At least these did not give me a headache like yesterday's stories did. The best of this batch was Gordon's story.


Isolated
by Casey Gordon
www.fictionpress.com/read...id=1575521

The old, first person “let’s go sneak into the haunted mansion” story. The first thing that comes to mind is that the dialog is full of commonplaces, which means that it is going nowhere. Limit dialog to what is necessary and forget the rest. It detracts from the story. Much of it is also Joe Explainer. Furthermore it repeats what has already been said in the narrative.

"Where's Rick?" John shrugged as he layed down next to Chelsea and fell fast asleep. Well now, isn't this great?”

It’s ‘laid’ not ‘layed’, a good editor would have found this type of stuff. The story is rife with it.

The narrative is too unfocused and meandering. It needs to be tightened up before it willl work.

The ending did not work for me. The story did not add anything new to the sub-genre of haunted house stories.



Locker 13
By Sheldon S. Higdon
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp

Abused teen locked in a locker story.

The opening is clumsey, the wording awkward. Start with the locker.

Tommy comes his “blond mane”…. Tommy runs his hands through his hair….. Body language is important, but it doesn’t need to be repeated like this. Plus this isn’t at all original. I suggest the writer, who I’m guessing is young, should try some better stage direction for his characters. Stand up and move through the steps as they would. Imagine being them.

Also, Tommy is the only one we are seeing body language from. What are the rest of them doing?

Sammy held up his fists to his eyes and made fun of Charlie.
Tommy stood back.
Tommy walked away and Sammy and Billy followed like puppies.

This doesn’t work. Get more visual, find some stronger verbs and nouns and adjectives.

In an instant, Charles leaped through the air, his wings spread. He tackled Billy to the floor and with military precision wrapped his wings around the robust man. Billy tried to escape, but the strength of Charles was too much, and he was pulled into the darkness screaming.

The ending didn’t work for me. There was too much dialog and not enough solid description. Also, the morph into demon at the end didn’t come off as convincing. How did Charles do this? The pov switch in the middle of the story is not carried off well. Furthermore, while a novel using third person omniscent has a hope of pulling off pov switches (Jane Austin comes to mind, as does Frank Herbert), a short story can’t because of its shorter length. So the story feels violated.

The Flamer
Kyle Kucek
www.fictionpress.com/~infamouswriter
64.233.167.104/search?q=c...k%22&hl=en
kh-2.net/?x=fanfic
www.geocities.com/ominous63/

This one is reminiscent of another poorly written tale by the editor of this anthology, Piggy’s The Fandom Writer, and I admit that the quality of the writing is similar enough to Piggy’s that I thought he had written it under a pseudonym. But no, this is by a thirteen year old boy apparently.

It confused me at first because the protagonist, who is very unsympathetic and irredeemable, resembled Mr. Pacione so strongly that I wondered what it was doing in here.

The internal logic of the story is off.

“Few times I have ever been bashed because I do not have an email account nor any other program of communication with others. I only own a cell phone, and the number I keep safely hidden away from the Internet and any other media or computer.”

Then how is he managing to flame anyone?

“It’s only because writers despise us flamers just because we given them false opinions on their work.” Bad editing, missing words.

Taking into consideration the writer’s age, I will not go into the juvenile language aspect.

However, I found the ending trite. Evil flamer steals story (plagerism…. Why does Piggy and his acolytes think this is a hilarious accusation to make in a story?) and burns himself up.

It needed a real editor to bring the writer up to speed.



Some brief creds, a partial list

articles published in:
Movieline
Cinefantastique
Washington Post Book World
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Drive Guide
Black Belt
Martial Arts Weapons
Monsterland
Thrust: Science Fiction in Review
Science Fiction Review

Former MPAA Accredited Journalist.
Currently Active member, SFWA, HWA