Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27582895-20170130001515/@comment-5101683-20170130013706

I am sorry if I reviewed your story badly.

SUMMARY:
The story feels unfinished because we don't know how the world will react to something like stabbing people. We don't know why the protagonist stabs the parents. Also, I think that the first two paragraphs should be changed to past perfect tense. However, I don't think it was horrible by any means.

STORY THINGS:
(I am assuming the protagonist is a girl named Sierra.)

Sierra never shows that she was polite, so we don't actually see her being polite. As a result, people don't know what she thinks "being polite" is. If you show an example of her being polite (like, say someone calls her a bad name, and she doesn't insult that person back), then we know that she's not lying/delusional/bombarded.* Also, if you were to have her meet someone on the street, and then have her think about what she would have done, and then what she actually does, that would work.

* If she is meant to be one of those things, then having her meet her grandmother would be useful. The conversation with her grandmother will be longer, so we can learn more about her character. You could have her friends come out of nowhere and react.

Also, the actions Sierra takes seem out of place. Her mother takes* her laptop (where, admittedly, she keeps her drawings) and she responds by stabbing her mother and father. This is obviously wrong; the problem is that Sierra doesn't seem to know that. If you have her state her reasons for killing them (instead of taking back her laptop or something), then the reader can understand why she's doing this.

* Also, quick question: what does "take" mean in this context? When I hear that word in that context, I think that Sierra's mother hid it somewhere in the house. But do you mean that she, like, threw it away, or deleted all of the drawings, or threatened to delete all of the drawings? I mean, Sierra doesn't even ask her mother where the laptop is.

Also, it felt unfinished. I think it's because I don't know how her grandmother is going to react. Is her grandmother the one who put the idea into her head? Is "relaxed" some kind of loaded word? Is the outside world horrible and mean, and "relaxed" means something like "violent" or "racist" or something? No one knows.

MORE MAJOR GRAMMAR THINGS:
The story begins in past tense, but then switches to present tense before switching back to past tense. I think that you want it to be in past tense (though if I'm wrong, correct me), so I would make the first two paragraphs past perfect (meaning that I put "had" in front of them) because they happen before the main story.

I'd always had overprotective parents. They had never allowed me to curse, soil my clothing, or date. Unfortunately, the politeness I'd (I've) worn for the past thirteen years is a simple mask to hide my rebellious teenage self. It'd OR It had (It's) been manifesting itself in several different ways: being angsty, sarcasm, and straight-up rudeness, to name a few. (I think that you should either change "being angsty" to "angst" or change the other two into "being sarcastic" and "being straight-up rude".)

My friends told (tell) me to run to my grandmother, the most relaxed person in my family. I definitely would have, but my parents had set up cameras in my room, and they had monitored (monitor) the footage every morning. I'd have been (be) discovered within hours.

LESS MAJOR GRAMMAR THINGS:
Third paragraph: But by 9 - my curfew, I decided I would take action. (I think you should either put a dash after "my curfew" and not have a comma, or have a comma before "my curfew" and not have a dash.)

Fifth paragraph: she awoke. "Sierra... What are you doing...?" "I've had enough, Mother." Vermilion blood spilled across her chest; the knife had gone in. (The second quote should become its own paragraph, because that way it becomes easier to locate the speaker's role.)

GOOD THINGS
The grammar was not horrible by any means (considering that there were essentially only three grammar mistakes). The spelling was good. It's rather obvious that you understand English written grammar and spelling.