to provoke in the reader.

* Small thing, but Richard's life can have "felt" long, but not "been" long, when he's still only in his teens.

[close]

[Weaver]

But I'm a writer. I'm not an artist

Personally I think writers are artists.

I really enjoy your writing style (techniques, balanced paragraph- and sentence-lenghts etc)

I wish I could write like you, I really do.

There's one little thing I didn't quite like, though. I may be wrong (not being a native English speaker and having very little writing experience).

Spoiler

I didnt like your use of "therefore" in the 1st paragraph (it makes the flow somewhat artificial and "stiches" the sentences instead of connecting them). In [spit!] Academic Writing this word's a must but it's evil cause it puts people to sleep (especially in the beginning of the story) if it stands out like that. Like it's fellow leech-words, "however" and "furthermore", it stalks innocent narratives and ambushes them in dark alleys. I'd advise you to drop it and rewrite the paragraph.

[close]

Keep up the good work!

[esper]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I'm working on a rewrite, taking everyone's ideas and crits into consideration. Several things you guys said that I find interesting...

Weaver: I know... I tend to be a bit verbose and bombastic at times. "However" doesn't strike me as being quite as bad as some of the other words I might have used. However, if I do it this once, it would be cosmetic. Using words like that is a staple of my writing style. I've always loved and tried to emulate writers who, like Douglas Adams, could write long, preachy, surface-boring paragraphs which in context are hilarious and meaningful.

Fred: I find what you say slightly odd... I never felt as if I were mocking him, rather attempting to make him appear pitiful.

rharpe: hmmm... hanging you say? What did I leave you hanging on? It  was my intention to cover all the bases. The reader is supposed to figure things out for themselves, but if I didn't give enough info for the reader to do that, I'd like to know.

Steve: suck and mush were intentional. "Target" was for lack of a better word. And I DID NOT mean to make it overly gruesome. That's not my style. Do you think it was too gruesome?

Nik: Thanks for the encouragement. Now are ya gonna read it or not?

[Kweepa]

Do you think it was too gruesome?

No, not at all.
I'm curious to know why you spelt "axe" the British way.

[Squinky]

Thats the british way? Thats how I've always spelled it...

(And getting to reading here soon, I'll let you know my worthless opinion tomorrow.)

[Nikolas]

Yes, I read it.

Ok

Comments:

* I like it and I can see that the form is well thought and laid out.
* I find though that I would like a little mroe knowledge of Richards lonely life. btw loney life is fine with me (not a native speaker though)
* The language is fine by me also, but I'm not really to judge as my English can be por.
* The whole idea with axe-Richard relationship works for me.

And generally, I don't know, if it is me or how I know you, or what I know, but I find that kind of writting and the way that you say things, and most importangly the things that you say and you mean, with the final twist (note weak but never the less predictable) a nice and again well thought out.

What I would suggest is having the reader 'meet' the characters a little more.

Now all we know is Dave, the only guy to be nice top Richard (although we don't know how or why, or why Richard is so unpleasent to be with...), the girl we don't know anything about. I would think that another page spread along the whole text, with descriptions of the characters would benefit this story.

Then again I do know that oyur aim are not the characters them selfes...

Well, anyway I like it a lot (and could also visualise it, which is good for a story).

[big brother]

I read your story fairly quickly, so most of my crits deal with the writing itself rather than the story. Here are some suggestions on how to improve:

(big issues)

- SHOW don't TELL! It's easy to say that "Richard led a lonely life," or some shit, but it doesn't impact the reader as much as if they can reach that conclusion on their own. Your job as a fiction writer is to paint a story with words. Again, the beauty of writing lies with the specifics you add to the story. What clues can you give the reader to develop Richard's personality and depict his emotions? For instance, look at this short paragraph I wrote:

"Jenny swept down the hall past Richard, trailing girlish laughter and perfume borrowed from her mother's boudoir. Richard turned to watch her, absently tonguing the chip in his front tooth. Her cheerful step and the summer breeze from open windows made her hair bounce dreamily. Those auburn tangles -- the color of the cat his neighbor's owned when he was in grade school. He remembered it lying at the base of the driveway, its ribcage deflated. When he nudged it with the tip of his boot, the blood rippled around the tire."

Notice that I give a little backstory, while both developing Richard's character and progressing the narrative. Richard seems like a creepy stalker, but in adolescent way. When he turns murderer, it will be a shock to the reader, but not a totally unfair one from the storytelling aspect. It introduces the cat as a possible parallel to Jenny, and demonstrates how Richard longs for things that belong to others.

- Developing the setting is very important for any story. Coupled with a implied backstory, you can weave realism into your plot. How old is Richard? Where does he live? What does it look like? Neglecting description is a neophyte mistake. I'm not saying you have to make it obvious, like "His name had been Richard for all 16 years of his life, and no one at his middle-class, predominantly Caucasian public school had called him Rich, ever." Maybe just drop more clues, like "During junior year, he noticed Dave and Jenny had moved their desks closer together."

