
##Details

I want you to pick more specific details, more unusual details, details that paint a more vivid picture of Maria than what you give us. For example:

> In the backseat of her car is a hoarder's paradise. 

Hoarder's paradise. Ooh, interesting. Let's see all the quirky little trinkets that a hoarder would love!

> Her frail plastic grocery bags held mounds of clothes. Her pillow and blanket threatened to fall off the polyester seats and onto the muddied underside. 

Oh. Grocery bags, pillow and blanket.

In other words, the kinds of things *anyone* might have in their car. Not a "hoarder's paradise." Your description wrote checks that the specific details did not cash!

Give us something, anything, that hints at Maria's personality. What old magazines would she have read? What stained T-shirt did she buy at a garage sale because she liked its motto? What IS that motto? Why can't she let go of the brown owl plush toy, and why can't she let go of it? These paint a picture. Gro

##Overall Impressions 

FYI, this is my first time coming to your story, so I can't (nor should I) evaluate it based on previous versions. So I'm coming into this cold.

Maybe I was too distracted by the "Short sentence. Short sentence. Short sentence." nature of the prose, but I found the story overall to be confusing. I think there's meat there. Maria wanting revenge for her brother, for example, and going to an old house where only SHE knows the killer will be? Of course there's tons of tension there.

The way you develop it, however, robs us of that tension completely. 

I'd rather you open the story with Maria's backstory, her life, and the hook that she's going to a "dead man's cabin." Then end the first beat by revealing that she's there to get revenge on her brother's killer--i.e., maybe she loads a gun before you do a section break. That is full of tension, full of reasons to read on. Will she live? Will the killer win? That's the kind of tension we need.

Instead you end on a

(continued here)

# Character

This was a mixed bag. Some things were very clear to me: Maria is traumatized by her brother’s death because she loved him. All of her actions are driven by this. Luke didn’t conform to society’s notion of gender and was abused by his parents for it. Some things that were less clear: anything about the personality, identity, or motivation of Luke’s killer (although I realize this might be revealed gradually), how much of Maria’s tics or qualities are authentic vs put upon (It’s mentioned that she has a disability, or at least implied by “the curse of disability” and her lisp, but it also mentions that she played these things up or acted out more symptoms than she actually had. I’m not sure where the line is.).  
   
Maria’s characterization is strongest in the sections when you show rather than tell. You tell me that she’s sad and empty and numb and that everything she’s doing is to protect her brother’s memory/cabin. What actually shows me that is the fa

# General Remarks

I haven’t read the prior versions of your story, so everything I say is about this version only. On the whole, I found this confusing, both because of some mechanical things (like the fragments. Oh, the fragments!) and the details that you chose to include or leave out. It’s tagged as fantasy, but from this excerpt in particular, I wouldn’t be able to tell that. The pacing was a bit slow, to the point that it felt like a bit of a slog to get to the actual action at the end. Just based on this first chapter, I wouldn’t personally continue reading this book. However I do think you have the bones of an interesting premise, and some of the details were definitely intriguing; they were just bogged down by unnecessary description and “telling” sentences.  


# Hook

First, let’s talk about the hook. The first paragraph comes in strong, letting us know that 1) Maria’s brother was murdered and 2) She’s still haunted by his death. That definitely piques my curiosity, although

‘“See this Maria?" Luke said, pointing at the mirror. "No matter what happens we'll both be ok. Luke said. "I got a friend who lives here and if something happens to either of us, well, he'll take us in."
Luke wasn’t ok. Maria was the one to find[p] his corpse.’

—I’m intrigued to find out who this friend is, and also to learn more about Luke, perhaps just imply that something bad happened and make it seem like maybe Maria is trying to track him down, then at a crucial moment pull the plug and reveal he’s dead, once we are invested, so it hurts as much as it hurts Maria 


‘Seven years and I didn't see that? Maria stared into the mirror. Her reflection smiled back with tired eyes.’

—explore her tired eyes more, you could make this moment so much powerful if you do that 


‘The stars simmered violently in the night. She wondered why she couldn't move on with her life. The years passed like sand in an hourglass. His face was beginning to blur away. Luke's memory would fade like the phot

‘She gazed at the mirror. Oh, the things her brother once loved. Cherry lipstick. He'd often bathe[o] in the balm, despite the bruises their father left behind. The beatings never broke his resolve and when Maria was being mocked after school for the lisp that plagued her speech, he broke five boys' jaws, all while in a skirt and high heels. Their father had taught him the meaning of a good punch’

—one thing I was told in therapy about abuse is that ‘at least with physical abuse you know where you stand’, as in everybody knows it’s wrong. I feel it’s a cheap way to show a character is bad. Perhaps try and more morally grey character, maybe one who get angry and screams and Luke feels the need to learn how to make makeshift weapons to protect himself? Emotional abuse is more often grey, and more people are emotionally abused than physical, so if you want to connect with the reader I’d seriously tone down the trauma, because it’s so bleak. She sees her brother die, she watches a junkie 

She closed her eyes. Her brother loved to tell stories. He talked about rainbow skies. Little wizards bustling through the heavens on broom-sticks.

