Young Writers Society

Hey! Sky here for a review. Just have to say real quick that horror isn't my favorite so luckily I just woke up. These are all just suggestions by the way.

I'm going to go one by one:

1 - I think it is pretty good. It wasn't the scariest, but it definitely made my heart beat a little faster. The only thing I have to say is I feel like there is just a touch too much detail. There are like 7 different describing words and I feel like you don't need them all.

2 -

All she had was the energy to think before everything faded was-

His father checked everywhere for the monsters under the bed: In the closet, under the bed,

The business man ran into an elevator with a lot of purpose to get to the 13th floor.

Hi there, Kara. You mention you've changed up this piece quite a lot, so I'm here to take a look at it, although I don't know what it looked like before.

I kind of peeked at the old comments, and from what I gather you used to have much simpler sentences that fit the reddit tone and voice. It's hard to review the sentences here on YWS because it's such a different audience. Reddit would expect the simplicity so they can imagine the creepiness on their own. YWS is used to you writing the creepiness specifically. BUT it's really hard to get specificity into TWO sentences without it sounding awkward. So NOW what seems to have happened is that you've tried to fit too much information in your two sentences and it seems strange. But I see that you've turned at least one of these into an actual short story, so I feel that that's the original purpose of these -- a jumping off point for a full piece.

In that case, the first number that gave me a sense of chill and spookiness was number 6. It's so realistic and simple, but so plausible and creepy. It might almost be less creepy if it were extended into a full piece, though, because all of the fright is surrounded just by the fact that she doesn't know if she turned it off or not. Describing whether she has reason to worry or not would take away half the fun, I think! Haha.

Number 10 seems like it would be a good one for expansion. I don't quite understand the relationship between the two sentences, but I'm still intrigued, so I wonder what the whole story would look like.

I hope these thoughts were helpful to you! Lemme know if you have any questions/comments about this review by PMing me or leaving a reply.

Thanks for sharing, and let's bring Team Sans to victory!

Hannah

Ooh, flash fiction.

Hello Kara, it's outvaders here. I'm here for a brief review this nice Review Day. Let's get right into the beef.

Instead of getting straight to critiquing these little stories, I'd like to tell you two things that make horror stories successful, then relate it to your work.

The first thing that makes a horror story successful is the constant injection of fear and tension all throughout the story. If you look back to the best horror flicks of the past like The Shining, you'll notice that something always feels wrong. You can't define it, you can't see it, but it feels as if there's some hidden force watching you as you sleep. That paranoia haunts you as you watch the film; you feel as if something wrong is about to happen any moment now, and that is fuelled by the film's constant injection of fear into your heart.

Basically, you have to make the viewers feel paranoid by making them feel like there's something wrong. However in this short form of prose, you only have two sentences to do so. So from the first sentence in, you have to inject a great deal of fear and tension into the reader immediately.

The second story injects it right. " The last thing she saw..." These words implies death. They are very spooky in themselves, and it causes a great deal of intrigue and tension. On the flipside, the last story squandered this opportunity to inject fear into the reader. It opens with, "She listened to music as she jogged down the street." It's boring to say the least, and it could been more fearsome. It's a waste of half the sentence limit.

The second thing that makes horror stories successful is keeping its antagonists shrouded in mystery. Successful horror stories don't reveal everything about their monsters. Junji Ito never fully explained the enigma of Amigara Fault. Lovecraft didn't tell us what exactly the full extent of Cthulu's strengths and weaknesses. If they did so, then we would come to understand these monsters. If that happened, we wouldn't be as afraid of them because we're more familiar of them. It's the mysterious nature of these antagonists that makes us so afraid of them.

The fifth story just simply throws that out in its second sentence. It explicitly stated that "the elevator's cable had snapped two years ago and had never gotten fixed." That's a big fat no-no in horror writing. We already know the mystery, and thus we're not so afraid of it. Not only that, that "too bad" at the very beginning of the same sentence just makes it so comical.

Anyways, I hope you learned more about horror through this review. My advice for you is to read more of the genre, specifically those works of the legends like Poe, King, Lovecraft, Del Toro and Ito. That's it for my review today. Have a pleasant Review Day.

-outvaders

Hey, KaraStevens! Scythe here for a quick review

First of all, the intention of this work was supposed to be horror, now I don't know whether I just have no ability in me to be spooked or not, but I found myself smiling or laughing at these. Some seemed so ridiculous!

He walked into the elevator. Too late, he realized that the elevator's cable had snapped two years ago and had never gotten fixed.

She looked in the mirror. A man looked back out at her

Her mirror; it gleamed with the prospect of future encounters. If only it weren't for the rugged man who looked upon the mirror's owner in distaste.

She was absorbed in the book with her back turned from her doll collection. That's why she didn't see the doll turn its head and reach out to her with its porcelain arms.

I believe #7 was the scariest. XD These are all such good story starters!

Hey, clogs here for a review! my first in way too long

So I'm picking up a pattern from these things: The first sentence usually sets up a fairly normal scene, and then the second sentence totally subverts it and turns it into horror. Which is a good, definitely effective, format. I think you have the structure down very well, but these could use fine tuning on the details. So here are a few tips:

When you're working with such a small amount of text, you want each word to pack the maximum punch it possibly can, so don't waste breath on unnecessary details. For instance, with number seven, why bother mentioning the book if it's not relevant to the main idea of the story? Perhaps set a scene that's more directly relevant to the story, such as a child playing with dolls.

Also, you can spice up your language! Much of this is very dry and plain. For instance,

He walked into the elevator.

Hey Kara, I'm just dropping in for a short review though usually, whenever I say that it ends up being WAY too long. I don't know - were you looking for critiques? Ah, well. I'm here, anyway. (;

Some of these sentences were a little chilling and for your information, my favorite was number seven. Dolls have been giving me the creeps, lately. *shudders*
A person really can't give much of a review based off of two sentences. I've never actually read a story that consisted of just that so I'm assuming this was just for fun. But it is amazing how much someone can convey with just what you got here! Some of these, I noticed, you could totally just sit down and write a whole story about. (For example: #10 )

However, sentence number two wasn't as equally horrifying as the others. You say: The last thing she saw the the little girl standing near the window. Her last thought was, "I don't have a child." I'm sort of demanding some background info on this. If I saw a little girl or boy or child standing near my window, I would not think "I don't have a child." I would be freaked out, yes. But such a thought would not ever in a million years cross my mind. You seem to be pushing it a little with that one. Also, as a note: you smashed two "the's" in there. I'm pretty sure you meant "The last thing she saw was the..."

Aaaand... yep, that just about sums up my whole review for today. Hmmm, I did pretty good for saying it would be "short". I hope you found this helpful in some way and please do keep up your writing. Bye for now,
-TheKid

I think this is a really cool idea, and I think 4 is scariest.

I honestly cannot decide which one is the most scary. They all sent chills down my spine