Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25618483-20141105142033/@comment-24056975-20141105221427

I've got notes, roughly in the order that I thought of them while reading. I put the three most important parts up to the top, though.

Notes:

Your narrator has no character arc. He ends the same as he began, he neither gained nor lost anything. He just continues to exist. You didn't even have a subversion of the arc, in which he pointedly remains the same as the world changes around him. It's actually easier to write a good story where the narrator has a standard arc than a decent one where he doesn't. I'm not a professional, but to me the key seems to be knowing what it is your trying to say by having him stay the same.

In most stories, there would be a gradual building of horror as the protagonist realizes he is dead, or the monster, or whatever. Read H.P. Lovecraft's "The Outsider" for the first example to pop into my head. The ending you delivered is a non-ending. It does mesh with the Sword of Slain subplot, but it wasn't handled well enough to work yet. This ties into the previous note, it either needs to change or it needs to be tied together more tightly so it's clear that the non-ending was intentional.

I actually would have liked the fantasy novel bit if it hadn't been wrapped up so clumsily. The sentiment was perfect, reading it through only to find out there were no answers to the questions. It also mirrored your plot in that the narrator never even knew who the protagonist was until near the end. The overall delivery was somewhat lacking, though. I might suggest cutting this, but that bit of symbolism is currently the strongest thing you have going in this story. If it was intended to mirror your story so closely, play it up more. Otherwise ax it.

Way too long. Too many days with no buildup or purpose. Everything from before the narrator found From Beyond can be merged into one night, with everything following compressed to another night or two. Three if you want to keep the book in the trash bit.

Proofread for weird sentence structure and typos spellcheck missed. Intact is one word, "short one" rather than "short on," etc. You also have too many spaces between paragraphs. Just use one space, please. This way makes the story look even longer and it's not yet strong enough to avod a TL:DR after the first paragraph.

I like that the scribbles are childlike. Great subversion of a trope. I wish you would have put it to more purpose.

Why does it seem like the narrator spends more time writing in this journal (writing is present tense when referring to the cleaners he's waiting on) than actually reading this book that he bought? He uses past tense when talking about the rest of the day, or the final incounter with the cleaners. Pick a tense and stick with it.

Who is the narrator? The story leaves them blank. I didn't even guess a gender until the final sentence.

Stylisticly, I like to avoid questions and comments made to the reader, like "You know the kind," or "Guess who it was." This being a journal, I can't say it's a hard rule, but it just never reads right to me. Needless to say, I didn't like the way this started. I think it would be stronger if those first three lines were just dropped.

Hope this has been helpful