Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Mystery/ Suspense Mature content

This is topic Mystery/ Suspense Mature content in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Drock0211 (Member # 9459) on :

I'm working on my grabbing and hooking the reader...hehe
Also, trying to get a better grip on telling vs. showing and passive vs active. So....give me all ya got.

Thanks.

She wanted him to suffer. She made sure his ankles were bound tight enough by the rope to start severing the skin. She smiled as she watched the blood drip from his flesh. He looked like one of those balloon animals crafted at parties by happy clowns in stupid, floppy shoes and big red noses. She hated clowns, possibly more than she hated the useless sack of flesh laying before her now. Chuckling to herself, she turned to grab the meat hook which she securely fastened to the ropes holding his ankles. Her lip raised into a slight sneer at one corner of her mouth as she slowly raised his pathetic body off the floor. Like a side of beef, he hung naked and horrified, swaying as his hair swept the floor. His wrists had been securely fastened by duct tape to his neck. With a raise of an eyebrow and a sly grin, she reached for the

Posted by Raker (Member # 9449) on :

Wow, I'd have to say that I was immediately hooked. I am instantly asking myself what this man could have done to her that would cause her to be so inhumanly cruel. I am also wondering how this woman was able to overpower this man and get him into such a position.

The only place where I think it is a little weak is where you mention clowns. What about him makes him look like a balloon animal? The fact that he's tied up? I can kind of see that, but the part about clowns seems a little beside the point. I also don't think it's necessary to say how much she hates the man, since that's pretty obvious already.

Good job!

[This message has been edited by Raker (edited March 24, 2011).]

Posted by snapper (Member # 7299) on :

Not hooked like our friend Raker was.

I counted 25 pronouns in this 13 lines, and not one name. If you don't want to share the protagnoists name, why not the victim? You could easily cut some of those pronouns out by trimming your prose. For example...

quote:
She made sure his ankles were bound tight enough by the rope to start severing the skin.

could be reworded to...

His ankles were bound tight so the rope would slice into the skin.

Too many qualifiers is slowing this down. Things like...

quote:
Chuckling to herself

could be just simply...

Chuckling,

Brevity my friend! Try to say the same thing with less words.

Hope this helps!

Posted by muranternet (Member # 9465) on :

There's a lot of good visceral stuff here, but it reads like an anger dump. Is she raging or methodically cruel? She's doing things that imply a lot of setup, so I'd think the latter. However I don't know her motive, so it may be the former.

She wanted him to suffer. There's enough relishing in the rest to make this point. If the line is important, maybe make it its own paragraph?

The balloon/clown thing in the middle of this does seem a little incongruous. Is the protagonist scattered, jumping from thought to thought? (Hard to tell in 13 lines.) Maybe in this descriptor you start by watching limbs swell when the venous blood flow is cut off, and then it makes her think of a balloon animal, and then she remembers she hates clowns and turns up the cruel-o-meter. Also, you might have to resolve the blood dripping part that preceded it, as the swelling thing implies that the blood is pooling where it is (yes I know both can happen at once but I have to think about it instead of flowing in the narrative). Something like, Blood escaped in droplets, staining her nice new rope, and she hated him for that, but far more stayed where it was, swelling...

naked and horrified, swaying as his hair swept the floor. "Horrified" is a state of mind. Is this piece in third person limited? Maybe something like naked and swaying, hair brushing the floor, eyes wide.

Anyway this is nitpicky. It's a good setup.

Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :

I often thought of adding torture scenes. Not because I would enjoy them but because they are intense (if done right). But I'm not sure how readers react to such scenes. Would an editor reject the story just because of one gruesome scene?

Posted by Drock0211 (Member # 9459) on :

This came from a conversation with someone about digging down and getting dark. I think I said something like, "I'll show you dark" and came up with this scene and typed as it came to mind. After I sat back and looked at it, I thought it would make for a good serial killer story with a female killer. I'm not exactly sure about her motivation. I don't want to get too cliche about that.

The clown thing worked better in my head than it does (as it stands) on paper. It's as Muranternet described--the ankles are cinched so tight that the feet are swollen and when she suspends him, the blood that did wind up oozing out of the cinch wound winds up dripping down (or up?) his leg. The swelling reminds her of clown feet, etc.

Thank you, Snapper. I'll take a look over it again and see how I can tighten this up a bit. I should have mentioned this was off the cuff, but I do want to hear what mistakes you see in order to fix things.

I doubt an editor would reject something because of one scene IF it is relevant to the rest of the story.

And, yes, this is an anger dump of sorts and I thought this would be a good kick for a prologue to get things started. I wanted anonymity for the sake of mystery and a blind set-up. Then, I'll be starting chapter one with the actual story and the reader will be wondering which of the characters is the killer.
Maybe this is not the way to go, I don't know.

Thank you, all, for the help. I do appreciate it.