#13 Hey, Gary

Greetings all you fickle fiddles, today we have an offering from Whitemorn on Writing.com titled ‘Hey Gary,’ and it promises horror.

“Hey Gary look … a haunted house! Let’s go check it out!”
Dropping their Stingray bikes to the ground excitedly, the two rambunctious seven year olds crept through the high grasses and under the ancient Weeping Willow, while keeping a close vigil on the rotting old grey, three story home. The boys seldom walked that far down Oak Boulevard because they remembered the event that happened two years ago. That poor, six year old girl (Jenny), had been missing for so many months, until someone reported seeing two white boards on the ground in the shape of an X in a vacant overgrown lot just a block away. That’s where they found her dismembered body buried. But that wasn’t why the boys avoided that area of the boulevard; you see, her killer had not been found!

For the first sentence, we need a comma after ‘hey’ since it’s a direct address. I would also consider deleting the ellipses as it doesn’t feel like there would be a pause there. After that, I would delete ‘go’ from the second sentence as unnecessary.

This brings us to the second paragraph, and here I think the telling actively hurts the sentence. The words ‘excitedly’ and ‘rambunctious’ feel forced, awkward and a little obnoxious, which makes it hard to read the sentence because they’re so loud. They’re also unnecessary, excitement and rambunctiousness are easy to show via a character’s natural actions in the course of the story and will naturally be self-evident. This introduces another point, the words ‘excited’ and ‘rambunctious’ contradict the action of ‘crept’ which is quiet and careful.

These are easy fixes, for the most part, just cut them out—Dropping their bikes the seven-year olds raced through the high grass…— (I deleted ‘Stingray’ and ‘to the ground’ as well, the first because it read awkward, and the second because it was unnecessary. If something is dropped, it’s going to fall to the ground unless stopped by something. ‘Two’ I deleted because that number is implied by the dialogue, our nameless speaker addresses one person instead of a group.)

The rest of this sentence suffers a little from over description (especially in relation to the house) but also from simply trying to convey too much. (The whole sentence struggles with this last point, trying to convey 18-19 different things to the reader, no exaggeration.) So, we just have to streamline and cut the what we can so everything flows and works together. I would switch ‘and under the ancient Weeping Willow’ for—… to the trunk of an ancient Weeping Willow— the purpose of this being to indicate the boys stop at the trunk, thus giving a purpose to mentioning it as part of their string of actions, but also locating where the boys are (which the original sentence leaves ambiguous.) After that, I would exchange ‘while keeping a close vigil on the rotting old gray, three story home’ for —and watched the dilapidated three-story home.— (In the original sentences, there should be commas after ‘rotting’ and ‘old.’ I deleted ‘old’ and ‘gray’ because they don’t read well, and ‘old’ is implied in ‘rotting.’ I switched from ‘rotting’ to ‘dilapidated’ because I felt that ‘rotting’ left the sentence feeling incomplete, where ‘dilapidated’ does not.) I switched from ‘keeping a close vigil on’ to ‘and watched the’ simply to reduce wordcount, thus streamlining the thought so it doesn’t clutter the sentence as much. ( ‘watched’ can be converted to whichever verb best suits the author’s intent, such as ‘inspected,’ ‘observed,’ etc.)

All my edits:— Dropping their bikes, the seven-year olds raced through the high grass to the trunk of an ancient Weeping Willow and gazed at the dilapidated three-story home.— (I inserted no comma between ‘dilapidated’ and ‘three’ because it’s only two descriptors in a row, and you don’t have to start adding commas until three.) Reading it combined, we can swap ‘and gazed’ for ‘, gazing’ and probably delete ‘trunk of an’ (which only really work from a rhythm stand point if we switch to ‘gazing.’)

Reedits:— Dropping their bikes, the seven-year olds raced through the high grass to the ancient Weeping Willow, gazing at the dilapidated three-story home.

Sentence two: The boys seldom walked that far down Oak Boulevard because they remembered the event that happened two years ago.

