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Comments
Hi,
I enjoyed this - good job. I like the premise of the detective reading the otherworldly thoughts, and the connection to real life events.
If I could offer some helpful (?) thoughts... I think the story could use an edit and be a little tighter. While the background was useful to some extent there was a lot of it, and it meant the action didn't really get going until halfway through the piece. This gave the feeling of a slow start, rather than a real attention grabber. I wonder if you could consider starting off with some action that gets the same message across?
David
Good job here. I liked that it started right away on the gruesome crime-scene. This allowed some of the back-story that followed to be more easily absorbed. Maybe that section could be tightened a little, though its necesity becomes very clear later. Once the action starts, you pace it well and describe it in a way that was clear to follow--not an easy thing, I find, describing fast, brutal action with the written word. One paragraph could be broken down a little for clarity, the one that starts with the tech (i believe) saying, “No problem detective. Hey, is it true what they say?” There's like three separate pieces of dialogue going on there within the same pargraph body that made it a little hard to follow. Other then that, really good job.
--Dino
Nice work. Very visual, and an interesting central character, which felt like quite a bold move for a short story. The dialogue between Pete and Jack was very good and believable and, despite a relatively short role, worked to develop Pete. Especially like the 'water over the dame' metaphor. Just a quick couple of notes, I wasn't sure about the use of the word POP! twice (just personal taste, but I always shy away from using exclamation marks), and the pace ratcheted up in the last few pages, but it would have been good to see some build up earlier.
Again, these are just personal opinions, and I clicked the thumbs up button without hesitation.
I underlined some sentences/phrases that I liked:
The books called it Clairvoyance; the clergy called it Divine Visions. At first it was a gift, and a great tool to pick up girls with, but now he just called it a curse.
There was a theory that the human mind left behind residual traces of emotional energy when under extreme stress.
Some speculated that was what ghosts were, residual emotional energy.
Where those two sets of arms or three?
I think this was a very fun read. It took a little long to get to the action, but once it did, it was really good. I think some of the exposition could be cut and the latter part of the story with the monsters could be drawn out. The pacing just felt a little odd like it was really slow and then kind of rushed near the end. I think the descriptions of the monsters were really good, though. Very creepy! I also liked that the protaganist is a psychic. It would be fun to expand this into a character study. Are the monsters hunting him because of his abilities? How did he get them? etc. Good work!
This is an interesting story, and I really liked that it was set in one of the Levittowns. I wish you had done more with that connection, though. The monster just seems to have been unearthed by chance. I wanted to know more about him and why he was there, why he was on the rampage. It's very ingenious, though, that the main character can channel other people's fear as a weapon.