7 Comments
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Ali McFarland's avatar

This is gooooood really immersive and tactile.

Gregory Blair's avatar

This is great! I particularly like the juxtaposition of the gruff and grit with the unexpected tenderness.

Waymon Hudson's avatar

This is excellent.

What impressed me most is how much tension you created through restraint. The repetition becomes hypnotic, and every “Scrape” and “Thump” quietly raises the stakes.

The reveal lands because you trust the reader enough to let them catch up on their own.

Really glad you wrote this one.

Aaron Martinez's avatar

Thank you, Waymon.

It’s really cool to see how these come to life when certain elements fall into place.

It’s a bit like writing a song. Establish a rhythm the story can play out to. The shovel becomes percussion.

The restraint is a trickier beast, but with every one of these I write, the process comes together a little more cleanly. Something clicked for me while writing this one in terms of character development - that was the emotional truth we talked about. It felt like another leveling up.

Im very happy with how it turned out.

Waymon Hudson's avatar

I think you’re right about the emotional truth.

The technique is impressive, but what stayed with me afterward wasn’t the structure.

It was Garrett and Tanner.

They feel like real people instead of characters serving a plot, and everything else gets stronger around them.

That’s a hard thing to do, and you pulled it off here.

And for what it’s worth, I think this is a level-up too. 🙌