Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26814449-20150724020710/@comment-26425680-20150726030202

Your second and third paragraphs add nothing to the story. It's better to let the reader get to know your character by the way he reacts to situations, rather than just explaining everything to them right from the get go. Also, your character's personality traits don't seem to have any bearing on what follows. Why do we need to know that he's mature for his age? If he's mature, we should be able to figure that out by how he handles himself throughout the story.

The most important thing you need to work on is your style. Its too straightforward, and you have a tendency to tell the reader what's happening, rather than showing us. Here's an example:

"I was facing the mirror, and since my room had some light that came from the outside street lamps, I could see my reflection in it."

Okay, so you told us that the light from the outside streetlamp (one word) is allowing you to see, but that doesn't really paint a picture. You could re-word it like this:

"I stood in front of the mirror. A pale yellow glow permeated the room, courtesy of the streetlamp outside."

Do you see how the rewording gives the reader more of a chance to use their imagination? This is the kind of thing that improves with practice; it's not always easy when you're first starting out. But always be on the lookout for ways to "paint" a scene with your words.

You also have some clunky wording. For example:

"The day occurred normally and I went to sleep."

Grammatically speaking, I suppose this is correct, but it just sounds weird. In fact, it doesn't need to be there at all. You gave it its own paragraph, just to tell us that nothing happened.

And then there's this:

"In my reflection, my nose was painted in dark purple, but my nose wasn’t. My nose wasn’t painted at all."

That makes no sense to me. I think you're trying to say that the reflection's nose is painted, but yours isn't. But that makes me wonder how you would know your nose wasn't painted if the mirror wasn't being honest. That whole paragraph needs to be reworked.

You also leave some questions unanswered. Namely, what's up with the DVD you watched, and why does it cause nightmares? Since this is only the first part of the story, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're planning to address this in the second part. But don't forget to do that!