JED's Boo in a paragraph

Link to Original Story: Boo in a Paragraph - JED

I'm not sure how actually spooky this is. I certainly intended it to be spooky though. It may come off as trying a little too hard (what with the coke can suicide and the killing everyone in your family kinda thing). Still, I'm pretty happy with it. It's hard to be frightening, really encapsulating the essence of surprise and fright that is "boo!", in just a paragraph. I don't think you need to know what the thing is, and I don't think you need to know what it's going to do to you. Sufficed to say, it's bad. Horribly, horribly bad. And beyond that you leave it up to the imagination of the reader, trusting that it's far more vivid than anything you could scrawl down on the page. That's a nice technique and is important with all stories – knowing when to let the reader take over. It's a bit hard for me since my natural inclination (as you may have noticed) is to write and write and write until every atom in the room has its own paragraph-long description. And on that note, I do think it would be fun to re-visit this universe sometime, explore exactly what is going on with my own imagination. Maybe save that for next Halloween.


JED had a very interesting idea with this one, and some very horror imagery (tearing your wrists on a coke can, anyone?) but I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of it. First of all, most of all, probably the main reason I’m not as thrilled with this one, is that the grammarian in me insists that this is two paragraphs. Moreover, I just don’t think I quite get it. In part, the nebulousness is the point, but I was still left a little bit confused. I must also say, it doesn’t really make me jump. I’d be interested to see where he could take the idea with a little more room, though; it intrigues me.