Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26242189-20170811025843/@comment-32461413-20170811205846

Yossipossi wrote: Thank you for your feedback! I added a paragraph further describing the creature and added a few lines to reveal its purpose, but I think I want to keep its exact origin/species unspecified. I also changed the line of dialogue for the child to reveal what its intentions are. I changed a few sentences so there are less "I" paragraphs, and changed one "tendril" to "appendage."

Any further feedback you could provide based on the revised draft? Something I noticed that I forgot to point out before is how you used the word "hanged" instead of "hung."

You mention that you added a few lines to reveal the creature's purpose. After rereading the whole thing, I still don't see exactly what it is. You do use the word "prey" which gives me an idea that it may be that the creature is looking for food. If this is what you're going for, you should make mention how the creature is hungry and looking for some prey to eat. That would make sense as the house is far away from anyone else so whomever was inside could be eaten without anyone knowing.

I noticed you use the pronoun "they" when referring to the child. However, you also describe the child as a plural. "Were they expecting me" is an example of this. It becomes confusing as it is hard to tell if you are mentioning a single child or a collective. They is a pronoun people use to refer to a single person, however, for a more dramatic effect and to strip humanity away from the child, "it" would be better suited. However, if you were to go that route, you should briefly mention the creature's thoughts as to why he thinks of the child as less of a human.

Why exactly does the creature get the attention of the child before it goes inside? You could mention that it does so as some kind of sick pleasure to watch its prey freak out before it eats it. But there should at least be a subtle reference to why as there are many problems with this. If he takes away his stealthiness, he could risk his prey climbing out the window and running away, calling for help, or pulling out a weapon, etc. I think it would be more suspenseful if the child never noticed the creature looking at it in the first place (or pretended not to).

What exactly is the relevance of the house being in a rotting state? The smell of a rotting corpse is mentioned, but why? Some things are mentioned that don't progress the story like they should. This moment could be a great tool for foreshadowing. Perhaps the rotting corpse is the remains of leftover food that the "child" has eaten.

Something that I feel would help out the story is if you made parallels to the creature and the child. Maybe, the child is actually a strange creature itself. At the end, you could mention that it grabs the MC with tentacles (or some sort of weird appendage) as a way to make that distinction. It would be a role reversal; an unknown creature stalks its prey which it thinks is a human, only to find out that it is a creature itself that was hunting it.