Talk:The Smiling Man/@comment-29249491-20160724060425

The tone is good, the premise is intriguing, the writing is weak. And, sometimes, the writing devolves to the kind of thing that ruins a story -- "He looked completely and utterly insane. And that's a very, very scary thing to see."

Superlatives suck. Utterly is one of many words internet amature writing cultures have somehow made prevalent, to a painful degree. Adverbs suck anyway, overused adverbs are worse (quickly, slowly, gently), overused superlative adverbs are shit (utterly).

'Very' is the least very word in the english language, it doesn't even have a meaning. Well, it does in the sense of "The very man!" (an exact thing) but as emphasis, it doesn't have a meaning. Using it twice doesn't help, and if you feel the need to use it twice just to bolster your adjective, then, your adjective sucks. Pick a new word.

There's more, but when either the first or last sentence of a story are bad it bodes ill for the rest of the work. Those are meant to be the absolute best a work has to offer.