Opinions PLEASE!!!! (1 Viewer)

[Wolverine]

this is my general idea of my crime/horror story please give me honest feedback...

My story starts of conventional 5 teenagers on a rock swinging off a rope into the water. under the water there are spikes. first guy goes off impales himself through the leg but head remains above the water.. the next two guys see him struggling and jump off at his aid and die.. the other two girls start screaming because of all the blood when someone comes out from behind them and pushes them off the edge... thats how it starts
then i want the story to go back in time a few days earlier or a week earlier and tell the story up to that point with random depressing flash backs throughout the story... in the end im going to start talking to the reader asking why they have to know who the killer is? what about reading this story is so thrilling? and in the end ultimatly not tell the reader who it is and leave them hanging to try and figure it out for themselves.....


what do you think please honest opinions!!!!

 

[monique66]

sounds good but how are you going to ask the audience what they think? Like what kind of techniqes are you going to use? Is your story self-reflexive? If so, then who are your audience?

 

[steffo]

i like the whole talking to the reader idea. if you can pull it off without sounding cheesy i think it could be cool.
but how is having a spike in the water a killer? i don't get that. it seems pretty horrific- which is cool. it's always good to be scared when you're reading.
it seems like an alright idea, but whether it is able to be pulled off. give it a go i'd say. maybe try writing the last bit first?? i dunno.
the flashbacks thing seems a bit cliched, but cliched isnt always that bad, not necessarilly original, but can be entertaining. not sure whether it would seem a bit cluttered and daunting having so many techniques, i.e. the flashbacks THEN this really whack thing about talking to the reader. do u get me?

 

[tez0r]

i think leaving the reader hanging is rather obscure, although if you explain it well, you can pull it off very nicely.

 

[Wolverine]

i dunno how im gunna just change it all and start talking to the reader thats the main part i need opinions and ideas on... got any??

 

[Wolverine]

having the spikes in the water isnt the killer... the spikes are put there by the killer and the killer lures the teenagers to go to that certain spot, the killer is the guy that comes out behind the 2 chicks and pushes them off the edge...

while im asking anyone got any good names for my characters im absolutely stuck!!!

 

[PerfectByNature]

Um... how come they cant see the spikes? how far under the water are they? how did the first guy jump in if only his leg got impaled? how come his head remained above the water? why didnt he call out to his friends and tell them it wasn't safe to get in the water?
sorry if this sounds a bit like a bombardment but i really want to know and these are the things you have to think about.

 

[Abbeygale]

Also sorry if this seems like a bombardment, but-
How did the killer get the spikes into the water in the first place? To jump safely off a rock you need a good ten feet of water, so they would need to be fairly long, and they'd need to be fairly well grounded to impale the boys.

I'm not sure about the ending idea. It could work well as a commentary on the genre, particularly with the idea of directly addressing the audience. Or it could end up seeming like a cop out. In my experience, writing gruesome death scenes and coming up with motives is fairly easy- deciding which character did it and laying out clues is hard. If you don't say who did it, it could end up seeming like even you don't know who the killer is, and you're trying to skip the tricky bit. But this opinion may stem from the fact that that episode of SUV that didn't have a resolution really pissed me off.

 

[Meldrum]

Hmmmm, sounds a lot like Goosebumps to me.

 

[OutOfOrder]

i'd read it.
But yeah, most horror stories don't make sense anyway! Well, movies.
I guess stories are kinda different...

I like the ideas, if you can pull it off the way your plannin to it will be awesome
go talk to fisher during lunch or something, she'd be more than happy to help ya

 

[Kerren]

Love the kinda post-modern thing ur thinking about for the ending. Imho i think it could be cool if u had the kids jumping on the spikes but then a flashback to deal with why the spikes are in the water; i reckon that's the really interesting bit.