u/anon33249038

New writers tend to become defensive toward negative critiques. This is only natural and the more veteran writers completely understand why. You worked hard on your composition, it's important to you, you've opened yourself up, and it feels like people are dumping on it. Let me be clear, that is not what's happening.

Effective writing is skill, not a talent. You have to train and develop it. Speaking for most of us here, we want your writing to be better, and the only way to do that is through critique. Critiques only exist to make your writing better. One of the best (and harshest) things I was ever told was, "If you want your writing praised, give it to your mom. She'll love it and pin it to the fridge. If you want to get better, learn to listen."

Because of that, I now hate positive critiques. They do me no good because they don't tell me how to improve the piece. Negative critiques are some of the most valuable things on the face of the planet to a writer. It shows you where your missteps are and how you can improve your craft.

Good critiques will have these qualities:

• It's honest and objective
• It's mechanical (if those are the issues)
• It's constructive
• It's qualitative
• It will justify itself and give reasons

All of those make you better. It's not meant to offend or dump on you. If someone says, "Your metaphors are too abstract," that doesn't mean your metaphors have no meaning, that means you need to write them better so the audience can understand them as well as you do. One of the most valuable critiques you will ever get is, "This is not very good and here's why."

Does this mean you should accept all critiques? Hell no. There are bad critiques and they're easy to spot if you know what to look for. The first thing is that it's the opposite of everything above, but there are other telltale elements, and they usual revolve around taste.

• Criticism of the topic as "distasteful" or "offensive" in some way.
• Character portrayals
• "I don't like this."

No, this is your writing. To quote Ted Lasso, "You do whatever you like." You write about what you want in the manner you think is proper. Critiques are not about taste, they are about effectiveness. I call these "sour cream" critiques. Imagine if Wolfgang Puck personally served a dinner for them to rate, and their criticism was, "The dish had sour cream, and I don't like sour cream. One star." That's not a critique. That's a matter of taste. If the dish calls for sour cream, I'm going to use sour cream. If the story needs a character to be described as a "bitch" in the narration, guess which word I'm gonna use. Now, if you tell me that describing her as a "bitch" is inconsistent with the story or the writing style, that's a wholly different conversation, and I can work with that.

The main thing I want to get across is that proper critique is done with your benefit in mind. It's never fun to be told that something you put a lot of effort into isn't where it should be, but don't disregard it. Rewrite it with those critiques in mind. Use those critiques to your advantage and your writing will improve.

Tales from the Crypt is amazing, but sadly, it ended with no successor. There is no "Tales from the Crypt: the Next Generation."

But if you're like me, you still have a want for those types of stories. What is your goto media to scratch that itch which isn't associated with TFTC?

Here's what does it for me:

• The Frighteners - I know that it was originally supposed to be a tftc movie, and you can tell. I think that's why I like it.
• Channel Zero - SyFy's answer to AHS (and was a lot better IMHO)
• Creepshow (SHUDDER series) - the writing isn't as good, it's kinda hokey, but the spirit is there.
• Creepshow (first movie) - no explanation needed
• Masters of Horror - series originally on Showtime, now on TuBi; same description as the Creepshow series

I would love more suggestions.

Chapter 2 = 3687 words. 7108 project total wordcount so far.

Still no title.

They wrote a villain so good that people enjoyed watching him and called him the best part of the show. Isn't that a good thing? I'm being completely serious. Isn't that the *aim* of writing a villain?

It's pretty obvious as of late that Hollywood is running out of money, which usually results in more horror movies. Personally, I think it's about to be another golden age of horror movies (fingers crossed).

Right now, we have a lot of independent horror movies from small-time creators coming out and they are kicking ass and taking names. And good on them! I'm loving every second of it! I love the fact that it is unfettered art answerable to no one except the creator, which is how it should be. There shouldn't be rules to creating art beyond "do no harm."

Hollywood is watching these audience trends toward horror movies because that's their job, but once again, they are taking the absolute wrong lesson. Right now they're trying to find stories on Reddit to adapt into horror movies. They think they have a story problem. They do not. They have an execution problem, and a studio executive problem, and all audiences see that.

