Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26875863-20150811205424/@comment-26572345-20150824223901

Personally, I don't get why the story has to have two first-person perspectives as most of the story focuses on Johnson's experience. It may work out better if it was entirely written in a third-person perspective or have Erika's section removed entirely, with Johnson filling in some of the blanks at the beginning. There's no real sense of character progression either. Erika is barely around at the start of the story giving her little characterisation outside of pathos and malice when she does start haunting Johnson, leaving her subsequent appearances rather shallow and bland. Johnson himself is written as cartoonishly evil. Sexually assulting a highschooler, then killing her and burning her house down just comes across as silly, even under the pretense of mental illness and Native American superstitions. Sometimes sentences end when they don't really need to and appear a bit awkward, "I missed.  By about half an inch.  The police kicked in my door, found me, got me to the hospital and now I’m here.  In a coma.  The doctor thinks I’ll never wake up". The writing needs to be fluid in order for the reader to digest it properly, it just comes across as wierd in chunks. Just a suggestion for the previous sentence: "The police kicked the door down and found me sprawled across the floor with my brains decorating the walls. After they wheeled my body to the nearest hospital, I was able to hear the doctor saying that I was in a deep coma; one which I'll never wake up from" If this piece has the characterisation focused on a lot more and the wiriting perspective is set in a way which benefits the story, then this could be seen as a possible mainstay on the Wiki. I hope you get the critique you're after and I wish you the best with getting this story online. :)