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Caleb Aaron Dobbs's picture

A Yivek Chain (Updated)

By Caleb Aaron Dobbs in Scare Us

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Description

Losing someone can be hard...finding out why can be harder. A Yivek Chain.

Comments

Caleb Aaron Dobbs's picture
Caleb Aaron Dobbs from Sallisaw, Oklahoma is reading A Game of Thrones July 30, 2012 - 10:43am

Sorry for errors! New to this world!

Caleb Aaron Dobbs's picture
Caleb Aaron Dobbs from Sallisaw, Oklahoma is reading A Game of Thrones July 30, 2012 - 10:44am

Thanks for reading!

Emma C's picture
Class Facilitator
Emma C from Los Angeles is reading Black Spire by Delilah Dawson July 28, 2012 - 5:35pm

You have an omniscent narrator but pepper this with the protagonist's internal commentary, which I found unnecessary and a bit distracting. I think you can delete all the italicized commentary, including the introduction, without losing much story. This became particularly confusing during the "flashback" of what happened to Dane.

The narration is also extremely relaxed and reads more like a first-person account of the teenage protagonist than a detached third person. You may want to consider changing POV (but you'd lose the Dane scene).

You start out talking about how normal the protagonist is, then seem to give a list of things that set him apart without including a MAJOR character trait that is revealed later in the story. Either include it here, or do away with the character introduction altogether. 

I was on board with the story until he arrived at Clair's house, then it just seemed to go off the rails. I don't think the Kyle character added anything to the story and the dialogue gets a bit tedious here. 

You have a good premise and monster; focus on these and don't worry so much about all the other details. 

 
Caleb Aaron Dobbs's picture
Caleb Aaron Dobbs from Sallisaw, Oklahoma is reading A Game of Thrones July 28, 2012 - 8:40pm

Thanks for reading! Never written a horror story before, so I appreciate your comments a GREAT DEAL! I agree with you on the internal commentary; I'm uncertain about the demon and Dane flashback remaining in the story at all at this point...maybe it was too much? I just didn't know how else to get a feel for the creature. My POV's are consistently odd...I need to stick with one or the other, but I think I need to read more FP to get the job done.

 

I'll try and go back and cut out some of the more tedious dialogue...and maybe cut Kyle. I had more things planned for the three of them, but I was already over 4000 words... #epicfail on staying within the limit. I guess it showed!

 

When you asked about revealing his 'sight' earlier on, I understand that it wasn't obvious enough...but I didn't know how to say it without pushing it too hard. I did, actually in that paragraph you recommended, say this:  "He had some intense imaginary friends when he was little and was more passionate about orange sherbet than life itself…" I know that it wasn't much, but what would you recommend? Maybe just throw it in as if it were nothing and move on?

 

Emma C's picture
Class Facilitator
Emma C from Los Angeles is reading Black Spire by Delilah Dawson July 29, 2012 - 7:56am

I think you can address it subtly; the "intense imaginary friends" line didn't exactly lead me to think he had these powers, and it felt a bit too convenient later in the story when you reveal that he does. Find a way to leak this information out slowly- I think you hint at it again when he asserts that Dane isn't really dead. 

 
Jane Wiseman's picture
Jane Wiseman from living outside of Albuquerque/in Minneapolis is reading Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks August 3, 2012 - 6:07pm

I liked the story until the narrator got to Claire's house. Then it seemed to take a completely different direction, stopped seeming real, and got very confusing. But that first part was really good. Leaving horror completely out of it, I think you have a gift for realistic description, characterization, and narration. If I were you, I'd forget horror and concentrate on that. I don't know much about the horror genre, so maybe just ignore me, especially if you really do want to learn how to write it. But you could always instead "write what you know" and concentrate on good, character-driven fiction. As far as I can see right now, in my limited experience with the genre, good horror writers do both--all good genre writers do. But don't worry about all this gimmicky stuff for a while. Just write good stories.

Caleb Aaron Dobbs's picture
Caleb Aaron Dobbs from Sallisaw, Oklahoma is reading A Game of Thrones August 5, 2012 - 10:13am

Thanks for the advice! I am in total agreement with you on the horror thing...I can't even watch scary movies without tripping out! Lol. I can do realistic and fantasy (kinda), but not horror.

