Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-29502200-20170209055035/@comment-29502200-20170209060122

EmpyrealInvective wrote: First and foremost, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between this story and temptotosssoon's glitch in the matrix story. Whether these similarities were coincidental or not (Both involve a protagonist who suffers a dramatic injury, recovers, falls in love, before focused on an object, alienates their family, realizes this reality isn't real, and tries to cope), they still can be used to highlight the issues present in your story.

The introduction needs quite a bit of work. There's no real set-up of the scenario or building up the premise/reason for why the protagonist is telling this story. "Literally two weeks away from high school graduation; and, some moron hits me, totaling my 1993 Saturn SC2" doesn't really do much for pulling the audiences attention and feels like you accidentally forgot to set up the scene. To further highlight this is the line: "Elizabeth Somnium became Elizabeth Morcawski." which seems to imply that the audience knew the protagonist's last name without any real introduction.

Unfortunately I can't help but not draw comparisons between your story and the other glitch in the matrix story as there were some things that they did effectively that are lacking in your story. Scenes like this could use a lot more focus to make it more effective: "They pleaded, and I did nothing. They cried, and I did nothing. They walked out never to return, and I did nothing!" Especially since it ends on a relatively weak note of: "My wife, my child, my entire existence; it, was all a hallucination." Remember this protagonist has spent decades in this life and to end it like this feels anticlimactic. Feel free to gloss over the other story which focused on the protagonist seeing his 'son' out of the corner of his eyes and how that paints a more effective ending than just telling the audience that it was a hallucination.

Even if we overlook the mechanical issues like punctuation ("I felt the rugged texture of the frame's rivets"), grammar ("I met a woman who's (whose) smile"), wording ("The only thing I can recall from the incident, is an officer pulling out my body from the (pulling my body out from the) upside-down red car, and being placed on a stretcher.", "After countless applications, I was hired in (sic) by a local car mechanic", "What started off as oil changed and tire alinements (sic) at minimum wage", etc.), tense issues ("After what seemed like a week, I become a mannequin"), it is hard to ignore the plot issues. Feel free to browse the Glitch in the Matrix Reddit if you're looking for more pointers on how to flesh out this concept.

Unfortunately this is going to be kind of challenging to step out of the shadows of other stories posted there that delve into the same topic.

So Basically: My story is a dumbed-down version of a story that already exists, with no intro, and a poor example of an ending. ...Well crap, time to start at square one.

I do appreciate the criticism, perhaps the next story I write will not have already been written.