Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-36393004-20180912183148/@comment-36393004-20180913120911

BloodySpghetti wrote: The introduction is tad long, but it's bearable. You might want to trim it a little. Nothing to serious to do with the introduction, honestly.

As for the story as a whole, it's pretty good. I like how you kept the image of the creature anatomically reasonable, being a fish it should be as a fish... or a fish kind of thing. Mermaids, Sirens, whatever usually get tend to be portrayed as "beautiful creatures", Well, if a marine biologist comes across this fish looking disgusting carcass, they'd find this beautiful but most people would just try to look away. I've read an article about how Mermaids should look, if they existed and they'd be ugly as fuck.

Originally Sirens are bird human hybrids, but the mermaid thing works well for your story.

Here's what I found kind of weird, how is an old man alone at sea, especially if he's fishing big game fish? Is he trying to die at sea or make a living out of the sea? I would've given him a pal or two. The fact that he is old doesn't make him unable, it's just weird to go fishing in the ocean alone. Also, I'd make him a tad bit more physically healthy, just a little. I mean, I get it, life at sea is devastating pretty much but as a person who engages regular physical activity should be relatively healthy.

I really like the ending too, it's really nice and you could go on about how it's a divine intervention that saved him, the lightning strike really reminded me of Zeus' sloppy behaviour towards humans.

I do suggest you proof read this thing all over, fix some odd phrasing and perhaps other issues that I did not notice in detail and I guess after some minor plot editing (the introduction thing mostly) it's good to go. I will be trimming the introduction today and I know that Sirens were portrayed as bird/females, which is why I used the term 'loosely'. I wanted something with the premise of a Siren of the sea without making it animalistic at all. I didn't want something that was half fish either. I wanted something that was more of a demon of the sea. I really like the idea of old myths having a root in some kind of truth and that truth might even be more horrible than the myth. As for him being alone, I was trying to give a nod to another story of a similar name, maybe I missed my mark and I can fix that by adding just one sentence. Yes, he is fishing to earn a living and I should have clarified that.