Jonathan Riley's picture
Jonathan Riley from Memphis, Tennessee is reading Flashover by Gordon Highland August 3, 2012 - 11:14pm

For me this was a cross between "The ring" and "The Sixth Sense". Not as bad as "The Ring" and not as good as "The Sixth Sense." Like Jane said. You built a really great character.(Really Realy Great) and the front half of the story sucked me in. I was actually buying the whole premise halfway through Clair's house. I even like the little sister that wasn't there. I was expecting that Clair had a little sister who had died years earlier.  (that would had made my skin crawl.). I also think you made your charachter sensitive in the beginning. Nice guys who get there heart broken don't suddenly speak to girls with such distaste. If i hadn't identified with him as nice it wouldn't had bothered me.

I liked the end. At first i felt you were gonna leave a broken "chain" but your finishing lines linked it again. There was alot of good writing here. Throw this through the ringer a couple more times and i think Your narrarotor can carry this story to really great places. Thanks for sharing this.

--Jonathan--

 

Caleb Aaron Dobbs's picture
Caleb Aaron Dobbs from Sallisaw, Oklahoma is reading A Game of Thrones August 5, 2012 - 10:17am

I agree with you. It was totally out of character for him to freak out...but I didn't know how else to move the story along in the time frame. At one point, it was 4500 words and I went...stop Caleb, just finish this. You are trying to write for a set of criteria.

 

I don't do criteria well...lol.

Thanks again for reading!

Pushpaw's picture
Pushpaw from Canada is reading Building Stories by Chris Ware August 4, 2012 - 11:34am

Has a hilarious opening--really like the way you introduce the character and his situation. He's a great main character too.

I found one of the problems with the "horror" element was that, instead of allowing us to discover the Yivek through the main character, we're just told, via Clair, who already knows. It's quite compelling when the "little sister" appears with the bleeding cat, so if the characters could know nothing of it at that point either and figure it out together, bringing the reader along. I certainly wanted to find out what the little girl was as a reader, but was disappointed when it was delivered to me by Clair.

I think your writing is strong, in terms of it being readable and enjoyable line by line, but where you need work is in developing the overall narrative structure, emphasizing things like drama, tension, suspense etc.

Hope you keep sharing stories here, as you really have a unique voice and way of seeing things.

Caleb Aaron Dobbs's picture
Caleb Aaron Dobbs from Sallisaw, Oklahoma is reading A Game of Thrones August 5, 2012 - 10:19am

Thanks for your words! I may shy away from the horror genre and just write character stuff!

Regina Peacecraft's picture
Regina Peacecraft from the Philippines is reading Android Karenina August 5, 2012 - 9:37am

I like your monster and there are nicely morbid/scary parts in the story like how Dane died and the scene with the cat, but the phrasing throughout the whole story is very confusing.Mostly I think you should work on building more organized paragraphs and better constructed sentences. The climax was a little short-lived and lacking in intensity but the epilogue part (Clair's death) was a good clincher

Caleb Aaron Dobbs's picture
Caleb Aaron Dobbs from Sallisaw, Oklahoma is reading A Game of Thrones August 5, 2012 - 10:21am

I do have an odd style...I'll work on making it more readable! I think one of the huge problems is I know everything about the situation...but forget to make it obvious to the reader as well. In other words...I'm a NOOB. Haha. 

ArlaneEnalra's picture
ArlaneEnalra from Texas is reading Right now I'm editing . . .. August 5, 2012 - 3:22pm

This one caught my attention from the start.  I liked the writing style and the flow of the story from the get go.  There were a few things about the ending that bothered me.  For one, it would have been nice to explore what happened with Clair after the whole incident.  Putting a break in the story right there is probably the wrong thing to do.  Maybe have her go with him to Church a few times and then fall out again or something like that.  Also, the various other voices, like the ones speaking at the end were a little confusing.  I'm pretty sure one of them was the Yivek but the other or others I'm not sure about.  The scene in the truck also bugged me a bit.  It felt a little disjointed, as though there were things missing.  I couldn't get a clear mental picture of what was going on in the truck.  Otherwise, I really liked this one!