Talmonis posted:

I'm working on a horror short story set in Detroit. This is my first actual writing in many years, so I don't expect it to be very good. Let me know if I should keep going:

Sarah Kester's day was turning out to be an object [You mean abject, right?] lesson in misery. It started off with her waking up unable to breathe through her nose, a hardened crust of mucus trailing to her ear. [This detail, while gross, means nothing. It doesn't tell me anything about her or, really, not even why her day was starting off badly. It's just fluff.] A note by the bedstand ["by the bedstand or ON the bedstand?] informed her that it was (as her boyfriend James put it) "Time to start looking for a job."[This sentence is super stilted and lovely. So is the next one.] Something by the way, that she is perfectly aware of, as she already has a 9am interview.

Sarah Kester woke up sick, groggy. A bright yellow square scrawled with thick black writing was on her bedstand. "Time to start looking for a job. -J" No poo poo, James. She had moved in with James only a week before, had moved to Detroit only a month before that, and the city was not exactly teeming with opportunity. She did have an interview today, though. So save it, James.

Now, I clearly got very editorial here with your character. Maybe they don't live together. Maybe James is a saint. But what I am trying to do is illuminate that you can build character here while also giving out the boring little details like "she was sick" and "she woke up". That poo poo honestly doesn't matter. Who she is, who is he is, where they are. That does.

Well...had an interview. The godawful directions given to her by the receptionist at Magnanimous Marketing Solutions, LLC neglected to mention whether it was North or South Tacoma Avenue she was heading to, resulting in the cabby dropping her off well shy of her destination. By the time she realized the mistake, the bastard had driven off already. Bleary eyed, stuffy nosed and cold in the October morning, she looked up and down the crumbling street she'd been delivered to in search of MMS's office, to no avail. The looming tower she thought was MMS’s office was actually an abandoned apartment building, judging by the rusted sign reading “Valley View Heights”. The strip mall she stood before had exactly one business in operation; A pawn shop called "Gold'E'Locks Gold Exchange," with a fearsome looking storefront. Bars over the blue and gold painted windowpane, and the excited depiction of the words: "Guns!, Guns!, Guns!," why do you have a comma after the exclamation point were not terribly reassuring. The remaining storefronts were the cold brick of late 70's architecture. Their wide display windows and doorways boarded over with the rain and snow soaked particleboards of the last decade, warped further by intricate graffiti tags. this whole paragraph was past tense

Fearing she'd miss the interview, she jams her hand into the pocket of her slacks to retrieve her smartphone. A quick glance at the cherished yellow and black display of Felix the cat is all she needs to see that she has no signal...and that her time is running short.and from here on out, it's all present tense

"Fuuuck," she groans, turning annoyed to the window of Gold'E'Locks. still present ...

Peering through the grime encrusted window, she can see an obese, middle aged man scowling at her with drooping, baggy eyes from behind a bulletproof glass kiosk. Sighing, she pulls open the heavy door to a reeking, garlic filled blast of heated air.

Smiling, she says; not a semicolon, just a comma “Hi, can I use your-“

“No. No phone, no bathroom. Company policy,” he grunts, wiping sweat from his comb-over with a balled up shirt. “You wanna buy somethin’, you let me know.”

“Please? It’s kind of an emergency, and I’m not getting any bars on my phone. It would only take a second.”

“Nope, sorry lady. Gotta follow policy or I get shitcanned,” he shrugs as he points a nicotine stained finger at a looming security camera.

“poo poo,” she curses under her breath. “Fine. Thanks,” she turns on her heel and swiftly exits the foul smelling shop.

Back outside, the frigid wind hits her immediately as she turns in the direction of downtown and starts to walk, already dreading the long, cold trip home.