Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26407997-20151204173055/@comment-25980905-20151206000338

[insert quirky phrase here]. Let's begin shall we?

Overall:

Ok, the story began on a quote. That's nice, but it doesn't relate to your story at all, especially if you relate it to the context in which it was said (the words themselves also have no direct link to your story). I would suggest removing the quote. The indent in the 'roughly-middle' of the story should also be corrected so that it is text and not an indent. There are also various typos and punctuation errors throughout the text (ie Capitalisation of names, spaces between words, 'know' instead of 'now', etc). Please read over your story and correct all errors before putting the story into a spelling and grammar checker (they are built into text programs like 'Microsoft Word', but can also be found online).

Moving on, I like how your story dealt with the consequences of people's actions. That's a genuine fear that inhibits most people's actions and I'm glad someone finally decided to do it. The fear of consequence is universal (both subconsciously and consciously). However, I feel like your approach towards this could have been better. Being caught is always bad, but there wasn't really any consequence to the protagonist besides them feeling shamed, disgracing their parents and then realising they were being put on trial in the afterlife. I mean, the protagonist is already dead. What's the worst that could happen? Hell? It just kind of feels like the protagonist is being punished with ginat waves of parental disappointment.

I'm also not sure what the twist in this story is (if there was supposed to be one). Was it meant to be the last line? It wasn't really a surprise/shock as you already made it clear that the protagonist was dead and there was a judge judging the person. It's pretty much self explanatory that that was a trial.

What I think this story needs more of is suspense and characterisation. The protagonist is a criminal, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It makes empathising with them incredibly difficult for the reader and, in a story like this, you want your readers to empathise with the protagonist so that they care what happens to him. After the readers have a substantial connection with the protagonist you can then begin building suspense around that character. The police, the trial; they're all examples of points of tension within your story that could be played on a lot better to build suspense.

Overall, the story wasn't all that creepy (fear is subjective and this one didn't do it for me), but it was readable. And readible is good. I think if the quote was removed the story would have hooked me a lot faster than it did during this reading. There are points where the story's flow is damaged, which breaks the immersion of the reader. These were mainly caused by the points featured in this review.

Anyway, that's it from me. I hope this helps.

Good luck in your writing adventure!