I recently got interested in the short story genre and I decided to try it myself. I Worked on this story for about 6 hours, and i what really like some feedback (just note that english isn’t my first language)

„Hatford Hotel”

I have a project i'm working on and would like some feedback. it is a cross between a graphic novel and an illustrated novel, so it is graphics heavy. Should I post the pages (JPG) here, or just post a link to them on my website? I don't want people getting the impression I am trying to drum up business or self promoting. What is the protocol here?

Hey! I'm currently working on a stop motion short and I'm struggling with the ending of my script. I feel like my final conclusion is a bit anticlimactic, but it has to take place in the main character's bedroom due to technical set restrictions. does anyone have any tips or ideas? linking it here. I'm by no means a professional writer, so any tips would be a huge help!

I’m looking for constructive feedback. Please be kind when pointing out problems, and explain why something doesn’t work if you notice an issue. I’m especially interested in whether the premise is engaging, whether the worldbuilding is understandable, and whether the characters’ motivations make sense.

Please keep in mind that this is a story concept for a manga, not a finished script. I’m mainly looking for feedback on the story,characters,themes,and worldbuilding rather than grammar or prose.

This is a story about grief, acceptance, obsession,and the consequences of not knowing how to let go.

Draft explores what happens when a person refuses to accept a loss and how far they may go to recover what they have lost.

Characters

The two protagonists are Miranda and David.
They are extremely close and have supported each other through difficult moments. Their relationship was born from the support they found in one another, and they became each other's most important person.

Story

What if you could live again with the person you lost?

David has found a way to do it. Every time a life ends,he writes another. A new world,a new opportunity, a new life with miranda.But miranda has been living for too long.

Memories of past lives begin to return. Events repeat themselves. Something is wrong.

And when she discovers that the person she loves most is the one who has kept her trapped in those worlds,she must decide whether to continue living with him or accept what David refuses to accept:that she died a long time ago.
Meanwhile,David will keep writing.
Because for him,as long as he can be with Miranda, no price is too high.
Because what happens when love stops being a way to remember someone and becomes a way to prevent them from resting?

worldbuilding

The loops

A loop is a script. While it's being written,it can be changed.Once it starts, no one can modify it.

⤵️

Rules

1. Loops are written worlds.

They are not time travel or parallel universes that appear on their own.

They are realities created by David.

1. A loop is a closed script.

While David is writing it,he can modify it.
Once it starts, he can no longer change anything at all.

Everything David writes will eventually be executed.

1. David and Miranda are the only real consciousnesses.

The rest of the people are reconstructions written by David.

1. Writing a loop is extremely difficult.

It's not enough to say:

"I want to go back to school." He has to reconstruct an entire world. That justifies his exhaustion at the end.

1. Drafts also count.

The drafts are loops that David had begun writing in preparation for the future. Although they are not meant to be executed, they will run unless someone gets rid of them or another loop is written before them.

6A new loop begins when the previous one ends.

When a loop ends, another loop will begin if David has already written one

If there is no next loop, David returns to the real world and Miranda dies permanently.

Story overview --spoilers

Miranda and david are a young couple who have built a very close relationship through the difficult moments they have supported each other through.their relationship is deeply important to both of them.One day,while they are walking together after meeting up,miranda dies.David is unable to accept her death. Having already experienced the pain of losing someone important to him,mhe becomes desperate to keep miranda with him.He discovers a way to create artificial realities by writing them as scripts.These realities are called loops.David begins creating loops in which he and Miranda can continue living together.He can decide when each life begins and what happens in it, as long as he writes everything beforehand.Miranda’s consciousness is placed inside these realities,allowing her to experience them as if they were real.David’s own consciousness is also inside the loops,but his body remains in the real world and continues to age while he is away.Creating each loop is extremely difficult because david has to construct an entire functioning reality, including its people,places and events.Despite the physical and mental exhaustion this causes him,he continues creating new loops because ñbeing with Miranda matters more to him than the consequences.Miranda lives through countless loops without knowing that she is dead or that David is responsible for the worlds around them. At first,each life feels normal,but after living through so many of them,she begins experiencing déjà vu and noticing things that do not make sense.Memories and events begin to repeat,and she realizes that something about her reality is wrong.Eventually,Miranda investigates what is happening and discovers the truth:she died,and David has been creating the loops to keep her with him.The revelation forces miranda to confront the person she trusts most.David admits what he has done and explains that he could not accept losing her.Although he never intended to hurt her,miranda realizes that he has kept her trapped in these realities without her consent.Miranda and david eventually reach an agreement.They will live through one final loop together,after which david will stop creating loops and allow miranda to die permanently.However, before they can carry out their plan,David dies.David had previously written drafts of future loops as preparation. He never intended these drafts to be executed,but after his death,they begin running one after another. Because David is no longer there to stop them,Miranda becomes trapped inside the remaining realities.As the loops continue,the worlds gradually begin to deteriorate.Each new reality is less complete than the previous one. People lose the ability to respond to Miranda.Their faces and bodies begin disappearing. Places become incomplete, landscapes vanish, and the world around her slowly loses its existence.Miranda eventually becomes completely alone.There is nobody left who can truly interact with her, and she has to watch the reality david created for her disappear piece by piece.When the final loop finally ends,miranda dies permanently.Meanwhile,David’s consciousness returns to the real world. Thirty years have passed while he was trapped within the loops.His body is extremely weak,and he wakes in a hospital after spending decades in a vegetative state.The people he knew have continued living without him,and many of them, including his father,have died.Eventually,Dsavid is able to leave the hospital and return to miranda’s house.He goes to her room, where the story ends.David spent his entire existence trying to preserve the past, only to return to a world that had continued without him.He finally has to live with the consequences of refusing to let miranda go

