Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26537256-20160716142055/@comment-4715955-20160717142942

After reading the other comments, I have extra stuff to add.

Learn not to take attitude with your critics. You could be the best author on the planet, but if you respond to criticism with underhanded or aggressive remarks, nobody will want to ready anything you write. Getting sassy with bullies is okay, but there's a difference between a bully and a critic. Best not to talk down to people 'til you learn that difference. Empy and I both tell it like it is, and he's right that you're getting defensive rather than listening to reason. The fact is, this story needs to be rewritten. Accept that and move on. Nobody said writing was easy.

Also, one friend understanding this story, whether or not you had already talked to him about it before he read it, doesn't mean everyone else is an idiot. If only one in ten people can tell what the hell's going on, fixating on that one positive review won't solve your problem. It'll fuel your denial like crazy, though.

So yeah, another problem is the lack of clarity that the first part of the story is the thought processes of the man in the second part. But the other stuff still applies: the purple prose and general clumsiness of the writing makes it hard to understand what's going on, even without the weird psychological metaphors. And in the end it begs the question, "So what?" So it turns out the council was the mind of a serial killer, and the vote decided he would murder his next victim after all. It's an interesting idea, but it's not enough to really give the story much weight or merit on its own. In fact, it turns out this really isn't a story at all: just a snippet of how this lunatic's mind works. Okay. Interesting idea, but you really don't do anything with it. There's no real conflict amongst the people inside his head: they have a vote, and a guy is gonna die. You basically bank on the Herman's Head motif to carry the story, and that's just not enough. It needs substance. Add that to my previous comment I guess.