Forever Dream [18+] This scary story is an experiment of mine. I am curious about what others think of it. |
This review is for "Gang's Monthly Review Board" [13+]! The following is strictly my opinion. Please take what you need from it and disregard what you don't. My goal here is to provide you with a thorough, honest, and encouraging critique that will hopefully be helpful to you. If you have any questions about my comments here, please do not hesitate to ask. My door is always open! Hey ForeverDreamer ! I'm dropping in the review a selection from each of our classes Newbies! We are so excited to have you joining our group and this is just one of the ways we like to show our members that we care. So here we go! First, I will share with you what I liked about the piece: I am a horrorphile through and through, so this really appealed to me. I knew right away that it was going to be an exciting read just from your opening lines, so you did a really good job of getting your reader invested from the get-go! I thought the way you formatted this was pretty brilliant, with the "Groundhog Day"-esque cycle-of-hell repeating the day as things grow more and more extreme. I kept thinking to myself, How can this get any worse?! It built excellent tension from start to finish, which is exactly what you want in a good horror read. Well done! There was really great use of descriptive writing throughout, with phrases like "She smiled at me with broken and yellowed teeth and breathed the breath of the dead in my face." and "I could feel the ocular fluid flash into steam as my eyes burst out of my head." especially standing out to me. Your ending for this piece was spot on, bringing us full circle right back to where our poor main character began. It raises the question of what exactly he is experiencing: Is he stuck in a nightmare? Is he actually IN hell? Is any of this real? It had a very creepy vibe that gave me chills! Now, a few observations that I wanted to relate to you: While the format of deliberate repetition is an excellent device for telling this story, you have to be careful of actual repetition in your sentences and word choice within the narrative itself. I noticed a lot of sentences beginning with the same words, especially in the 'volcano' scene. Just a minor thing, a few of your paragraphs are missing their indent. The 3rd and 10th paragraphs I believe. I woke up in a cold sweat, shaking. I sat upright in terror. I knew I would never go back to sleep, so I went outside to smoke. The flow feels a bit choppy throughout the piece to me, and I think that can be attributed to the use of too many simple sentences all together at once. This makes it read more stacatto and is a bit harder for the reader to get into it. Try rewriting select sections with more complex sentences and starting fewer sentences with "I". I enjoyed reading this so much, as well as my visit to your portfolio in general! You have a great knack for horror writing - I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work in the future! Keep putting pen-to-paper, The Huntress ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
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