​They've set down so many rules about what Cinema is allowed to be that they've negated what Cinema is supposed to be. It's supposed to be the visual expression of a story that the creator thinks is important to tell and nothing more. But they've set so many micromanaged rules about what can be created, who must be a part of creating it, and worst of all, prescribing how it must be created from concept to credits. You know how people are talking about how bizarre Nolan's Odyssey is? It's not bizarre, it's just the logical product of their rules. That movie is him abiding by all of their rules. You know what you get with all that? Bad movies, and the grosses show that.

These new creators do not have those rules. They have one rule: "make a movie that people will like, WETF that is." If Hollywood took that lesson, they would share in the success that these new creators are experiencing, and people would come back to the cinemas. But as it stands, they have not learned that lesson yet.

This is just something that has been bothering me as someone who speaks a bit of Swedish. It is not pronounced HAR-guh. The letter å is not pronounced like an A. It's almost an O sound mixed with an A, pretty close to "boar." HOAR-guh. If you want to be a little extra about it and sound a bit more Viking-ish, roll that R like it stole something. HOARRR-guh.

Also, ä is pronounced like English "ai" in hair, and a is pronounced like "ah," so Hälsingland is HAIL-sing-LAHND.

Just for good measure (I don't remember this being in the movie), Hälsingland is a real place in the county of Gävleborg. Here we go: start off with a soft G, that's like a Y. ​Then "le" is more like "luh". And end with soft G which becomes like "ey" in "rey." It's not BORG like in Star Trek. Thus you have YAIV-luh-BOR-ey.

Try it out!

Not necessarily your favorite episode, but the episode that really wowed you. Mine is "Death of Some Salesmen." The fact that Tim Curry played three distinct characters was really amazing.

I'd have two nickels.

I remember hearing that during World War II, the Dutch would identify if someone was a native Dutchman by have him say "Scheveningen" because "sche" is difficult to properly say if Dutch is not your native language. What would you suggest for your language to identify a native speaker?

I'm kind of torn on it myself because I can see the argument on both sides.

Alla de nordiska språken kommer från samma fornnordiska språk, eller? Alla folk har haft liknande historia. Jag förstår svenska, norska, och ens lite isländska (inte för mycket, men lite). Däremot, när danskar pratar, är det ett jävla mysterium för mig.

I walk into a music store in a strip mall. It's beige stucco and red light-up letters on the sign. The only letter i can see is "P." Inside, it looks like any other music store. Gray walls with long security mirrors lining the top perimeter. Guitars are hanging. Symbols and high hats. I see the owner. He's a big muscley bald guy in a tight hunter-orange shirt. He kind of looks like Joe Rogan. His shirt has a black brand name on the sleeve. It looks like the Zildjian logo but I can't make it out. We're in between the racks and he walks up to me.

"Can I help you find anything," he says.

"I'm not sure," I say, "I used to play the cello back in the day."

"Have you checked our our ochestrals? There over here." I follow him over.

There's violins, cellos, basses, a harding fiddle, all sorts. But I see a group of instruments off to the side on the wall that are a weird color. Kind of faded peach colored. For some reason, I know they'll be soft to the touch like a leather shoe or a leather jacket. I wonder how they sound so I walk up to touch them. The owner grabs my wrist, "Don't touch. They're very rare, very expensive." I see a price tag next to the bass that says $25,000.

The owner walks away and I can't help it. I have to know how it sounds. I get real close to the strings and pluck the bass's D-string. It flops around, smacking the fingerboard, like it's loose. But the bass breathes in. That's when I notice the strings aren't strings, they're white. They're sinews. The bass has arms with hands. I look at the other instruments. They're all made from human parts. I see half a face on the violin. The cello has a rib cage. The viola has sweat beads on it.

I look around. There were guitars made from stitched together skin. A high-hat which had a spine for a pedestal and foot for a pedal. Drumsticks made of bone. A drumhead with a tattoo of a deer stretched and distorted on it. While they're being played by the other patrons, I could hear the instruments breathing and screaming. One man strummed an electric guitar and it wasn't the chord that came out, but a man screaming.

I felt like I had to help them. I had to save them. I had to play the instruments to keep them alive. The owner was about to leave, so I stopped him. "I want the instruments. I want all of them."

"How are you gonna pay for them," he said.

"I don't know," I say, "Do you guys negotiate? Maybe we can come down a bit by buying all of them," I said.

He laughs, "Ha! No," he says and walks out the door with the bell jingling.

Then I woke up.