Technical knowledge is only half the story...

You can have the world's best grammar and spelling skills and still make a crappy story. Today's feature proves just that. Her grammar isn't spot-on, but she appears to have at least run the thing through a spell-checker and stayed awake during English class... yet her story still isn't good.

It's because it reflects things we have read and watched in movies about a hundred THOUSAND times over. It's typical yet it's supposed to portray an urgent, panicked feeling. We can't feel the emotion because we're reading it with blank minds because... hey, it's been done over and over... and over.

Because she took the time to at least use decent technical skills, I wrote her some feedback about what is so damn typical about her prologue in hopes that she could steer the story in an opposite direction.

In making it more interesting, the writer's main faults here are bland, boring sentence structure, cliche story line/setting/character use, and using the character's name WAY TOO MUCH.



Prose:


Christine ran through the forest, her feet pierced by tiny rocks as she ran. Christine dared to look back only to find the glowing red eyes growing closer, she tried to pick up speed but she was already at her limit. The pain in her side was growing and the air inside her lungs were burning, she knew the moment she stared into his eyes she wasn’t going to see the light of day again.

Christine tripped over a root from a tree and fell face first into a puddle of thick brown mud, she tried to get up and start running again but it was too late he had already caught up and was going to make her assumption reality. He grabbed her by her long red hair that was caked in mud and leaves; he lifted her head so she was staring into his glowing blood red eyes. Christine was paralyzed by fear; she stopped fighting and her entire body went limp. She couldn’t move she just laid there and watched as his face morphed into some sort of deformed human, his eyes appeared even more red and his teeth grew longer and sharper; his cheek bones were getting bigger and sharper and what appeared to be tribal marks started to appeared on his forehead.

When the transformation stopped he didn’t appear human anymore. With one quick jab he pierced Christine’s chest with his hand that had grown a set of razor sharp claws. Christine felt the sharp pain growing in her chest but she couldn’t move, all she could do was lay there and wait for it all to be over.

The monster stared Christine right in the eye as he watched the life slowly fade from her eyes, when the monster was sure she was dead he took out a knife with the same kind of marking on his forehead and slowly put in into the fatal wound he had inflicted with only his hand. When he pulled the knife out it was glowing red and was absorbing the blood it had picked up in the wound, the knife then let out a blast of light and returned to normal. The monster almost look human now if it weren’t for the blood red eyes, he put the knife back in his pocket and walked away into the darkness of night on the prowl for his next victim.




My critique to her:


Well here's the thing.

It's nothing we haven't read before. A few of the things:

1. The opening sentence. I could probably link you to a good 20 other topics where the prose starts off in this manner. A girl running. I could link you to even more that just starts off, right in the first sentence, with the focus of the section (or the whole story) running. Usually in a panic, usually with someone pursuing them. Granted, you could make this into a good start if it was a clear, original story or if it was a not-so-typical reason for running (ie, say they were in the middle of a race or chasing after a dog... or, even chasing after someone else!) but sadly it's not.

2. The "glowing red eyes." It's been done so many times it's near impossible to take anything like that in seriousness. Again, they can be used if it's in an original way but sadly it's not.

3. Trip over a tree root, land in a puddle. There's so many different ways for someone to fall but they always seem to do so over a tree root (I've gone running through a forest! You're more likely to trip over a bump in the ground than a tree root...) and of course there's always the troublesome puddle there. And why is everyone who is running in these stories such a clutz, anyways? They always, without fail, trip! I know if I were running in a panic, I'd be watching where I step because there's no way I'm going to find myself face-down on the ground while some creeper catches up with me! Anyways...


It's just not something I'd take the time to read into more, you know? Because I already, apparently, have read many things just like it. That's all. I mean, you're not a bad WRITER. Your grammar isn't horrible and nothing made my gauge my eyes out. You clearly at least spell checked, but that's only half of good writing.

Good luck.