Discussion of "Shadow Hills" by Josh9585

This was actually a short story I wrote for my cousin's class (college). She isn't the creative type, so I did the whole thing for her. I got the highest score in the entire class, made the other students hate her, and impressed the living crap out of her teacher. *sigh* It's too bad I'll never get any actual credit for it.

Similarities may be spotted between this story and Eternal Soul...that's because it ties into it as a sort of prequel. Anyway, I had to chop it into four different parts to get it to fit here. Enjoy!

Using both forbidding and foreboding in the first paragraph slightly over-does it. There's a lot of foreshadowing and build-up - I think you could actually drum up a little more suspense by withholding some of the foreshadowing and by developing the scene more. The final paragraph feels too rushed and might do better as the start of the next chapter.
In all, I do like the story. Your words are chosen as careful as an artist deciding on colors. Minor edits would make this go from really good to great, imho.

I didn't even realize I used those two words in the same paragraph?! lmao! I'll go back and reedit that little oopsie there.

About the rushing part, I tried my best to condense the whole history I put together as much as possible. My cousin never said there was a page limit, but I didn't wanna make it too long. Which proved futile anyway because my story was the longest in the class by ten pages! lol. But I guess I can go back now and put back in what I originally took out.

Yes, PLEASE put it back in! I really liked the way it built up in the begining, and bet that you could have done the same with the ending paragraph. It has all the classic chiller, with the great twist of her thinking it was all a hoax. I liked the tempurpedic beds bit. :)

Holy crap! I'm featured! How did THAT happen?! Seriously!

Should I leave the story alone, though? Could adding more make it worse? This is awesome!!!

Sorry...I wasn't trying to gloat...I'm just super stoked...^_^;

Anyway, I'm reworking the original document as we speak and I'll probably repost it as if it were a new story. Not because I wanna double post, but it would just be easier to redo the whole thing and repost the entire improved version in five sections (because it'll probably be THAT much longer).

I'm glad you liked the tempur-pedic joke, shadinah. As much as I was trying to write something scary and creepy, I just can't write anything without some of my humor in it. There was another part I removed about TJ commenting on a flat-panel TV and a Blu-Ray player being in his room in part 2, but I felt it would've killed the joke.

To be honest, I really have no idea how I managed to make this story so...good. I mean, if you compare this to Eternal Soul it's vastly different. I wish I could recall the mindset I was in back then and force it on the things I'm doing now. Then again, the first Eternal Soul was finished like a year ago and I've grown a lot as writer since then.

Okay...I'm babbling now. My deepest and sincerest thanks to whoever decided to feature the start of my short story and I'll do my best to keep writing material equal to or better than this.

lol - great feeling, isn't it! So, I hate to do this, but check out the forums - the announcements/feedback/questions - then the "wow - I got featured" forum. Tells about how a chapter is picked. ;)