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midnighttyper's picture

A cat in the woods

By midnighttyper in Scare Us

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Description

Two young boys hear roumors of a giant cat in the woods and set out to investigate. 

Comments

Jane Wiseman's picture
Jane Wiseman from living outside of Albuquerque/in Minneapolis is reading Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks July 27, 2012 - 6:53pm

I think you need to polish the writing quite a bit, including matters as basic as grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. Also--SPOILER ALERT-- I think you spring the idea of monster trees on us out of nowhere. It's fine for the boys to believe, or half-believe, in a giant cat, but there ought to be some sort of foreshadowing that the monster might be something else entirely. In addition, why monster trees? What has made the trees this angry? You might want to give us at least a hint or two why this would be.

Jonathan Riley's picture
Jonathan Riley from Memphis, Tennessee is reading Flashover by Gordon Highland July 29, 2012 - 7:54pm

___SPOILER ALLERT___

I saw a horror short once. It was shot in the perspective of a tree being chopped down by a lumber jack. I kept expecting it to come alive and fight back but it didn't so i thought the execution was poor. Maybe you can give your trees a point of veiw. Also maybe give them a reason to murder. Maybe the children are poluting the woods, carving there names in the tree.

midnighttyper's picture
midnighttyper from England, South Yorkshire is reading The picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde July 30, 2012 - 7:54am

Hey guys thanks for taking the time to leave a comment for me. I originally wanted the audience to be as clueless as the boys but now i realize that does make the ending a little cheap and unjustified so I'm going to try write it again before the deadline. Grammar and punctuation are obviously not strong points of mine, i spent the last three years studying science and math where only basic English skills are needed so I'm relying heavily on spell check software. Hopefully I'll be able to teach myself these things again over time, should be easy enough with the great people here and their well appreciated honesty. Thanks again guys. 

Scott MacDonald's picture
Scott MacDonald from UK is reading Perfidia July 30, 2012 - 1:36pm

Hi. Just finished reading your story.  I didn't mind the reveal of the threat, but I did think that the pacing needed some work. Everything seemed to start suddenly happening at once, where as the location of the forest at night, with shadows and noises, had lots of opportunity to build some anxiety and tension in the reader.

That said, there were things to enjoy here too.  I liked the reference to Frank's sister and the comment from Jack that his 'feet were still sore from yesterday', which gave the boys a life beyond the story that I always feel manages to flesh characters out.