SalMonroe

Oh man, where to start... First of all, thanks everyone for the waterfall of feedback. Been busy with life lately so I only returned just now. Fridging To be honest, I didn't even know this was a trope until now. Looked it up and my story fits it perfectly. That being said, I don't think it's avoidable here. Maybe I'm too narrow-minded or too inexperienced of a writer, but in a story this long, I honestly don't know how to avoid it. It's obvious that Suzie is just a tool used to establish something that John wants to live for, but I really don't know how I could make her into a fully fleshed out character without making the story a lot longer (which is always an option, but I also think that Suzie isn't important enough to warrant it). There's also the option of Suzie not existing in the first place, but then it weakens the punchline and purpose of the story. Speaking of which... Clarity I realize from your comments that I need to do a pretty big overhaul of the story. The general consensus is that my story is a story about PTSD with a hint of maybe-it's-actually-magic mixed in. I'll be honest and say that I 100% intended for it to be the opposite, where the curse is something concrete and there and the numbers are the biggest part of the plot but that might just be a product of insanity or something. I intend to fully take out the mention of war and replace it with something else in order to reduce the potential for this whole plot to be a product of PTSD. My original plan for this story as supposed to be a "curse of immortality" story. The original ending that I had planned was that the story continues past the point where he discovers that his number has gone up, Suzie has died in her sleep as a product of his number, he tries to end his life and now that Suzie is gone he expects that he has nothing stopping him, something does stop him, his number goes up again, he realizes that he can't actually die, whether it's through natural death or suicide, and realizes that he's stuck... Which is obviously something that I didn't convey at all in this rendition of the story. I should also make it clear that Suzie dies. Wording I'll work on that. Misc. The elevator: Originally, I made him avoid the elevator because it's covered in mirrors and he's uncomfortable with reflective surfaces because he doesn't want to look at the number, but I really didn't do enough to establish that he's uncomfortable with mirrors so I guess it ended up unreasonable. Unless of course, he has an unexplained fear of elevators. The park and junkie: The purpose of this was to make him have a scenario where he legitimately believed that he should have died and make him feel like his number should have gone up. I'm either going to make the reason for him being there a bit stronger, or just throw that entire thing away. Micheal's toy sword: It's a toy sword. I'll probably just make it a broom or something. It's not important and it doesn't deserve to be. Jim Carrey: I'd never heard of that movie, let alone seen it. The number 23 in my story is just a number that I chose completely at random. Easy fix to just change it. Probably to a much lower number if I take out the whole war thing.

Yay, my first critique. Also, my bad. I was probably too excited for my first post that I skimmed through that part. Probably not a good enough reason, but that's my reading excuse. *insert waggling eyebrows here* Bad puns aside, I sent a revised copy out that has double spacing and indents. I'll make sure to keep the formatting in mind for any of my future works. Now onto the actual critique... Page 2 Paragraph 3: I completely agree with you here. I think my thought process was that since this was the action that introduces the main conflict of the story, it needed some importance to go along with it, but my attempt at legitimizing it was pretty unnecessary and dumb since I'm supposed to be talking about the 23. Dialogue with Suzie: I'm very happy that you liked it. The writing for this story took around 4-5 hours total, and the intro with Suzie took up around 2-3 hours of my time just rewriting and trying to get it decent. Dialogue with Michael: A little less focus was put here I admit. To be honest, I'm mostly fine with it but that might just be because it's too fresh to me. I'll give myself a day or two to defamliarize myself and then destroy Michael. The Park: This was a hardcore author force on my part. I absolutely needed John to be in a position where he would feel like he almost died and I couldn't do it in the safety of his home without making the near death experience too nonsensical or too suicidal. I toyed with the idea of an almost car crash or some industrial accident, but I wrote him into the park and the cross just happened to pop up and I continued to write from there without taking the time to give the cross any importance. I'll probably stick with the park and the cross, but I'll also probably give the cross and park a backstory. Maybe he used to play there as a kid. Maybe that particular cross just calmed him down for no reason. Who knows. I sure don't. Suzie's dead: Yeah I'll definitely add in something to hint at Suzie's death. I've gotten some feedback from people who were absolutely clueless. Don't know about writing in his reaction to the 24 though.

Hello everyone, This is a standalone short story. I'd be super grateful for anyone who decides that the grammar and syntax are atrocious and red inks my entire story, but at the moment I do have some pretty specific questions that I wanted answered on the last page of my story. I'd hope that you answer those questions as it would give me an idea of whether I should make some big changes or not.

I've been a part of the email list for a few weeks, just haven't been submitting until now. Read the guidelines too.

