The Walk

Initial Thoughts:

This story took a hard turn into left-field.

Mechanical Issues:

This is a very short story so I cannot see any reason why you wouldn’t proofread this out-loud to catch the multitude of errors in it.

+”It was a late night[;] I was walking to my [girlfriend’s] house.”

— (You’re comma splicing here. These are two independent clauses. This means they have a ‘subject’ and ‘verb’ and the sentences can stand alone. You typically link two independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction (ex: and, but) else you use a semi-colon not a comma. With the word ‘girlfriend’ you need an apostrophe with an ‘s’ because its possessive — it’s HER house.)

+”I’m at my [girlfriend’s] house, standing in front of the driveway[,] and I see a black [car] parked.”

–(I think you meant ‘car’ here — again, proofreading would have caught an easy error like this)

“I sneak around to the back[;] I look through the sliding glass door. I see [two] men or women standing there with gas [masks] on with guns searching the house.

— (With numbers 1-10, you write the number out. Anything above that, then you use the actual number. Also the word ‘make’, I assume, is supposed to be ‘mask’.)

I think you get the point and I’m not going to go through your entire story. It’s very short and shouldn’t take no more than ten minutes. This is an easy fix but can really shape the outlook people have on your story; it’s distracting, and with a short story like yours, it comes off as lazy.

Plot:

Point #1: The plot is very bland and basic. First off, it’s safe to assume the characters (main and the girlfriend) are probably young, considering she still lives with her parents. Obviously, there can be an exception to this rule, but for the most part when someone is living with their parents, it’s because they cannot support themselves and often are too young to do so. Why do I bring this up?

Well the first sentence states “it’s a late night” and the protagonist’s girlfriend’s parents just pulled up. If they are young, then I can’t see any parent allowing their daughter’s “significant other” to come over “late at night”, especially if they are home. We know what teens typically do if left alone in the “late evening”. Now, it is possible it’s a Saturday with a movie night or something, but nothing is given to us, the reader, to indicate that.

Why do I bring that up? It goes back to my first thoughts on the plot: bland and basic. You don’t tell us anything aside from the main character walking. Why is he going to see his girlfriend? Give us some details to get us up-to-speed. Don’t give us this LONG exposition piece, but at LEAST give us the essentials, so we can put together what to expect at the end of this walk.

Point #2: The main part of the story is supposed to be an eerie feeling that the protagonist is being followed at night, something most people can relate to. However, you don’t do a good job selling this. Where’s the uneasiness the character feels? The shadows in the corner of the eye? That escalation of skin-crawling paranoia? You could’ve used the phone conversation with his girlfriend as an easy ploy to convey that. And don’t just SAY he texted her, SHOW us the back and forth conversation. It puts us in his shoes. You do a lot telling with little to no showing. Convey the feelings of panic to set the tone. Put us in his shoes!

Point #3: The story’s ending was so unexpected and not in a good way. It was never hinted to even head in this direction. Why did his girlfriend kidnap him? Did she seem like the type that would do that leading up to this point? If he’s going to her house in the evening, it’s clear they’ve been dating for some time. Where did the men with guns go? Or rather what was the point of even introducing them? I thought his girlfriend was on the verge of getting robbed or worse. Then out of nowhere you introduce the “tall creatures” with no description as to what they look like aside from their height, so we, the reader are clueless.

There’s no tension setup for it. There’s no indication what the character is feeling. We don’t know if he’s tied up or even in the house anymore. There’s so many questions left unanswered because the setup was all over the place. The story doesn’t know if it wants to be “a stalking story”, or “a robbery story”, or “alien abduction story”. It’s sloppy and lacks any kind of structure.

Closing Thoughts:

Overall, this story needs to proofread out loud so you can catch your mistakes. It looks you wrote it one sitting and then posted it without re-reading. Had you used Microsoft Word’s spell check or the free online spellcheck(.)net, you could’ve caught most of those errors.

The story is very bland and is more like an outline talking about events it wants to touch upon, rather than fleshing out a complete story. It also suffers from the lack any form of structure, jumping around different topics, as if you weren’t sure which idea to execute and decided to include them all. You don’t describe anything or go into detail at any point — you skim through every potential creepy moment with a few sentences, which defeats the purpose of the story.

I recommend you practice developing your scenes. You can do this easily by picking up a book and reading. Study from the horror masters and see how they’re able to craft such nail-biting scenes. Then practice it yourself to hone your skill then… practice some more. Writing isn’t a quick-type-then-immediately-post skill. It takes time and effort, and without it, it WILL show.

I want you to come back from this. I’m not bashing the story to belittle you, no, I’m pointing out the issues so you can learn from them. If nobody says anything, then you wouldn’t know any different. Those who want to help you won’t lie to you.

I wish you the best in your future stories.