Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28266772-20160909215816/@comment-26475800-20160910025607

Okay, so this was interesting. I don't know where I stand on this story. Anyway, here are a few things that I noticed. (Also, keep in mind, I read this on my phone with a cracked screen, so I may have missed some things while reading.)

Redundency was a big issue in this story. The number of times valkery was used far exceeded what was needed. I understand that you wanted to drive the point home, that she was a strong, formidable woman, but you could have used different words that would give the same effect. Also, there was at least one sentence where you said the same thing twice.

There were a few spelling errors: he instead of her/she, and the like.

I think the biggest issue here though is that the protagonist/antagonist is completely unlikible. You spent far too much time in the beginning building her into an untouchable bitch. But, and this is coming from a man's prospective, she didn't have any normal/good qualities about her. I get that you wanted her to be a strong woman, and that's good, but you should also make her something more relatible.

Also, and this is just a suggestion, if you made her seem not so crazy in the beginning, the shock of what she did would hit harder. If the reader can relate to her, it makes it so much harder hitting of a story. Maybe, have her insanity flare up as she is writing the letter. Make her seem sane at first, but slowly have her mental stability become questionable, that clean there is no stability.

Most people who are crazy, can pass for sane, for a little while at least. That's why you hear so many people say something along the lines of "he never seemed like the kind of person to do something like that," because they aren't talking about how great they are most of the time, and hardly ever admit to the crime at first.

I don't know, I found this person extremely annoying. Probably because of how much she was stroking herself. So much so, that it had become a little bit of a chore to read. Although, that could also be because I was reading this on my phone, where I constantly had to keep moving the page just to read it.

It may be better to have her start to lose her shit when she starts talking about the miscarriage. People who suffer from something like that have a hard time talking about it. So that could break the facade and show her true insanity.

Anyway, the concept is interesting enough, and it has a lot of promise. Those are just my two cents. Again, I would wait for someone else to comment on this, because it's a real pain reading stories on the phone.