I'm a new member of RE and I've only critiqued two works on this site so far including this one, so I didn't realize that we had forum discussions for critiquing and just sent it back as an email reply. Going through the email reply I sent, I edited it a bit since it was unproofed rambling and I'm posting it here instead. It's a bit wordy (+ 1000 words) and very nitpicky so if you have any critiques for my editing style please let me know. I do feel like I'm overstepping my boundaries on a few of these suggestions and critiques so please critique me back. And if you want revenge for the thorough red inking of your piece, I'll hopefully be submitting a short story next week so you'll get your chance to destroy me later. I’m excited to see how this plays out. This is the first version of your story I’ve read and so far it’s pretty interesting. I’m curious how and if you’ll integrate the smithing later on into his ability (since it is a DnD character) and I’m curious to see the bigger picture to this, both in whoever that guy is at the end and why exactly Rowan is so powerful. I'm assuming he's a sorcerer, but where does his magic lie? Since I don’t have any way to edit pdfs, I’ll just be referring to whatever I’m talking about by saying “Page number”.”Paragraph number”.”sentence number” 1.1.2 I don’t think recount is a good word to use here. I think you use the word recount to mean something like “re-count” or “remember how many times”, but I personally think of recount as a word to replace “remember” in general. This is only the second sentence and since I only learned that he’s walking around the alley with a sense of familiarity in the first sentence, I thought he was someone who used to be homeless, rather than someone who currently is until the next sentence. 1.2 - 2.6 I feel like the ordering of some of these paragraphs is a bit odd. In 1.1, he’s focused on the present, in 1.2 he’s focused on the past, in 1.3 he’s focused on the present for half and then quickly goes back to the past, in 2.1-2.5 he thinks about the past, finally transitioning back to the present. I thought this back and forth thing was really unnecessary and that it would be a lot cleaner if you kept all the memories in one place and the present thoughts in one. I don’t know if you were going for an effect where you’re trying to represent turmoil by making him flit between the present and the past so often, but if you want to do that I’d suggest that you make it even more pronounced and obvious by making the flip-flop even more severe. 2.5.1 I don’t feel like this sentence needs to be italicized as it is right now. Right now it seems too impersonal to be an actual thought of his. Because you’re using his third person limited POV for him in this story, all the text is his view on what he’s thinking/seeing anyways, so I feel like if you want to bust out the italic thought text, it should be for something significant and not for something that can just be described without needing a thought. But I do think that this is actually a good opportunity for a chance to use italics, just not in its current state. Maybe you could have him react to the thought, clench his fist or what not to show whatever emotion he feels strongly about the Arbiter, or maybe you could change it up a bit. If this was from the viewpoint of a more nihilistic character, maybe the thought would be something along the lines of “no one ever escapes the thing of the Arbiter.” Of course, Rowan seems a bit happier than that so it’s just an example. My point is, the italics are special and this thought doesn't seem special enough to deserve it. 2.6.1 Warren comes out of the blue with no introduction or description. All we know is that he works with Rowan. I think it would do a lot if you added something about Warren, even if it's just one single element. Without a good image to ground him on, I felt lost about how I was supposed to imagine this new character. At this point, I can imagine Warren as being any sort of guy. I could think of him as paranoid, overly caring, a perfectionist, or arrogant (in the end I actually went with him being some gruff paranoid gang leader until I saw how he actually was later). Any one of those could think that Rowan’s a simpleton. Even though he's not really important for anything other than his role to anger Rowan, I think adding one single character trait could do a lot to add a lot of colour to the setting and to Rowan’s situation by describing who he’s being forced to work with in order to achieve his goals in this setting. Maybe you could say that Warren was difficult to listen to because of a rough sailor’s accent, or maybe it physically stings to talk to him because of the concentrated booze stench that floats off his breath, or maybe Rowan admits that he doesn’t actually listen to Warren as well as he might like because he’s always distracted by the possibility of simply stealing Warren’s overabundant jewelry. I don’t know. Adding just one thing would have so much potential to add so much colour. (Am I overstepping my critiquing boundaries here?) 3.3.6 Wide berth* not birth. 4.1.4 I don’t get why he’s giving him a quizzical look. I’m guessing it’s because of it’s age or because Rowan is sidling up to the woman, but that’s never really explained. The bartender keeps being pretty nonchalant about his drinks until he realizes that Rowan had mistaken the woman for a man. Because “quizzical” is significant for me to notice but never expanded on, I legitimately thought that the bartender was in on what was going to happen, and was just surprised that Rowan (a young boy) was the one who was the one that was hired for the job. 4.12.1 He’s running the scenario through his head and having a fun time imagining it, but I wouldn’t expect him to be physically smiling. He’s just been insulted. 4.12.1 / 4.13.1 Did she actually smile and then instantly turn sad? I guess Rowan achieved his goal of wiping the “smug smile” off her face, but this flip flop kind of sticks out. 5.4 At the sight of* 6.5.1 Isn’t he supposed to be smuggling this thing? I get that there needs to be a way for the Chalkydri to notice his illegal dealings, but there has got to be a better way. Right now, Rowan is being way too stupid. He places the damnation amulet right on the table. The only explanation I have is that he’s no longer nervous due to the alcohol and his judgment is flawed by the alcohol. 6.5.1 Isn’t he incredibly nervous about the job? If sketching is something he does to calm himself down, mention it. If he’s calmed down enough to be able to casually pass his time with a hobby, mention it. 7.2.4 Capital on He. 9.1.1 I wouldn’t really describe what the priest is doing as “helping” Warren, and I don't know if Rowan would describe it as that either. “Why are you turning a blind eye, punishing me for what he’s done, ignoring him, etc.” 9.8 I really wanted to know exactly how the priest replies here and I'm kind of disappointed that you left it up to interpretation. Is he bored, sadistic, euphoric? While he’s probably a character that never appears again, he would work as a good representative for the setting that Rowan had lived in for his whole life.

I'd like to put in my name for next week. First time. Submitting a short story I started to write as a joke, but somehow got it to a full 3920 word story.