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Slaughterhouse
How It Rates
Description
Lee has a story to tell the new guy, William. William doesn't take the old man seriously since he's already admitted to being evaluated for psychiatric problems. Is what Lee says he saw the truth or just a crazy old story from a crazy old man?
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Comments
Hey - fun read. You do a very good job with your descriptive language and the final pages are fun & fast reads. I could envision the whole thing going down. I also like how you have a bad name (the sucker) but it's Lee's name and he admits it's a bad name but "it works." Funny.
Just a couple of criticisms - the opening dialogue is fine, but it goes on for a few pages without a break. Inject a little setting in here, introduce us to William, maybe describe the wrinkles on his forehead as he's not buying Lee's story, things like that. Get us in that scene in the security room a little quicker.
Give the janitor a name, maybe even a little personatily. Maybe he stops by the security room while Lee is starting to tell William the story and he rolls his eyes at the story. I dunno, maybe just a little something so there's a connection when the sucker gets to him.
Thanks for sharing!
This is so much fun, Wes! If the goal here is to have fun, you've done it--you seem to be having fun with it and we readers are sure having fun.
The characters are really vivid, and so is the gore. I love the setting. It feels completely real, so that makes the Sucker real to me, too. All the little physical details about both main characters are spot on. I can visualize the slaughterhouse perfectly, and the dialogue sounds completely real too. This has got to be the secret to writing horror: to make it so real that the one unreal thing in it becomes real, too.
Wes, this was genuinely scary! The thought of being sucked into pipes can give me nightmares, and you have great detail to help visualize what it's like. I think the dialogue is also very strong, and effective building of suspense. I agree with Jane, it sounds very real!
Thanks, now I'm afraid of my unfinished basement with its 8" drain.
Great tone, and I like how it starts with Lee's curmudgeonly rant. The action is gushy and I actually made faces while reading the last few pages.
Great work. And thanks for making showers challenging. You drop us into the middle of this, and yeah, the dialogue is long on the front end but I think it works. It felt like a campfire ghost story. I do like the idea of fleshing out the janitor a little bit, but I think that's a minor criticism if a criticisim at all. Great setting, great dialogue, great tone, and it's actually frightening (as opposed to disturbing or gross or whatever) which is the point. And, last but not least, you came up with a truly original monster. Really good stuff.
Yeah, Wes, it has taken me MY WHOLE LIFE, practically, to get over "Psycho" and be ok with showers again, but now . . .
Thanks everyone for the feedback, I appreciate it. I hope you're all still showering or at the very least hosing off in the backyard. :)
I'm thinking about the janitor and debating with myself (which is great and somewhat entertaining). I don't think anything will change for "Scare Us" but I'm sure I'll play with some of the things bouncing around the noggin.
Thanks again for reading!
Slaughterhouse is a great story. I really appreciated the detail in Lee's character revealed through dialogue. The character descriptions are worked into the story very cleverly. All in all there's not much I would change, maybe some minor tweaks on the description of the building but a very well done story.
Yes! Iv'e read about thirty entry's now and i've been waiting for this kind of Gore. Vivid. You did a great job with Lee's dialect. I think i knew lee when i worked in comercial plumning. Coincidence? lol. I had a tiny problem with the line about spitting out the tobacco flake. Most Cammel's have filters. Not sure if he was smoking a Camel Non-filter. If so mention that. Otherwise i'm not sure how the tobacco got ino his mouth. At first i thought he might be smoking and dipping at the same time. Sorry That was real Nit picky. But over all, the story was great. I knew the slaughter house, could see the monster, and could feel the bone-crunching pain.
--Jonathan--
Really fun read. The back and forth dialogue felt very organic and the gore was super fun and gross, like it's supposed to be. Really liked this a lot.
The opening was pretty decent and hooked me into the story right away. Then I read about the two security guards attempting to kill the thing with Tasers. That really didn't make sense too me. Tasers are meant to be a non-lethal weapon. Though it might, remotely be possible to kill something with one, I'd really want something more potent than that to attach an unknown violent creature. Heck, there's no guarantee that a Taser would have any effect at all. I did initially find myself confused about who was the old timer and who was the new guy. That was probably me missing something in the middle, but I do think it could be a little clearer.
Okay, the “Sucker.” I like it, already.
The first-person narrative on the first two pages is very fluid and natural. Honestly, I think you could probably due without the phonetic spelling (most of it, anyway). The syntax is very carefully put together; it reads as though you have an ear for this kind of speech rhythm, and it would sound just as authentic without the phonetic spelling, if not moreso.
“Carl, he was a big boy, he could step on a penny and flatten it out like the one’s you put on the train tracks.” Very vivid; an original description, if I’ve ever read one.
“You know that little fuckin’ thing the dentist puts in your mouth to slurp your spit up? If you’ve ever closed your mouth around that then you know what Carl’s face looked like.” Again, very vivid. Lee’s voice is great.
“William watches the thin old man lean back on two legs of his chair and exhale a plume of cigarette smoke from his unfiltered Camel, “bullshit.””
The syntax is a little off with this one. I gather that William is saying “bullshit” to Carl’s story, and it’s a good action tag to use but, the way it’s written—“bullshit” after the comma at the very end—makes it sound like a brand of cigarette. A Camel Bullshit instead of a Camel Light or Camel Red. Not sure if it seemed that way to any of your other readers, but it made me chuckle and broke the spell of the story, for just a moment.
Once both William and Lee start talking, interacting with each other, I get lost in the exchange pretty quickly. And by “lost” I mean drawn into it. It’s a very natural back-and-forth, akin to Jules and Vincent at the opening of “Pulp Fiction.” I’m not really concerned about what’s happening or where the story’s going, as I’m lost in the banter between these two. Well done. I especially like how Lee perceives the pipe to be some sort of sentient monster, when it could just be a case of malfunctioning equipment. You leave just enough information out for the reader to be walking the tightrope between both scenarios… until it attacks Lee.
Really dug this one. Nice work.
Mr. Clevenger,
Thank you for the feedback and I am glad you enjoyed the characters.
After you pointed it out, my entire family got a laugh out of my mistake of putting "bullshit" after the action tag and making it sound like a brand of cigarettes. It's a glaring mistake now that it's been pointed out, but there are so many times I read over the line and never realized anything was wrong.
Thanks again. Looking forward to your next book.
Wes