Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24101790-20160705183801/@comment-25569708-20160710034730

Alright, just got a chance to read this. Sorry for taking a bit to get to it. There are a few things which may or may not be errors, please correct me if I'm mistaken anywhere:

"We were driving home after vacation". Not sure if you meant to put "We were driving home after a vacation" instead.

"It became a mundane and trivial thing". This actually needs a period.

"It felt like my brain was a bundle of nerves that was wrapped in sheet of constantly constricting razor wire". Not sure if you meant to have "wrapped in a sheet" instead.

"I only needed few hours without a crushing headache". Did you mean "I only needed a few hours without a crushing headache"?

Alright then, let's talk about the story. Well to be completely honest here, I would have to say that's it's astounding! It's kind of like a mix between Rick and Morty and Being John Malkovich. Structurally there isn't really anything that I find wrong with it (Aside from the very first paragraph which feels a bit jumpy). The story's got a great flow and every paragraph is ordered/described very well. Again, I can't really find anything at fault structurally.

As far as the plot itself is concerned, I'd say it is a big success. I was able to follow everything that happened. I was interested from the beginning, to the accident (which was actually described in a disturbing way), to the first experiences with "mind-switching", all the way to the end where madness takes its toll and Protag is implied to off himself. I liked how you never described the protag (not that he would have to in a story like this, but still). Because of this lack of description I put myself in his place and it made the story feel kind of unique and personal. I'm not sure if that was your intention or not, but it made the story more enjoyable for me nonetheless. The situation the protog got himself into with the migraines was interesting to read about and seemed like a very distressing thing for a character to go through. I especially liked the line "How many people will I sacrifice to steal a few more precious hours?". It reminded me of The Cell Phone Game; this awful decision to sacrifice innocent lives just to eke out a few more pointless moments of life. It sounds like you did some ending-changing earlier; all I can say is that I think the current ending you have is fine.

There are a couple things that I think are odd however. When the protag makes the decision to not return to his reality, it's a big deal in the story. He's making the moral decision to not return to his true life; from then on out he began living these untrue lives. It's probably the protag's worst mistake in the story. However, later on the protag writes this: "I thought about returning to my original body and vowing to never shift to another reality, but I realized how hopeless that all was. Even if I could manage to sift through the millions of alternate realities to find my original one, what chance did I have of returning to my body?" Before this line, I just assumed that he could return to his original body whenever he wanted (which may have been a bad assumption on my part), but after this line it made the whole "deciding not to return to my original body" part feel a little pointless. If there was virtually no chance for him to return to his original body in the first place, then why did he have that mindset where he thought he could return at all? Maybe this is the protag's error of thinking, or perhaps I'm just being a dumbass and missing something here. Finally, there's the line "I am a horrible person". I don't know why, but to me this line feels very out-of-place and awkward.

Alright, that's all I got. Great job here; it was a very high-quality story that was rather thought-provoking and entertaining. In other words: a real mind-flip...