Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26921530-20151001221447/@comment-25980905-20151004102052

Two days and no comments? Well, let's see what I can do. Let's begin shall we?

Overview:

''Well, I'm about to look like a villain. Before I go any further I just want to tell you that I am not trying to personally attack you or anything, this review is solely aimed at the text itself. My disclaimer is on my user page. Usually, I would have two sections: what I liked and what I didn't. However, I simply can't find much to say about this story on the positive side. Thus, I'll cover everything under a single heading. For this, I deeply apologise.

'''PS: skip to the last paragraph if you are a person who cannot handle serious constructive criticism. This is my personal disclaimer for this review.' 

To begin, the story lacks any form of subtlety. It is immediately obvious where trigger words have been thrown in (and I do mean thrown). Words like 'grotesque' and 'voracious' come to mind here. Just skim reading through the text, I could immediately tell there were words that didn't match the rest of the story. The protagonist and narrator, Luce, is not a person I envision using words of the calibre of 'grotesque' and 'voracious'. The do not fit the tone of the story.

I must also express my conscern towards the overall writing of the story, as it looks as though it was written in the post before being immediately submitted without a second glance. Sentences like 'As I reached patient doors I broke through one and it revealed a young woman whose head and spine were detached from the rest of her body.' and 'I smiled at her and reached my hand in  front of her as she grabbed onto it tightly.' come to mind when I judge the overall quality of the writing in this text. The description of actions is rather lacklustre, and so is the description of the settings and characters.

The characters were also poorly developed. The protagonist isn't elaborated on very much. We learn who she is and what her goal is, but aside from that we know nothing about her. It makes it very hard for readers to immerse themselves in the text, as well as care about what the protagonist is going through. The antagonist of the story, the monster, is also very poorly elaborated on and we, the readers, don't even get what its goal/goals are. It just seems to show the protagonist some seems from a few hours ago before devour devouring her and being done with the whole affair. The description of the antagonist is also nonsensical at times (eg 'As my eyes were glued to the grotesque figure it began to morph into an eye.' => you said figure... but it's a '...large glob of ink...') and it is also pretty basic. All of the description feels as though the audience is just being 'told' rather than 'shown'.

I was pleased to see a simile in the text: 'Her blood looked as if it was splattered by a careless artist.'. I also enjoyed the other comparisons made in the story to generate description (for example, 'The smell from these marks were pungent and reminded me of a gym locker room.'). However, they were fairly basic at best. The 'careless artist' was a good allusion to what may be happening, but it was not elaborated on any further in the text.

The plot is incredibly unclear. The story pretty much ends at 'It’s because I knew what the creature had done.'. Well that's cool and all for the protagonist, but the audience still has no idea what has happened. There's also the fact that the protagonist meets the blob in the start of the story, but then in the flashback it appears as though the blob killed her. That's a major continuity error.

The flow of the story was also severely damaged in the text. This made the story very hard to read, despite the fact that it is only two paragraphs long. The sentencing structure, grammar, wrong words (please look at the 'yous' and the 'yours') nonsensical errors and all of the random 'big words' thrown into the text did little to help the flow.

Finally, realism. Bubonic Plague? Yeah, no. In this current day and age, the bubonic plague isn't even a threat anymore. A qualified doctor would not diagnose someone with the bubonic plague. More likely, they would classify it as some new kind of illness. Unless the characters are surrounded by their own excremental waste, the bubonic plague is impossible. Then there's the fact that whatever twisted activities that may or may not be occurring within that hospital would have been reported to the police way before the events of this story.

Overall, the story needs a lot of revision. I would start by rewriting it in a program like Microsoft Word or something, making sure to expand more on the story (the characters, both protagonist and antagonist, and their goals). I would also focus a lot more on how you describe the characters and settings. Expanding on that 'careless artist' allusion may also help a lot more, maybe make more of a reference to 'art' if you're steering in that particular direction (it's really unclear what's actually going on so I'm taking a guess). If you're having problems with spelling and grammar be sure to consult any computer/tablet program of your choosing or even an online spelling and grammar checker. The best of luck in your rewrite. I hope this review helped and I look forward to reading the revised version and/or your response to this review.

Good luck in your writing adventure!