—I personally think you should cut the junkie and gang banger part entirely, or just subtly imply trauma (sort of like how Lovecraft lets our minds imagine the monsters, if that makes sense?) and use that space for more memories like this, because it’s more central to the plot and makes the reader root for Maria, and it doesn’t make me pity her, but it does make her feel her pain. Which is what you want in a story, because this is powerful stuff 



“They're not witches." Her brother said. He pointed to a corner of the mirror as Maria slammed toy blocks across the carpet.


I'll come back for you when it's time. Luke's killer had told her. A knife against her throat. Her fault. Luke warned her not to go right away. He threw her to the ground and ran. Ran deep into the woods. Police couldn't find him. Six dead. He killed once a year. Always









‘Maria's life is seeing her brother die. The bullet in his forehead. Blood leaking out of his skull. Brain matter sprinkling the cabin’s wooden floor.’

—I’d think of a better word than sprinkled. I feel sprinkler is a bit of a soft word, plus not that accurate (generally speaking). I don’t exactly want to encourage about what gore looks like, but I’d used a phrase like ‘his brain matter spread across the cabin’s wooden floor like thick sludge’  

‘An endless vision. A montage of decay. The last of her purity, contaminated by his corpse’

—when talking of purity I tend to think of churches talking about saving yourself for marriage. Maybe use a word like innocence?

‘Her blood thickened at the sight and when the sludge inside her heart choked her, she spiraled down a whirlpool. Down into the death that made her’

—I really love this, it’s so visceral!

‘Maria traveled through the mountains in an ancient pale Cadillac. A junkie had 'sold' her the car. He was about to overdose bu

(Continuation)

"In the back seat of her car is a hoarder's paradise"  This seems to have jumped tenses.  I would reword it to something like "The backseat if her car was a hoarder's paradise." 

"Her frail..."  I would just drop her and say frail, as they are in her car.  I would also bnb use a decriptor like wads perhaps, as mounds suggest a particular shape. 

"onto the muddied underside" ... maybe switch that to "muddied floor" which is what I think you meant?  Underside suggests underneath the car to me. 

"Insanity." Like Alien before, can probably merge into its companion sentence. 

I don't know enough about house foreclosures to understand why she is working 16 hours a day, 5 days a week.  I'm assuming it's a weekend in the current moment of the story. 

"The perverts you know.  Are better than the oerverts you don't."  Feels better as a single sentence.  Also doesn't really feel like a real justification. 

"She drove past a fractured tree."  A description of the fractured tr

I see the NSFW tag, I see "filling some holes in the story."  Checks out. 

Straight out of the gate, the first sentence is weird to me, "Maria's life is seeing her brother die."  I'm trying to imagine how in some context, this would fit.  After a minute or so I've come to the conclusion that her brother has a terminal illness.  Quite an intro. 

"The bullet in his forehead".  Not what I was expecting.  I'm thinking, maybe "bullet wound" or "bullet hole" in his forehead.  

I'm also not certain sprinkling is a good description for brain matter.  Maybe, "scattered across". 

"A montage of decay" brings up a different visual than what is so far presented.  Did she watch his body rot there after the incident? 

"The last of her purity."  I haven't read past this yet but the word "innocence" occurs to me as being a better fit perhaps, which would of course necessitate a change of the word contaminated as well.  

"Her blood thickened at the sight and when the sludge inside her heart choked

Worked on improving voice and filling in some holes in the story for third round to leave sort of a mystery but to also help it make slightly more sense. Also eliminated some boring details and made the writing more complex.

Still anticipating this needs more work but each time, I feel like it looks a little better from the start at least.

Story   [Chapter 1 Remnants v3 - Google Docs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QlR7gB_YgZETBO5t9CERqBKo_itNqHGq25fu5YP55oc/edit) 

Critiques

[\[1816\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/wk8wkg/1816_silence_and_coffee_in_the_end/ijr63pj/?context=3)

[1772] Beyond the Mirror Chapter 1 V3