Hmm. There is a clear emotional impact, but only at the end. The rest is rather murky and bland. Here are some points:

# Prose

The prose in this piece fell flat for me. The words you use seem repetitive and inappropriate for the situation. This is a thriller. It's intense. Emily is in a life-threatening situation, and the repeated use of basic dialogue tags (said) and bland punctuation make the characters seem two-dimensional. 

The descriptions need some work as well. Here is an example:

>“Please! I’m scarred! Don’t let me drown! My daddy never taught me to swim!” said a little girl who sat right next to Elizabeth, as both her feet became submerged by the rising water.

This paragraph has the potential to be so much more emotional than it is. Simply describing a look of terror on the girl's young face or replacing 'said' with 'shrieked' would elevate the impact tenfold. This scene is meant to be heart-wrenching. We are witnessing a helpless, tied-up child who has her whole life ahe

I read this one last night but I had too many problems with it, so I decided to sleep on it and give it another try today.  Here's what I've got.

## Overall Impression

The plot is paper thin.  The entire story feels like an exercise in evoking spooky/scary imagery with no real point to it.  If I'm right, it would explain all of the many contradictions and unresolved threads.  I'll indicate some of these below, but maybe this was the point?  You said it was for practice, so I'm curious what kind of skill you were working on.  It wasn't plotting.

The premise, on the other hand is at least a bit interesting; the part about the ocean consuming the building and the shadowy terrorist/soldier/guard/demon summoner guys not seeming to be affected by it was cool.

I liked the ending.  Being sucked out the window made me wonder if the building was sinking or if the ocean was just rising extremely quickly, and I wanted to find out, but this was one of a stack of questions that left me wanting t

Hi, I had a few issues with your piece while i was reading it so I'll list them here for you:

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1. starting with a description of the room, from its carpet to its blue tinge, is not going to grab the reader. Don't tell me its a living room, tell me that people are tied to dining chairs around a table or something, Also, what is everyone tied to if its a living room? What is there to be tied to?
2. I never really get an idea of how many hostages are in the room.
3. she doesn't immediately notice 'all the other people tied up around the room'?
4. the initial conversation between the 'terrorists' doesn't get explained
5. the words of the little girl come across very unrealistic 
6. the protags reaction to everyone being shot is understated, in fact not even mentioned.
7. any of their reactions to being about to be shot isn't even mentioned 
8. the leader has an opinion about violence but then appears to order everyone(including at least one child) to be shot.
9. I don't know a th

Hello, I have read your story. Here are my thoughts,

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First off, I feel like you did a good job setting the scene. Instantly I was able to picture the scene and environment that the character was in. It was also able to grab my attention instantly. You also managed to grasp the more subtle details that make or break a scene. However, you could have gone just ever so further. You said that the waves cast a beautiful shade of blue. But what sade of blue. Different parts of the world have different shades of water. Is it the teal blue of the Caribbean? The deep blue of the north? It would help out.

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You lost a lot of that detailed momentum on the next paragraph. You could describe her bondage a bit further beyond "it was tight and it hurt". Did they bind her elbows and have her arms in an uncomfortable position? Were they interested in her having a bad time and have a crotch rope digging into her? These details could help characterize the villains before they are even 

As a "piece of practice writing," it held my attention from start to finish. It reads a little like a Kafka novel. There is the terror of the "blue devil" storm that threatens to drown everyone, and of the terrorists themselves, but there is also the terror of not understanding what is happening and is going to happen. On the one hand it is a relief that she was not shot like the others, but on the other there was the increased terror of being told that they (not she) were being shot to make their deaths "as painless as possible for as many people." Does this mean extra pain for her? The fact that we don't know if being equipped with a mask and oxygen tank will, in the end, let her make her "way back from hell," accentuates the ambiguity of the story, it's weirdness, which is what I think you're striving for.

That neither we nor Elizabeth know why she was singled out for different (better? worse?) treatment works in the context of this practice piece, for setting a scene of Kafka-esqu

This is just a piece of practice writing I worked on a little while ago. I just want to see what others think of it. Thank you in advance!

[The Blue Devil \[975\]](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Av0D-9SrhA6VOdcdGrWVFwF4hzS7bkuNN8CMxpqcvAQ/edit?usp=sharing)

[Critique: \[1214\] The Fairy Lamp](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/o2ots4/1214_the_fairy_lamp/h2kj7fy/?context=3)

[975] The Blue Devil