Well, hello there: I am reviewing you for the "I write in December..." activity.

What I love about your work: I liked how you had him hunting her right from the beginning and you wrapped her interest in hands into the end. Quite a chilling tale (pun slightly intended).

Why I could relate to your work: I love horror stories, so this caught my attention. Creepiness having him stalk her right from the beginning. Though I read stories like this and shake my head. Why wasn't she paying more attention? Always makes me grateful I was raised to be aware of my surroundings, but makes me nervous about my own children.

My suggestions: One of the things I've noticed is that you have a tendency to use the passive voice. Google passive voice, it'll help clarify what should be worked on. Words like "was", "had", "were" and "have" should be used in limited quantity. Your words will pop much more if you can learn to reword such sentences.

Also, I noticed that many of the sentences start with "she". Your third paragraph has seven sentences, five of them start with "she". It's something to keep in mind, but you want to vary up the beginnings of your sentences. When they start the same way, they begin to lull the reader and can lose their interest.

Another suggestion is to pay attention to the tags for your dialogue. Actions are not tags and shouldn't be comma'd into the dialogue. It's something I've had to learn through multiple critiques. When you have your character do something, that does not qualify as a speaking tag. Now if you have them ask, say, respond, cry, snarl, etc., things that are sounds or speech, those should be comma'd. It's confusing and hard to remember but if you focus on it, your work will be so much better for it.

Any noticeable typos: I did notice the punctuation errors, but speech tags are definitely a confusing thing to work with. Okay, so are commas. I would recommend reading this out loud and looking for those spots.

In conclusion: I think this story has a lot of potential and with some polishing, could really shine. The concept is strong and who doesn't enjoy a predator hunting his prey story. Best of luck in your contest.




My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .