Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24996913-20140906061925/@comment-24996913-20140907061953

Banningk1979 wrote: Alright, so let's talk about Bedtime Story.

-This was a well written as I have come to expect from you. Your use of grammar and tempo are always on point, allowing me to truly experience the story, without have to concern myself with grammatical suggestions.

-The character development was spot on. You brought this young woman into the story, used excellent description and detail of her mindset and really locked me into her point of view.

-The plot was complete. Having the reaper read her a telling of her own life and death, followed by the eventual embrace of death itself, came together very well.

What I would have liked to see:

-Let's talk about mood setting. You developed your Alexandria very well, made me truly care about her welfare and hope that she had a better outcome. Now, had you written her as a tragic heroine I feel that this ending would have been more emotionally hooked and baited. What seemed to happen instead though, was she was written to be a hapless victim, who was tormented and murdered, then allowed to return to her own life long enough to be visited by the reaper and made aware of her fate.

-With any situation where a hapless victim is introduced, but then developed to be a protagonist, we enter into the realm where the reader is going to expect a degree of either justice or salvation.

-Justice would be that the rapist/killer driving the truck, meets some sort of horrible fate for his actions, giving the reader that satisfying end of knowing that order was restored and balance was brought down.

-Salvation would be equally satisfying here. Allow Alexandria to survive the accident, taking what she learned from her experience to propel her into her life with a new found appreciation.

-Such 'Faustian' concepts could almost be explored, that Alexandria makes a deal with the reaper to take the rapist/killer instead of her, sort a one for one swap. Or perhaps even extend the story to where the rapist wakes up to meet the reaper on his bed as well, only when the reaper pulls back the hood, it is Alexandria, there to take his wretched soul to its punishment.

Overall though, those are just my suggestions. As it stands, I think you have a solid story that could easily be post worthy as it stands. As always, it's a pleasure to read your work.

I love your suggestions. I have a problem with killing off the good guys with no real justice in the end, so I do believe adding on would be beneficial to the readers experience. I especially like the suggestion with the driver of the car being visited by the reaper (Alexandria). I will definitely expand this before I even think about posting it. Thanks a lot for the feedback.