- Pace: resist the urge to speed up the narrative until the parts you wanted to write about more. Keep in mind that the reader, unlike you, knows nothing about the story or the characters. It's easy to forget that a lot of this background information is only in YOUR head.
"Richard was a creepy kid, especially after he killed the person closest to being a friend. Now on to the grisly parts, where he used a wood axe for the murder, which involved lots of mutilation especially around the sternocleidomastoid muscle..."
See what I mean? You want the character to look like the weird one, not the writer.

(smaller issues)

- Try to employ the active voice. Reworking your sentences to feature interesting verbs instead of helping verbs will inject vigor into your writing.

- Eliminate unecessary words. Very, quite, even, just....

- Pay close attention to the beginning and ending of your sentences. Typically, the last word determines the emphasis of the statement. For instance:
"It wasn't altogether unusual or unexpected when he hacked someone up with a wood axe one day." This is a startling revelation, but you downplay it.
“One day, quite expectedly, he took a wood axe from the toolshed and beheaded Dave.” This sentence better captures your reader's interest.

- Many of your transitions seem awkward and choppy. Try reading aloud to streamline the writing.

- The analogy about the maggots and ice cream struck me as totally unecessary. It seemed like you thought you came up with something clever and broke the style just to fit it in.

- The omniscience of your narrative voice detracts from any mysterious element that could otherwise be developed. Mystery is a good way to accentuate the horror of the situation. This story just wasn't scary. It read very matter-of-fact.

- Title: I'm not sure why you would reference Greek lore in the title, since nothing in the theme coincides, other than the axe (which is present in the title also, negated the novelty).

[Squinky]

Good stuff. The only thing that bothered me was the maggoty ice cream cone line....just struck me as weird.

[esper]

Big Brother: Thanks for the in-depth crit. Most of what you said was obvious, as anyone who reads books on how to write would know (active not passive, show not tell, etc.)... My problem is the four-thousand word limit I have going on. I wish I could spend more time on these things, but in most of the short stories I've read, the descriptions are left to the reader as the meat of the story is dealt with in the limited word count allotted. I'm paying close attention to the majority of your critiques, and the critiques of others, however, as I'm rewriting.

Squinky: Maggots...

Oh, by the way, has anyone figured out what's going on yet? I didn't think I'd made it altogether too obscure, but Big Brother's comment on the title makes me wonder.

Spoiler

In Greek mythology, Theseus was a hero whose ship was getting old and it had to be replaced plank by plank. Once the entire ship had been replaced, was it the same ship, or was it an entirely new ship? The entire idea of the story is:

[close]

Spoiler

He killed the boy with the axe, but the handle broke, and he had to replace it. When he went to go bury him, the head broke, and he had to replace it. When the ghost came back to kil him, bound by the laws of the spirit world, he could only do so with the very axe that killed him. Unfortunately for the ghost, it was not the same ax. The girl saw what had occurred, however, and knew Richard's secret. So Richard killed her, but the axe remained undamaged. Thus, the following year, the boy still could not kill him, but the girl got her revenge. The axe was completely splintered, head and handle both, to indicate that it was over.

[close]

[Kweepa]

Wow, that's subtle! ...and way over my head.

[esper]

Seriously??? Oh, dear. That does not bode well.

[Kweepa]

...for my classical education
I'd never heard of "the Ship of Theseus."
You say Theseus, I think "...and the Minotaur."

[Grapefruitologist]

The whole thing was quite confusing to me. Was that Dave's ghost or just Rich's imagination? If it was his imagination, then how could he get chopped to piece by something that didn't exist?
It was really all quite confusing... it didn't make sense. I couldn't understand it. One minute; Dave was a figment of Rich's imagination, the next, he chops Rich to pieces? Or did Rich chop himself to pieces? Or was it Jenny? Did Jenny see Dave, did Dave or Rich kill Jenny? Did Dave come back twice, or once?
I'm not sure if this confused anyone else, but it confused me...
This reminds me of "the Portrait of Dorian Gray". Much like it in the sense that, they were young (I'm assuming), and you would never suspect them, because they seem innocent. They also were greedy about a certain object; like, the axe in your story, and the portrait (or his youth) in Dorian Gray.
Add some description about how he really felt about things, if he was guilty, or if he felt no guilt, and why he felt no guilt; or if he feared being discovered or was he just a crazy guy or did he really feel emotions? What was going through his head? If he loved this girl so much, and killed Dave to get her, what was he thinking about her? Go into more detail about how he felt. Also-more detail about where he's from, etc., as mentioned before.

Also-if this is the first time he murdered somebody, why does he have spare axes lying around? He's not a serial killer yet, is he?
Or did I misunderstand that sentance?

[esper]

No, but he lives in a small town where you assumedly can't just go to the store and pick up a bundle of firewoord as easily as you might just chop it yourself.

Honestly, could everyone do me a favor and just tell me whether or not it's that hard to follow? I think I might need to do quite a bit more rewriting than was originally intended.

[rharpe]

Honestly, could everyone do me a favor and just tell me whether or not it's that hard to follow? I think I might need to do quite a bit more rewriting than was originally intended.

Definitely needs a rework!