Talk:She-Wolf in Sheep's Clothing/@comment-27838637-20180228123658

So, straight off the bat I can tell you I really liked this story. It was a simplistic approach to a simplistic song. The inspiration was there, and its very literal interpretations makes a unique tale out of an otherwise normal story.

Lyrical Interpretation – 21/25

What I really like here is that you tried to incorporate absolutely everything the lyrics entailed. Personally I really liked how you took all the imagery and metaphors literally, as if you hadn’t, we’d have a pretty lame story.

The fact that you were able to create a literal monster out of a bunch of crazy metaphors is commendable. You defied my expectations of what I thought would simply be a crazy woman, and turned her into a sexy-shape-shifting-praying-mantis-demon-bitch. Whilst that is a tiny bit absurd, it works well considering your influences.

Perhaps my biggest gripe though, is how painstakingly clear it is what your influences for the story are. Whilst I know that is the whole point of this contest, I think that naming the story after the song was a step in the wrong direction and a massive red-herring. The story would have been much more enjoyable if it wasn’t implied from the title that we’d be dealing with an evil shapeshifting woman. It just gives away the twist. This was a touch too much inspiration for my tastes.

Horror Factor – 18/25

What I really enjoyed here was that the story was darkly comedic. You made me chuckle a few times and the humour was present throughout. You need to be careful though, that you don’t forget to add in ample amounts of horror too. The whole bar scene was a perfect time to set up the impending doom for one of the characters but you don’t venture past cryptically telling us that they are both predators. Even a little bit of description goes a long way to setting the mood, but you don’t seem to do anything significant here until the end. Even the chatting at the bar has nothing questionable or suspicious other than a little bit of mystery surrounding both characters.

However, this wouldn’t be needed if you drew the horror out a tiny bit more later in the story. We have a tense scene where Alice stalks her prey in the bathroom, but you seem to gloss over this far too quickly. In a story as short as this you need to drag out the shorter, tenser moments such as this so that they truly have an impact. This seems to happen again in the ending when Alice kills her prey. I think you did too much over-explanation which hurts the mystery surrounding this alien monster. However, the insectoid beast was an inspired choice and the imagery in this scene was great and served up a nice fat dish of ‘NOPE’. Again though, I felt that you could have dragged this scene out a little longer to make it a bit more terrifying.

Entertainment Value – 22/25

As I said before, the simplistic plot makes this a breeze to read through. It’s a really fun story and there’s not much here to disengage the reader. The characters are interesting, and the reader is enticed to read further because you do a good job at keeping the suspense and building mystery. Again, the dark comedy is a welcome theme and it always serves well to keep the reader entertained. But, then we are dragged out of the story with two paragraphs that explain the murders. Not only does it drag us from the story, but it addresses the reader. This stylistic choice is not always a bad thing, but it seemed to come off as a little out of place here. A better decision would have been to have the characters discuss this a little. This conversation may have helped improve your horror factor a little too, as it was a great opportunity for the characters to talk about some freaky shit.

General Quality – 20/25

I didn’t find anything wrong here; grammar, spelling and pacing are all done very well - but there is the issue of the title. It just gives too much away. Generally I don’t make judgements on a story by the title but in this case it simply takes away a lot of the tension, surprise and mystery. Essentially it tells us that the female character is evil, giving away the twist. And while the praying-mantis form is a welcome surprise, this spoilerific title is a big disappointment.

Final Score – 81/100