Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-35813313-20181225034034/@comment-35813313-20190121191133

Jallybwan wrote: Finished Escort's one. Amazing story, but the ending - the kill - could be fleshed out a bit more, if you'll excuse my pun. When someone dies, it's not just a physical "knife meets flesh" moment. There's a lot of psychological things going on behind the scenes, and it'd potentially be a good idea to explore that a little.

Also, in regard to "She wasn't invited to the daily discussions of the magistrates of Salem (and why would she? According to them, she's a little girl who doesn't know enough.), but she has done some snooping herself." - the punctuation and syntax makes it a little confusing to understand without reading it twice. I'd recommend changing it to:

"She isn't invited to the daily discussions of the magistrates of Salem. Why would she be? According to them, she's just a little girl who doesn't know enough. But she has done some snooping herself." (Word changes are marked in bold.)

I think the main problem here is that your tense switches between present and past frequently. That makes it a little annoying to track. Technically speaking, there's nothing grammatically incorrect, but it's a generally good idea to keep your paragraphs following the same tense.

wHaT In TarNAtIoN how did I never see this

I agree with the past tense thing. I'm actually more comfortable with writing in first person past tense, and I felt like that wouldn't really work with these types of stories. I wrote the entire Escort story in past tense and went back to fix any verb-tense errors, but I hadn't caught that one. Oops.

As for the kill, I didn't want it to be that drawn out. Rather, I wanted it to be short and sweet, sort of like the story itself. I wanted it to be reminiscent of an orchestra piece, with the (god-awful) timpani rising in the background and suddenly tapering off. I can fix it if it feels too rushed, though.

Thanks for the suggestions! I really appreciate them :D