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El Chupaco rewrite
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Description
A Barbecue cook-off weekend in a small Florida town takes a frightening turn.
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Comments
I reposted this story after completely redoing it based on some painful but valuable feedback, in hopes it will get some more reads. Many thanks to my critics.....
Hi there,
Glad to read your story! I enjoyed it, it reminded me of an X Files novel I read in the mid 90s called Whirlwhind. Very creepy stuff, obviously, given the memory stayed with me for this long!
I've just finished up a litreactor class actually, so I hope you don't mind that I copied and pasted your story into a word doc, and made comments in the body. It's what I got used to doing for my class, and I hope I haven't imposed.
I'm not sure what the comments were on your previous story, and I thought best not to read them so I didn't get a certain idea stuck in my head. If they already mentioned presentation, I apologise in advance for doubling up. If you can get into the habit of putting it in manuscript form, it's a good idea. It makes it easy to read and review, and obviously ready to go if you plan on submitting it for competitions. You can look at my submission for this challenge if you want an example (I think I've got it down pat now!), but this site was recommended as a guide in the first class I did with litreactor this year - http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html
Also, if you have enough time, it's worth running your story past a friend to check for typos, grammar issues and 'believability'. I noticed a couple of missing commas, hyphens and a typo here or there. These didn't necessarily detract from the story for me, but it can really affect some peoples' enjoyment.
I hope you find my comments useful.
Jess
Thank you, Jess. I have been having some trouble with Word files so could not open this but I appreciate your thoughts and the time you took. I'll kee workiong on my technical issue and maybe I can eventually open that file.
Here are a few notes from a quick pass thru it. I'll spend some more time later today and revise my story. This helps me make it much better!
Enjoyed this very much. I like the direct style of the writing and the sense that anyone, anywhere could be judging everything you do to others. It came across as an expanded folk fable - something to tell kids before going to bed to ensure that they understand consequence to actions that may seem small to them.
I enjoyed the ambiguity of who/what the monster could be--which could be everybody for all we know. It pokes at those uncomfortabe paranoid places under the skin. I think the use of the clowns works well in this regard. I did feel the story meander a bit in the middle, but picked up again when that last sermon began. I certainly thought you have one of the more interesting home towns, and the fact that it boasts a clown college? Classic.
I like the use of clowns. Having people disappear with a lot of clowns around is a nice way to feed on people inherant fear of them! Favorite line: 'The county as a result has more clowns per capita than anywhere else.' Sounds like the mall by my house on a Christmas weekend.
Thanks for sharing!
I'm gonna jump on the clown bandwagon here. That was definitely my favorite aspect of the story. The folkiness of it was pretty cool and I liked your monster a lot. It was also nice that the stalking and murders took place in broad daylight. That doesn't happen often enough in horror stories. Good job!
The opening to this bugged me. The transitions between the various deaths seemed very abrupt and I found myself unable to visualize the various sequences of events that were going on. I couldn't really get a picture of the fair or of the old woman walking away. The mulch attack did actually work out pretty well though I would have liked a little more lead in on that. I guess the biggest component that I found missing is context. There's not really enough surrounding context to the death scene's or disappearances to get a feel for what was going on.
The scene in the church also bugged me. The pastor, appearing to be an innocent, getting possessed by something as nasty as your creature just didn't feel right. It might have made more sense if he were also someone it deemed guilty. As it was, him just collapsing after the whole thing, just really bothered me.
Still, it was cleanly written, which is a significant plus!
Thanks for your thoughts. I will keep all this in mind when reworking this, or in ay new stories for that mattaer. This was my first.