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erricknunnally's picture

The Ghosts of Franklin Park

By erricknunnally in Scare Us

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Description

Animal Control has never had to deal with anything like this on the streets of Boston. Nothing like this should have ever survived, let alone thrive. The police are too slow to realize that a criminal's passion for fighting dogs is the catalyst for unwittingly unleashing something that will change the city forever.

Comments

Jane Wiseman's picture
Jane Wiseman from living outside of Albuquerque/in Minneapolis is reading Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks July 14, 2012 - 12:20pm

I really like this story. The characters are interesting and so is the language. I love "gibbering vowels" and the "chortling" cell phone. The monsters are fun, too, and I like how you keep the gore pretty much offstage for a couple of deaths, warming us up for the really gory parts later. In general, I think you build suspense very well.

GaryP's picture
GaryP from Denver is reading a bit of this and that July 15, 2012 - 7:09am

I enjoyed the story quite a bit. The writing reads as an early draft (some POV problems and you need to tidy up some stuff), but the story is fairly strong. The ending comes abruptly and needs better closure (again, I assume because it's an early draft that isn't completely fleshed out yet).

Pros: 

Characters were realistic. Dialogue was good. Action was good. The idea is cool. The story pulled me right along.

Cons:

Need to tighten some text and watch out for POV shifts mid-scene. Story feels incomplete and needs to be fleshed out.

I'll do an LBL (line-by-line) edit if you can get me a Word or RTF version. PM me if you're interested. 

erricknunnally's picture
erricknunnally July 15, 2012 - 10:02am

Sure, thanks for the comments. I get what you're saying, I've been running up against the "less than 4,000 words" limitation and it's caused me a lot of pain.

If you're feeling the oats, how can I get an editable version to you? I don't want to publicly post up the joint with versions of my story. Oh, wait, there's a file attachment function at the bottom. Duh...

_e

GaryP's picture
GaryP from Denver is reading a bit of this and that July 20, 2012 - 8:31am

Sorry for the delay. Here's the LBL. I think you can expand this by quite a bit (obviously not for this contest) or you can make a shorter story out of it by focusing on just one character. I put my thoughts on this at the end of the LBL.