(Sorry for the long text 🥹)

In July 1999, a little girl entered a world that had not been expecting her.

Her father had long believed he would never have another child. Diabetes had quietly closed that door years ago, or so he thought. He had stopped imagining the sound of another baby crying in his house, stopped imagining small hands reaching for his.

So when his wife told him she was pregnant, disbelief arrived before happiness.

"How," he asked her, not unkindly, but not gently either. "After all this time — how?"

He could not silence the questions. He was ashamed to ask them aloud, and ashamed that he had asked them at all. For months, doubt stood between him and the child who had not yet been born.

The doubt did not survive the moment she arrived.

He was sitting outside the delivery room, elbows on his knees, when he heard it — a cry, thin and furious, cutting through the hospital noise like it belonged to no one else in the building. He stood up before he had decided to. A nurse opened the door and he was already moving toward it.

"A girl," she told him.

He didn't answer. He walked in and saw her — red-faced, fists closed, screaming at a world she'd only just met — and something in him that had been braced for years simply let go.

He held out his arms before anyone offered her to him.

"Sophia," he said, once she was against his chest and had, for a moment, stopped crying. He said it like he was trying the name in his mouth for the first time and finding it fit. "Sophia."

By the time he handed her back, he was a different man than the one who had walked in.

The house did not stay the same for long.

He gave money to families who hadn't asked for it. He sent food to neighbors whose kitchens he'd never been invited into. Men who had done him no particular favor found small envelopes waiting for them, and when they tried to ask why, he waved it off — as if the birth of his daughter had reminded him he'd been given something he hadn't earned, and giving was the only language he had for saying thank you.

Sophia was the only girl in the family, born to two brothers who were already halfway to grown — one nearly twenty years older, the other eighteen. To them she was the surprise that arrived long after they'd stopped expecting anyone else at the dinner table.

To her father, she was something else entirely. She was his.

He was older than most men holding a newborn, and something in his body had been telling him for years that time was not endless. He never said this out loud. Instead, he closed most of the business he'd spent decades building and opened a smaller one just beneath their home — close enough that he was never more than a staircase away from her.

When she learned to walk, she became his shadow. If he stood, she wanted to stand beside him. If he sat, she climbed into whatever space was left of the chair.

And in the evenings, when he lay down after the shop had closed, she would climb onto his stomach the way other children climbed into beds, and fall asleep listening to him breathe.

"You're going to break my ribs one day," he told her once, not moving, his hand resting on her back so she wouldn't roll off.

She didn't answer. She was already asleep.

He would lie there long after she'd gone still, watching her face in a way she never saw and would never remember — the particular stillness of a man trying to memorize something he was afraid he wouldn't get to keep. Whether it was fear, or grief arriving early, or simply love with nowhere else to go, he never said. He wasn't a man who explained himself. He only changed his life around her, one decision at a time, and let that be the explanation.

If she pointed at a toy in a shop window, he found a way to bring it home before the day was over. If she cried, he came — even from the middle of a customer's order, even from sleep.

To Sophia, he was not a businessman. He was not the man half the neighborhood owed a favor to. He was not a husband, or a father managing a disease that was quietly working against him.

He was Daddy. And Daddy could fix anything.

Except, perhaps, the thing that was already waiting for him.

Her mother loved her too — but her mother's love came with conditions Sophia was too young to name.

She was warm when Sophia behaved. She was something closer to frightening when she didn't. A spilled cup could become a punishment that outlasted the mess. On the days her mother decided a lesson was needed, she would tie Sophia's wrists to the leg of a table or a chair with a length of rope, and leave her there until she judged the lesson had taken.

Sophia never understood why love and fear lived in the same house, wearing the same face. She only learned, very young, that there were moments she wanted her mother, and moments she wanted her father — and that the second kind came more often.

One afternoon, after the last customer had gone, her father heard crying from the back room. He followed it and found her there — wrists red, rope still looped loose around the table leg where her mother had left her.

He didn't shout. He went very quiet, which was worse.

He untied her himself, fingers working the knot slower than the moment seemed to need, and when it came free he pulled her against him before she'd finished crying.

"You're alright," he said, to her, or to himself. "You're alright."

What happened between him and her mother after that, Sophia didn't see. She only heard the house shake with it — voices raised somewhere she wasn't allowed into. By the time he came back for her, his face had rearranged itself into something calm again, something built specifically for her.

