I'm a Ukrainian writer, and I'm trying to break into the English-language horror market with a short story I wrote. The piece is called The Head of John (or John Doe), around 2,500 words. It's a body horror / dark comedy about a luxury department store that uses a very unusual "living shredder" for confidential documents, and what happens when a wealthy customer decides to test it.
Here's my situation: I translated the story from Ukrainian using DeepL. The plot, structure, and pacing are solid — this story actually won a small contest back home — but the English sounds like it was written by a very polite machine. The dialogue is wooden, the descriptions lack texture, and the scary moments don't land with the force they should. I need a native speaker (US or UK) to go through it and tell me what sounds unnatural, what slang a real person would use, and where the prose needs to breathe.
If you're worried about time commitment — don't be. You can just read it once and leave five comments like "this phrase is awkward" or "a native speaker would say X instead." That's already enough to save the story from sounding like a translation.
I have to be upfront: I cannot pay. I'm currently surviving on UN humanitarian aid packages due to the war, so hiring a professional translator is impossible. What I can offer is a language exchange.If you're learning Russian or Ukrainian, I can help you: I'll correct your texts, explain slang and swearing (the real stuff textbooks don't teach), practice conversation via voice chat, or translate your short pieces into Ukrainian. I'm a professional writer, so I understand grammar and nuance on a deep level.
The story is grim, absurd, and hopefully hilarious in a twisted way. If you like corporate horror, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, or films like The Fly, Tetsuo, or American Psycho, this might be for you. I'm not asking for a full rewrite — just comments in a Google Doc like "no one says this" or "this hits hard, expand it."
If you have 30 minutes to spare and want to help a story cross the language barrier, please comment or DM me. I'd be endlessly grateful.