Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28627943-20160602094024/@comment-28266772-20160602145410

"If you see anyone with a skinned face, fresh wounds or not, run. Run immediately."

Knowing is half the battle...

Jokes aside, yeah, overall I agree with Demuerto in the sense that it's a bit of a cliched story, and the doctor notes don't quite make sense. Doctor's might make official records but they wouldn't write it so informally. Also, weirdos are very common in this setting, and doctor's have extremely high standards for weirdness so I don't think they'd comment on it unless there was something truly extreme and a screaming man just isn't that significant. Oh and a person wouldn't really survive with a large open wound like missing a face. Infection would be...brutal.

A lot of this story requires the reader to suspend disbelief. People seem to think that blurring the lines between the mundane and magic is a great way to ramp up tension, but it's not an easy thing to pull off. In order to achieve it you need to put a lot of work into convincing the reader that either explanation is possible. [Ambiguity is not the same as the absence of information.] Instead here you have a serial killer who can disappear from rooms, survive three days with no food or water, scream so loud peoples' ears bleed from across tempered glass, and have gaping stab marks in his back that don't affect him. You're asking me to suspend my disbelief in order to buy this sequence of events, instead of convincing me that this is what actually happened.