Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35911608-20190730183504/@comment-35711173-20190731174956

BloodySpghetti wrote: [...]

I think that the way the narrator is structured is what kills this the most. It feels too much like the narrator is talking to the readers, and these stories are hella hard to pull off properly. Perhaps you should make your narrator All Knowing, turn the "You" into a character with a name and it's own life and then use the ending to reveal that the narrator was an in-story character breaking the fourth wall by telling the story from its perspective to the audience.

This is very inciteful. Fourth wall breaking is hard to make work unless you are Deadpool. Then it often comes off as comedy, like Deadpool.

I kind of did the same thing in I Am a Professional Exterminator. There was a very clear "protagonist" who we got to know. They had very clear actions and were the focus. At first, this protagonist sounded normal, but then they started getting twisted. Then there was an escalation of horror with a very clear victim and motivation for the act, with an implication that anybody could be hit.