Young Writers Society

The Last Halloween at Desolate Creek
Chapter 1
Revision 1


The gruesome stench lingered for days, turning even the strongest of stomachs. Very few words can even begin to describe it. A thick cloud of flies accompanied the odor. When putting two and two together, one can imagine only two things, death and decay.

“John, when are you gonna throw that thing out?” asked my Mom, “ It reeks! I told you it was too early to carve it!” she added, looking down at the rotten remains of the family pumpkin. She was right.. as usual. It was only October 20, and the pumpkin was a moldy pile of brown and orange mush.

Ever since I could remember I was always excited about Halloween. I would have the decorations up before the stores even sold costumes! I love everything about it, from the candy, costumes, decorations, to the haunted hay rides and parties. So it wasn't unlike me to, in the midst of anticipation, carve the pumpkin the first week of October.

Needless to say I'm a kid at heart, the only thing thats changed about me is my size. I'm still that 3 foot, 6 year old tyke hauling the decorations across the lawn. Only now I'm almost 6 ft. and going on 16..

I trashed what was left of the pumpkin, and walked to the corner of the street to wait for my friends.

As usual, Alex was the first one to turn the corner. He was a little on the heavy side, with short, faded brown hair, blue eyes, and his trademark crooked glasses.

“Hey white bread!” He chuckled.

“Whats up smush!” I replied, “Listen we gotta go buy a pumpkin from somewhere, the other one started to rot.. 2 weeks ago..”

“Patience is a virtue” he reminded me. “Where's Joe?”

“I'll give him a call” I assured him.

After a few rings, a raspy congested voice answered the phone, “Hello?”

“Joe, you coming today?” I asked

”Can't I've got a sinus infection.. again” Joe complained.




“Damn it. Feel better Joe” I said, glancing over to Alex to find a look of disappointment.

“*sniffle* thanks..”.

I hung up and started down the street. Alex followed behind scrolling through his iPod.

“Which farm you wanna' to go to white bread?” Alex asked.

“I was thinking Desolate Creek Acreage” I replied.

“John, didn't that burn down in 2003?” he continued.

“Well, the house did, I remember that, it was horrible, you could see the smoke from miles away. And, almost everyone living there died. The oldest son survived though, I heard he got burned, bad, but he still manages the field every autumn.” I told Alex.


We cut through the woods, it was like a graveyard for dead and leaves. Maneuvering around the natural debris was a challenge alone, and inevitably we lost our sense of direction.

“I think we're lost” I confessed.

A concerned look of agreement was all I got back from Alex. Although aware of the time, I couldn't shake the feeling of darkness creeping up on us early, its a helpless feeling.

Almost instinctively, like Soldiers on deployment day, the hair on my neck stood tall.

My gut was pleading I turn around.. but we continued..

Hey there! Welcome to YWS! I guess I'm the first one to review your story; but before I do that, I would just like to remind you of the 3:1 ratio we have. Please make sure to review at least three other works before posting one of your own. This is so that everyone gets their work reviewed, and it also makes people more likely to review your work.

Anyways, on with the review!

OK. First I'd just like to say that I absolutely love Halloween stories, and this one has a lot of potential to be a great one! There are just a few things you need to fix up with it.

Throughout the chapter, I was quite distracted by the fact that your format isn't the greatest, mostly with the dialogue. Remember that you have to make a new paragraph every time the time, subject or person speaking changes. For example, which one of these do you think works better?

This:

A raspy congested voice answered the phone, “Hello?” “Joe, you coming today?” I asked ”Can't I've got a sinus infection.. again” Joe complained. “Damn it. Feel better Joe” I said, glancing over to Alex to find a look of disappointment. “*sniffle* thanks..”. I hung up and started down the street. Alex followed behind scrolling through his iPod.

Or this:

A raspy congested voice answered the phone, “Hello?”

“Joe, you coming today?” I asked

”Can't I've got a sinus infection.. again” Joe complained.

“Damn it. Feel better Joe” I said, glancing over to Alex to find a look of disappointment.

“*sniffle* thanks..”. I hung up and started down the street. Alex followed behind scrolling through his iPod.

Most people will probably like the second one better, because it flows a lot better than the first. This also helps your story appear longer, and everyone knows that people love long stories!

Anyways, another thing I noticed was that this really seems like a very first draft; rough and unpolished. Now, while first drafts are always extremely important, make sure you go through your story for grammar mistakes that are easily picked up, so that we as reviewers can focus on the bigger picture rather than be distracted by all the mistakes. Just maybe go through your piece, fix the paragraphs and grammar/punctuation problems. They're pretty easy to spot, and I'm a bit tired, so I won't point them all out for you right now.

All in all, this is a good start to your story. I really love the description of your characters - though it's not really necessary to point out absolutely every detail - and at the end, of how he feels walking through the woods. I can't wait to read another chapter, but just remember to review enough so that more people will want to review yours, and everyone will have their work reviewed!

Again, welcome to YWS, and I hope to see you around sometime! *givesstar*

~ Trish

I agree with the writingcat. Start a new paragraph everytime a new person speaks. You kind of got away with it in this piece but don't make a habit of it. This story stands up by itself but I am interested to see future chapters. Regarding the character descriptions and the opening paragrah, give the reader something and let them take the rest, don't force it all down their throats. You use too much description and you don't let the reader fil the blanks.

The smell was almost impossible to describe

Yet you describe it quite easily. Perhaps lead with this than say
"It was like a..." make it appear as though the narrator is struggling to describe it or don't say its almost impossible to describe.

You give too much weight to the first character description,entwine it, embed, bury it deep into dialogue so we as the reader don't realise you snuck the image of Alex into our head. You don't need to say he always begins with a joke then on the next line have him begin with a joke, it's excessive.

Use varying sentance lengths at the end to build the tension, put one or two short sentances in succesion to quicken the pace.

one more things, a graveyard is for dead things. So when you say its a graveyard for dead trees its tautology, you need only say its a graveyard for trees or perhaps even rotting trees.

Anyway thats all from me alot of potential in this story and despite the number of flaws this story had me sucked in well done, repair the flaws and repost, I will be interested to see the result!
JP

Thanks for the advice guys, this was a "sloppy copy", i was hoping to get some good criticism and I did!

I did my best to revise everything, I probably missed a lot of grammatical errors, however. (Grammer is not my strong point)




P.S. I posted 3 reviews, but only 1 shows up on my profile so ill get reading again!

Just two things: firstly in the first paragraph you said rite instead of right and secondly I think you should build up more suspense at the end of the passage.
Good Luck!