Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-3403351-20150409214803/@comment-25230922-20150409222939

As a pre-criticism note, the story needs greatly expanded on. There's not enough meat on the bones - it's too quick of a read to really feel anything from.

Your first description of Fred seems to be a classic Marty Stu. He wins everything, everyone likes him, so on, so forth. Just from that paragraph, I feel no sympathy for him. Is he a jerk? Is he a good kid? What's his personality? Who is this person that we are reading about?

Your second paragraph has a grammar error and seems awkward and redundant. It should be: A serious knee injury in his senior year took him out of athletics; which he took disastorously. The second sentence: To cope with the loss, he turned to God, and when his prayers went unanswered, to booze. "Of achievement" doesn't really fit nor need to be there.

The third paragraph makes me think that Fred is a narcissist who only gives a damn about himself, and he's depressed because somebody might be better than him. Character development is pretty important.

Additionally, the narrator (who has taken no part in this story previously) finally decides to intervene during one of his "more violent sessions". Question: why is he choosing now? Why didn't he do so earlier.

The reflection is only foreshadowed in any way by the title. No one knows anything about this entity and not enough is delved into to actually know anything about it. All it is: "You, only better." How is he better? He's a reflection.

Notes: I'm not getting anything out of this. There's no plot points or description to really grip the story with. Your characters can be taken in so many (negative) ways that it's not even funny, and there's literally NO detail justifying anything that's happened so far. This story needs a lot of work.