RE: ADSactly Short Story - Hell Next Door
After reading this piece, I thought it was interesting on many different levels.
First of all, I didn’t understand how the orphanage did allow Cooks to become Rosalie’s foster parents as prior to granting a couple parenting right they have to go through a grueling investigation that assesses their income, their moral standards, their ability to give a child moral guidance and become child’ role model. Thus, there is no way they were given a ten-year-old child knowing that the prospected foster parent will be in the sea several days a week and the Rosalie will be left alone in the remote house. Not only that this will be qualified as child neglect, but how could a ten-year-old child be providing for herself: cooking meals, buying groceries, going to school, as I presume she was in the 4th or 5th grade of the elementary school. Even assuming that the Cokers lied through the application process, the faster care authorities usually send the revisory delegation to the newly fostered child. Such fraud could have been discovered, the Cooks would immediately be deprived of their parental right and perhaps be indicted.
On an entirely different level of wondering, I couldn’t understand what was the point of the story? Now, I am saying the point, not the moral as not every story has a moral point. But if I were to recite the story to a friend it would be something like this.
“I read this story about the girl who was left alone in the haunted house.”
Then my friend would query “and what?”
“… and nothing. She was just scared and then her friend invited her to live in her house.”
Then he'd ask “…and...?”
Was the point of the story was that there is no escape from evil spirits once you've encountered them, or that the girl should have told her parents about her fears, or that she should have insisted to go with her foster parents on fishing trips? I can only say one thing… as a reader, I was left with questions.
Other than that a great story!
It's fictional, and as such, it is based on imaginary events which do not need to follow what is obtainable in the real world. Well, that's why it is called "Fiction".
Thanks for dropping by
My friend,
I beg to disagree.
A story of a good fiction writer always fits like a glove. Take any work of London, O’Henry or Hemingway. Everything is precise.
It could be about fictional events. But if the events stated in the story have internal contradictions, then a reader falls out of the “suspense of disbelieve” he or she was emerged by the story. That’s why an internal logic of the story should be impeccable. That is achieved by an intense work of imagination.
Let’s say your story is set 200 years ago when there were no social services. A couple of sailors that spend most of their time in the sea take a girl for adoption. This seems strange. What was their reasoning? To spend time with her? To have someone to pass their business to? If so, they’d take a boy.
Why wouldn’t she tell them about the evil spirits in the cabin? She was afraid they won’t believe her? Why? Did it happen before that her foster parents didn’t believe her? Or were they too indifferent to her plea? If so again, what was their reason for taking her from the orphanage?
Next, the sailor couple lived in the haunted house all their life and never did they encounter any spirits?
How is that possible? Statistically, this has a very low probability. If the house was indeed haunted they should have seen something. It just doesn’t make any sense. But maybe it wasn’t the house that was haunted, but the girl herself? The spirit that killed her mother was always following her. But in that case, she should have had the same incidents in the orphanage and in the house of her friend.
See how your story, despite having a nice writing style and some other good narrative moments, literally falls apart, because you didn’t spend enough time thinking it through.
You need to bulletproof your storyline as if you presenting it in court.
Cheers