Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25444505-20140926202056/@comment-25156307-20140927014910

This is interesting. I like the concept, and you hit all the right beats in terms of pacing. It doesn't stretch on too long past the point where you figure out what's happening, which is how you should do a piece like this. I also liked the second to ending line: "Honey, you're as cold as ice." It's subtle enough to not slap the fact that she's dead in our face, but obvious enough to wake up the slower readers. Very well-executed.

The main detractor I noticed is that the writing is rather stilted. It is partly a function of the format, the stream-of-consciousness style, which I don't think is helping your piece. While being immersed in your character's head is integral to the story, it isn't necessary to narrate everything as a function of your character's thoughts. "I guess" and "I notice" are phrases you should avoid unless necessary. For instance: "I guess she is still really mad" could become "She must still be really mad". Their thoughts and observations don't need to be marked as such.

Also, the sudden realizations, announced as such, are messing up the feel for me. Outbursts like, "Amazing! I finally made substantial progress!" are not only not something most people would not think (and if you want this to be a character quirk, you would have to make that clearer), but messes with the chronology in a jarring way. I can't quite put my finger on why it's jolting me out of the flow of the story, but I think it has something to do with the fact that suddenly five, twenty minutes or a series of important actions have passed, and I have no idea where we are now or what has happened. I would advise putting in a few actions - it won't ruin your removed, half-blind internal feeling, but will make the story more cohesive and understandable. (Same with more real-world details).

The take away: I definitely think you should keep the intimate, floaty first-person present tense, but shift away from stream-of-consciousness (sorry, I do know that this is the title, too). This is a solid story with good pacing and a good twist, but the style hinders it. The less you can make it sound like a person diligently transcribing their every thought, and the more you can fill it with the feeling of actually being in a person's head, the better it will be.

Good luck, and nice work.