Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25109876-20140714200053/@comment-25558572-20140714220213

This is a cliched, extremely weak story that seems strongly based off the "My-OC-is-a-serial-killer" premise.

First of all, the murders in the news are a big cliche, especially when you say they were "brutally murdered" and how they were apparently "tortured" to death. Torture and murder are not scary, they're tired and unoriginal plot devices that would make most readers face-palm with their weakness to scare. If you are going to use torture OR murder, use only one, and use it well. Put in a good story, strong characters (without adding totally uneeded introductions like, "Hello, my name is..., I'm x years old, I have x hair color.. etc) and definitely don't rely on gore as a scare factor. Gore is an intensifier, not a shock device on its own.

Second, why do you never seem to space out dialogue? You have to indent a new paragraph every time a different character speaks. The dialogue itself, though, was nonsensical and very predictable; why on Earth would a judge speak like that, for one thing?

Third, you eratically switch between present and past tense. You have to choose one and keep it consistent throughout the story. Don't switch it abruptly.

Fourth, the ending was a complete mess. How did Roseanna survive a fatal electrical shock? Why did her eyes start bleeding? How did she slip a pocket knife and a Taser past the authorities? And why did she suddenly want to kill her own parents? It's rushed, cliched, and completly unrealistic. And it's all smashed into one paragraph, too- why would you ever end a story with the phrase, "She killed her victims for the rest of her life." ''Why? ''Who were her victims? How did she kill them without being caught again, especially as how she was already sentenced to the death penalty?

Even if you revised this so it was totally free of grammar mistakes, it would be deleted very quickly for its generic, nonsensical plot, boring violence, and overall weakness. Please throw this idea away and come up with something new and refreshing. I have to say that there is nothing that can be done for this story to make it salvageable.