Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24996913-20140803215745/@comment-25148755-20140805040938

Was that really the end? Because, it felt more like the end of the setup.

There's a few minor grammatical things ('knelt' rather than 'kneeled'), you stopped capitalizing Belle for a while there (not a huge fan of that name but whatever.)

The story takes some pretty hard right turns at two places. The first is, obviously, when they walk into the door of the arena, the second is where the ringmaster notices her smell. They just don't feel natural, almost like I was reading different stories. Not sure exactly why but I feel like you could probably smooth them out a bit.

As I'm writing this review, I just realized why I hate the name Belle...because it's too much like Bella. This story is basically the introduction of mashup between Twilight and 50 shades of Grey (which started as a Twilight fanfic) if Christian Grey was a vampire or Edward Cullen was evil.

Courtney's character...eh. Sort of like those right turns I mentioned she's just all over the place. First she's coquetish. Then pissed. Then stoic. Then scared. Then sorry. Then excited.

Back to the ending, specifically because you asked: way too abrupt. I'm all for a good twist ending, but that generally leaves you with a fairly narrow amount of interpretation...the friend who's really a monster turns around lunging for your neck sorta thing. This one just feels incomplete, like you didn't even get around to describing what the trials are, just the rules she has to adhere to during them.

So I guess bottom line is although it's not presented in a vehicle I like, mostly due to the Twilight undertones I now can't get out of my head (don't think of a blue eyed polar bear...goddammit!) the notion of some crazy underground monster fight club/vision quest/whatever has some awesome potential. But as of right now it's just that. My humble suggestion for a twist ending: she completes the trials but the "reward" isn't all it's cracked up to be. She could go down to the room and walk in on Courtney being tapped like a keg or something.