Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26981815-20160126064453/@comment-4715955-20160128000529

I'm reviewing your story here because I'm not sure it meets the quality standards enough to stay on the wiki. In that case anything I post would get removed, too, so it'd be pointless.

First issue I had was the mom's "motherly" reaction to not finding her kid in bed where he's supposed to be, and the narrator dismissing the reaction as a normal womanly thing. Her reaction is totally neurotic: if she found he wasn't in bed, she'd be annoyed, and the parents would search the house for where he'd gone to. After an exhaustive search, if he still didn't turn up, they'd both start to panic.

I'm curious about the choice of a tape recorder being used in 2015. I used one in Whispers as a narrative device, but the events recorded took place in the 1990s, so it wasn't strange that the narrator would use such outdated tech. Here it seems weird, unless it's still commonly used in Australia for one reason or another.

Having the narrator interject between every single recording is monotonous as well. He doesn't really add much to the narration by sharing his thoughts. Go through each and maybe remove the ones that don't significantly contribute anything. Or remove them all and make the recording do all the work. If anything scary about the recording registers with the reader, they'll assume it registers with the father as well.

The recordings themselves, unfortunately, are very unnatural in wording and content. Tobias's narration feels like narration and not natural speech, and it's extremely expository to the point where I can't believe it for a moment. Nobody talks like that, much less would narrate their thoughts so precisely to a recording device they don't expect anyone else to ever listen to. It makes immersion impossible.

The last paragraph is a wall of text, which should always be avoided. The mom seemingly dying of a broken heart comes off as more Weak Woman Syndrome, and even if it's just the narrator's own chauvinism, it's still hard to take seriously, at least in the way it's presented. The current ending is weak as hell, so the idea for the new ending would be a definite improvement IF it's done right. If done poorly it could end up just as weak.

Overall the whole thing needs a rewrite to make the characters and narration feel more natural and believable, and to increase tension and dread so the scary bits are actually scary.