Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25036236-20140616230141/@comment-25036236-20140618011421

ImGonnaBeThatGuy wrote: This has major problems from the first paragraph.

The first graf brings tells us 40 things without SHOWING anything. The first three sentences are completely unrelated to each other. Everything is glossed over without taking any time for description, emotion or even dialogue. Her mother has a miscarriage and you tell us nothing about her thoughts. Why do they go back to the house and not straight to the hospital?

You tell us her life became bad, but it sounded more like she just kind of became a dick. Also, we don't know why her life was so good in the first place, so we have nothing to compare it to.

"One week later, on June 14th, 2014, Jenny finally lost her sanity." Finally? Why finally? NOTHING up to this point has indicated she would go insane. This is seriously a major problem. Nothing's happened. Was it her mother's miscarriage? You need to show us how she feels about that, then. Even that, while sad, isn't enough to make her go insane. If anything, it would effect the mother way more.

Lilly needs to be established much sooner. She just appears suddenly. Why would her parents laugh at their daughter's feelings like that? It's nothing particularly funny, it's just a teenaged girl's feelings. Adults, especially mother's don't tend to act like that. This devolves into fairy-tale wicked stepmother stuff where the parents are excessively cruel for no reason except so there's someone to be terrible to the main character. Bad parents are bad to all of their children, usually.

Maybe if this were set-up better, but it's still really unrealistic. Also, apparently this kind of thing didn't start happening until recently, because didn't she have a good life?

Cool it on the exclamation points.

Your main character comes off as really whiny and over-dramatic. She almost goes insane because her parents are jerk one time? ONE TIME. Over text messages. It's really petty and feels forced. Especially once the dad comes to apologize.

Her dad can pick locks? How does she not make noise while she cuts our her eye and cuts off her hand? HOW does she cut off her hand? She has to go through bone. Let's say a buck knife can go through bone, how is she doing it so fast? Why isn't she bleeding out?

Then, there's more cartoon shitty parenting. Why does he say to call an ambulance?

After that it's a race to the finish. The family is murdered in the space of a paragraph.

This needs a lot of work. Everything moves way, way too fast. Dude, I rewrote the pasta. Jenny is an only child and her father is dead. Her mother became a dick to her BECAUSE of the miscarriage, and that's how her life became bad.

I will add less exclamation points.

And also, in the new version, Jenny threatens her mother by saying she is gonna gouge her mother's eyes out and cut her hand off.

The first paragraph I will add more detail to. Also, dude, they can't go straight into the hospital with gutting knives and a hunting rifle.

I did think about the buck knife thing. I'll add more detail to it.

Overall, thanks for your advice.