Investigations into Nigel Knebworth

This is good, odd, unusual, and unexpected. It also kind of breaks the competition rules, in a way. That being said, I enjoyed it, despite the occasional misplaced comma.

This story doesn't really satisfy the competition requirements, as it is not a crime-based story. However, that's not the story's biggest flaw. Your main trouble here is grammar. Phrasing and punctuation are so clumsy that it distracts from the story. You also occasionally try to throw in a few big words, most of which were not used appropriately.

That being said, I think it's a cool story. You could easily double the word count and spend more time on the supernatural elements. The world-building is terrific. I had a real feel for my surroundings, and the character of Nigel is described well.

My suggestion is to have this edited by someone who is good with grammar, flesh it out more, be more concerned with story and less concerned with sounding fancy, and finally, submit it to a publication that is more fantasy/sci-fi themed. Definite potential.

This is another interesting take on the contest guidelines. I think you can argue that this just about fulfils the criteria. The central premise if of missing persons, and there is an investigation, albeit one that consists of someone reading a book and then standing in a field. It’s loose, but as has been touched on by other comments, there are bigger flaws here.

My biggest issues with this are with the grammar, flow, and language. Others have tackled grammar, but I would say the best example is the second paragraph. Read it out loud, it’s exhausting.

Over-elaborate language is a pet hate of mine. There is a reason for this. When I started taking my writing seriously a couple of years ago, I wanted to show off my language skills, and my vocabulary. My stories were consistently torn apart. Eventually I had it drummed into me that language has to serve the story.

I just want to pick a couple of your sentences to highlight where it looks like you are showing off your vocabulary (or your access to a thesaurus).

“To this day, my suspicions are still rife with compunction about his order for that sour.”

“After much reluctance, my averseness to refute him my hand was overcome by an innate sense of duty – social conventions will be the death of me.”

Who talks like that? If your friends say stuff like “rife with compunction” or “averseness to refute him”, get new friends. If you are aping the style of 19th century or early 20th century writers, than I can kind of see why you want to do that, but it just doesn’t work. Keep it simple. You want to take the reader on a journey, and this kind of language provides too many barriers. It also seriously affects the flow of the piece. There should be a rhythm to this, and your use of language is occasionally like performing an emergency stop.

This has the potential to read like an M. R. James ghost story, but it is oddly devoid of any tension. Your narrator should be finding himself dragged into the mystery, uncovering layer after layer, and each time he does so, the tension should be ramped up. Take for example the section where Nigel sees the burning girl. There is no tension, because we are told instead of shown what happened. You add details that nobody would include in their telling of a story – “The night was quiet except for the occasional owl looking for breakfast, and the sporadic rattle of a passing vehicles wheel chains chipping tint shards of ice up into the air…” Not only would Nigel not say these things, but even if he had, would your protagonist remember them sixteen years later?

Simplify the language, keep ramping up the tension, and sweep those grammar issues, and you may be surprised at that improves the flow.