J.T.'s Green Pen: Response to "Gothic Short Story"

I like that the teenage author of this story is willing to be bold. Some high school students really take to this kind of storytelling, others don't. Also, we often create conditions in our classrooms that discourage students from taking risks in their writing. This author -- I'll give him the (sometimes) narrator's name, Jeremy -- is willing to take risks and be creative, and for that alone he deserves credit and praise.

As a reader, I like that he wants to tell a scary story. While I don't believe in ghosts, I can nevertheless get the creeps as easy as the next guy or gal. He uses a famous local setting (Sunland Hospital) to tell his tale -- a real place with a reputation for being haunted. In so doing, he mixes his fiction with reality, reminding us that the distinctions between these two terms are blurry at best. Jeremy gives us dream sequences, strange and creepy characters (like the heavy set lady who says "Never say never"), and a supporting cast of annoying friends and siblings who we look forward to seeing ripped to shreds by menacing, invisible, otherworldly entities. Sadly, Jeremy deprives us of this satisfaction, using one of the oldest cheap tricks in the proverbial book of fiction no-no's -- it was all just a bad dream.

Were I to conference with Jeremy over his story, I would first encourage him to rewrite the ending of the story, thus amending his egregious transgression. First rule in fiction writing: no cheap tricks. The it was all just a dream trick worked maybe once or twice in history and never since. So, as far as content is concerned, that would be my first suggestion. Next, I would encourage him to give us a little more background on the characters and the old hospital before he starts swooshing characters up into the sky and into asbestos-packed hospital ward ceilings. A little more set-up would help readers to get into the story.

The text has several other problems with issues like narrative voice (perspective) and surface-level conventions. I wouldn't want to overwhelm Jeremy by hitting him with everything at once, so in my initial conference I would focus on just a few things. On page three of his story, he completely switches perspective, going from third-person to first-person narration. He needs to make a decision here and stick with it. Changing the narrative voice mid-paragraph just isn't working. Next, I would probably teach him how to set dialogue up on the page, starting a new paragraph when a different character begins speaking or doing something.

If Jeremy were a sensitive young man not confident with writing, I might stop here in terms of making recommendations in my writing conference with him. I've given him four things to work on, so if I'm worried that he might get discouraged, then I'd stop there. If, however, Jeremy is one of those students who can't get enough feedback, and he's confident in his creative abilities, then I might also mention that characters usually don't speak of themselves in the third-person unless they are cute little muppets named Elmo. On page one, "Lisa exclaimed, 'she wouldn't ever be caught in that haunted hospital.' " Let's make "she" into "i" and then capitalize it -- "I." On page two, Jeremy writes that "As David spotted the light he encouraged them to slowly sprint towards the building." A "sprint" by definition is not slow. Jeremy might want to rephrase that one. I might also take this opportunity to mention that "y'all" works a little better as the Southern version of "you-plural" than "you alls," which is annoying as hell.

Stuff like that. But again, the main thing would be to give him a few things to work on following this first draft (God, I hope it was a first draft!) -- mostly about content and shaping his story for an audience. Then on subsequent drafts I can begin to zero in on the surface errors.

That's how I respond to the "Gothic Short Story."

This concludes this transmission.