Happy to help. Keep at it. Good luck on your revisions and whatever you work in next

Thank you for the great feedback! You touched on some points I had been worried about, and raised new questions that I’ll definitely keep in mind !

**Initial Impression**

I did not understand the story. I was waiting for it to come together at the end in a way that would make sense to me. Did the mask have some mystical properties? Was the MC going to realize that she had been wearing the mask the whole time (after he put it on her at the beginning)? Why was it in the trash in the first place (if what he told her about that was even true)? What would cause a college girl to be so infatuated with a creepy older man? I had a number of questions that I was waiting to have answered but in the end I’m still left with.

**Introduction/Setup**

I was intrigued enough from the beginning. Who was this man? What was he doing stalking a college anthropology class? Why did he target this particular girl? I thought the setup was fine and it compelled me to read on. I’m not sure telling the first section of out of order added anything for me. I was waiting for a reveal as to why it was told like that. Like there would be some reason she was co

Edit: Its my first critique so forgive for the formatting.

"feeling quite alien from the rest of my body" the change of tense is quite bugging an it continues in the stories in between. the flow is interrupted in the otherwise smooth flowing work.

"there was his shadow lengthening across the floor, his footsteps ringing louder and louder" this is quite an extravagant use of words and sound, the "louder and louder" really? how much loud can a footstep get. The extravagance of words is quite often in the writing.

**Dialogue**\- the dialogue individually is good but how it changes in the first meeting itches me - firstly the narrator describes him in a fearful manner by the shadow and louder-louder, then by her dialogue we feel like its not that fearful when she turns. But then again when she goes and asks "do i know you?" it feels strange.

It didn't come together and didn't make a sense to me. I thought that something would happen but she waits and waits. Either I got the story wrong

I'm glad to hear you found my thoughts helpful! And yeah, experimenting with writing here and there is fun. Good luck with your future stories. :-)

Thank you so much, this is very helpful! I'm going to work on honing the narrator's intentions/personality. For now I have no real plans for the story other than experimenting with it. Thanks again for the advice!

Hi! Here’s some feedback for you. :-) 


**Opening Line** 


I think the first line could be one sentence while the ones describing the setting could be their own sentence.  


**Plot/Pacing**


> The sandwiches remained wrapped up for hours,


> kept smoothing down the pleats of my dress,


Right away, I’m not only drawn into your descriptions, but I’m interested in what’s going on. Why is this woman waiting? Is this a good or bad thing? I’m intrigued. 


> The mask would fall. From there, anything could happen.  


> the dirt already littered with footprints.


These are points where I’m interested again. I want to see what’s going to happen next! 


> I did not deserve it. I had interacted with him all of two times.


I don’t think the characters’ sadness is justified given their short and quite shallow meetings. Realistically, people would just feel a twinge of sadness then move on. That being said, if getting super invested super quickly is part of our narrators’ character, then I

This was very helpful! thank you for taking the time to give such a detailed critique.

This is my first critique here, so forgive the ugly formatting and my adherence to one of the templates linked in the welcome thread.

**General**

I'm not sure exactly where this story was supposed to take me. There's a magical element with the mask and the log that becomes a rotting stump, and her clarity of vision near the end, but it's unclear what's going on.

> I had interacted with him all of two times.

I think this is the crux of it for me. She goes from a "me too" moment the first day, to being triggered upon seeing him the next, to obsessing over him. I found it hard to suspend my disbelief, like how does she fall for the annoying dude in the mask after such brief interaction? I felt like losing him took longer than knowing him.

**Mechanics**

If I had to make a suggestion, it would be to dial it back a bit. Some of the sentence structure and punctuation choices draw attention to the craftsperson more than the craft.

> We had arranged to meet in my favorite copse of pines,

You’ve made a lot of good points, especially about working on this story as a character study. I will keep these in mind going forward. Thanks so much for the help!

(1) Comments, impressions, and so forth:

As it stands right now, there isn't much there below the surface. One character meets another. She falls for him but nothing comes of it. That's really it. It happens in a setting that's clear but isn't really fleshed out but that's not that big a deal. Your voice and tone are good and consistent and you can describe things well, so that will certainly get better as you rewrite this and keep working. 

I think the bigger issue is that the character is only really surface-deep, and for that reason it's hard to much care about them. Things happen to her and she responds and that's about it. If you are going to have a plot that's not very tangled and intricate, the story becomes a character study, and so you have to make the character much more intricate. The big thing is that she is disappointed, sort of, with the fact that things didn't work out. Okay, why? As it stands right now the reader has no real reason to understand why she feels disappoi

I’m so glad it resonated with you! You made a lot of great observations that I will keep referring back to. Thank you for your help!

**Upon first read**

I did not intend to read this through just now.  I could not put it down.  It is beautiful.  It has motion, by which I mean that I could not put it down because "and then what?" and "yes, and what happened after that?". 

The central conceit of the mask - an old, traditional, African carved mask, no  less - is both a rich mine of suggestion and metaphor and a land mine field of possible cliche or worse.   I think you're on the positive side of that equation.

I am not young.   I was in college in the 1980s.  This story viscerally took me back to the mind-bending experience of having these world-opening meetings with new people, so intense that the academic stuff fades into the background.  So intense that the risk taking - like those mornings waiting for him - lights up the world.   I hadn't thought about those feelings for years and they flooded back as I read this.

So, uh,  thanks for that!

To me, this feels like it wants to be part of a larger work, whether or

Any thoughts/impressions are welcome. 

Story: [The Man in the African Mask]

Critiques:

[Missing \[3120\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/ituqgt/3120_missing/)

[Dead Skin \[2829\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/hywjno/2928_dead_skin_short_story/)

[2735] The Man in the African Mask