Just small streamlining changes for this sentence, and one other. I would switch ‘walked’ to ‘ventured’ because they technically rode here, and I just happen to like ‘ventured.’ I would also replace ‘they remembered’ with ‘of’. Then, maybe combine this sentence with the ensuing explanation with a colon to smooth the transition into exposition.

Sentence three: That poor, six year old girl (Jenny), had been missing for so many months, until someone reported seeing two white boards on the ground in the shape of an X in a vacant overgrown lot just a block away.

This suffers from two much detail again, both from the context of too much information and from just cluttering the narrative with words that don’t provide equivalent value. In this instance, Jenny’s age is mostly irrelevant (what relevance it does have comes from the ambiguity of ‘girl’) and her being ‘poor’ (presumably in the sense of unfortunate) is self-evident. The phrase ‘so many months’ is vague and a little frustrating (in part because the author’s shifts style’s here without telling the reader, going from factual narration to emotional opinion.) ‘Reported’ conveys ‘seeing,’ and ‘on the ground’ is almost mostly unnecessary, but also tied to the wordiest section of this sentence, thus amplifying its flaws. ‘the shape of’ is just unnecessary, but deleting it makes the double ‘in’ echo so we’ll use a little rearranging to —…white boards shaped like an X in the overgrown lot a block away.— ( I switched ‘a’ to ‘the’ because it reads better, and deleted ‘vacant’ because ‘overgrown’ implies it to some extent. I deleted ‘just’ as unnecessary and to help reduce the clutter.)

All my edits: —The girl (Jenny) have been missing for six months when someone reported two white boards shaped like an X in the overgrown lot a block away.— 

Sentence four: That’s where they found her dismembered body buried.

Just a quick restructure to save a few words—They found her dismembered body buried there.—

Sentence five: But that wasn’t why the boys avoided that area of the boulevard; you see, her killer had not been found!

This sentence suffers less from the clutter, but it’s still present, though easy to fix. I would reduce ‘that area of the boulevard’ to ‘this area’ and I would like to switch ‘her killer had not been found’ to ‘they never found her killer’ (the ‘they’ may need to be ‘the authorities.’) I also want to delete ‘you see’ but it’s a little bit questionable. Let’s see what it reads like when all combined.

All edits:

“Hey, Gary, look…a haunted house!”

Dropping their bikes, the seven-year olds raced through the high grass to the ancient Weeping Willow, gazing at the dilapidated three-story home. The boys seldom ventured this far down Oak Boulevard because of the murder two years ago. The girl (Jenny) had been missing for six months when someone reported two white boards shaped like an X in the overgrown lot a block away. They found her dismembered body buried there, but that wasn’t why the boys avoided this area: the authorities never found the killer.

I made a few additional changes, I switched ‘ventured that’ to ‘ventured this’ because it’s occurring presently, and I reduced ‘event that happened’ to ‘murder’ to reduce words, because ‘murder’ is stronger and to avoid dancing around the bush (which is a practice I dislike.) I combined the last two sentences because I think they complement each other.

The exposition still feels a little forced, and I would like to add ‘at the curb’ after ‘bikes.’ The first ‘the boys’ probably also reads better as ‘they.’ A more nuclear restructuring might also benefit, looking something like…

—They’d found the girl’s (Jenny) dismembered body in an overgrown lot, buried beneath two white boards shaped like an X.—

This obviously cuts out the discovery of the X and the time period, but the first obviously happened (they would have to have seen the X to find it/unearth the body) and the second entirely irrelevant except as flavor text.

All combined:

“Hey, Gary, look…a haunted house!”

Dropping their bikes, the seven-year olds raced through the high grass to the ancient Weeping Willow, gazing at the dilapidated three-story home. The boys seldom ventured this far down Oak Boulevard because of the murder two years ago. They’d found the girl’s (Jenny’s) dismembered body in an overgrown lot buried beneath two white boards shaped like an X. But, that wasn’t why the boys avoided this area: the authorities never found the killer.

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