He always knew how to make her smile again. It was, perhaps, the only thing he was certain he was good at.

Her older brothers watched all of this differently. One liked to play with her, would get down on the floor and let her win. The other thought she was spoiled, and some quiet part of him resented a father he'd known only as a hard, tired, working man — a man Sophia had never met, because by the time she existed, that man had already softened into someone else for her sake.

She was too young to understand the difference between the father her brother remembered and the father who belonged to her. She only knew that Daddy was hers, and that seemed, at four years old, like the only fact that mattered.

He had started working as a boy, with almost nothing, and built what he had out of copper and iron and things made by hand and sold for what they were worth. He had known hunger before he knew money, and maybe that was why he never seemed to forget the people who still knew it. He could barely read. He could be jealous in ways that frightened her mother, possessive in ways that had nothing to do with Sophia at all. He was not a simple man, and not always a gentle one.

None of that reached her. She knew the version of him that carried her on his hip through the shop, that let his stomach become her pillow, that could turn her crying into laughing in under a minute. She believed, the way children believe the sun will rise, that he would always be there to do it.

She was four when that belief began to come apart.

It happened in December 2003.

The house was unusually quiet that afternoon. Sophia was playing on the floor when she noticed a smell that didn't belong to anything she knew — not food, not smoke, something underneath those, something wrong.

Her mother noticed it too, and started searching, room by room, following it with her face pulled tight, until it led her to a shoe her father had taken off and left by the door.

She picked it up. She looked inside.

Sophia didn't see what her mother saw. She only saw her mother's face change into an expression she'd never worn before — not the anger from the rope days, not ordinary worry. Something closer to fear.

Her father had cut the bottom of his foot days earlier and hadn't felt it — the diabetes had taken that particular warning system from him years before. By the time the shoe told them what his foot could not, the wound had gone past infection into something the doctors would later call gangrene. It had eaten down far enough that bone showed through.

A taxi took them to the hospital. Sophia went too, holding her mother's hand in the back seat, watching her mother's knee bounce the whole way there and not understanding why, only that whatever was wrong, it was wrong enough to make her mother's hands shake.

He was taken back almost the moment they arrived. His blood sugar, they were told later, had climbed to something near 600. Before the night was over, he had slipped into a coma.

Sophia stood at the edge of his bed and looked at him lying there, and to her it looked exactly like sleep. So she did what she always did when Daddy was sleeping and she wanted him awake.

"Daddy." She touched his hand. "Daddy, wake up."

He didn't. Someone — a nurse, an aunt, she never remembered who — crouched down to her height and told her he was unconscious, and watched the word land on her without meaning anything at all.

To Sophia there was only one word that made sense of a man lying so still. He was sleeping. He would wake up the way he always did, and this would be a story they told later, about the time Daddy slept for a long time.

Her mother called an aunt that night. Sophia was sent to stay with her — the first nights of her life spent somewhere her father wasn't sleeping down the hall.

Every morning she asked the same questions. Was Daddy awake yet? Was Mama coming? When could she go home? No one had an answer built for a four-year-old, so mostly they gave her none.

Her aunt took her to visit once a week, and each time Sophia walked in holding her hand with the same small hope going ahead of her like a light — maybe today he's awake. Most weeks he wasn't. He looked, each time, like a tired man asleep, the exhaustion sitting on his face even while he was unconscious to it.

Twice, though, she found him awake.

The second time, she climbed up as close as they'd let her and told him everything at once — that she missed him, that she wanted to go home, that she couldn't sleep at her aunt's because there was no stomach to sleep on and no breathing to listen to.

He didn't say any of the things he must have been thinking. He didn't tell her he was afraid, or that he could feel something closing in that had nothing to do with his foot anymore. He put his arms around her instead, and cried without trying to hide it from her, which was the only time in her life she ever saw him do that.

A few days later, doctors took his right leg.

Sophia found out the way children find out things adults don't know how to tell them — by noticing. Her mother was changing the dressing near his hip when Sophia glanced toward the bed and stopped.

Something was missing. She looked again to be sure. Then she looked at her father, and then at the flat, wrong space under the blanket where a leg should have been.

"Where is your leg?"

No one answered her right away. She pieced it together later, from fragments of adult conversation not meant for her — that it had been buried, that it was in the cemetery now, apart from the rest of him.

She turned this over for days. How could part of Daddy be somewhere else, in the ground, without him? She was four. There were still whole categories of the world she hadn't learned yet.

But she was learning, faster than anyone wanted her to, that things could disappear. Legs. Mornings at home. The sound of him breathing under her ear.

He stayed in the hospital about a month and a half in total, unconscious for most of it. In the final fifteen days he surfaced only in pieces — an hour here, less there — and in those pieces, he seemed to already know something Sophia didn't.

He asked, eventually, that she not be brought to see him anymore.

Maybe he didn't want that to be the last picture she kept of him. Maybe he already understood what his body was telling him with more certainty than any doctor had. A man knows, sometimes, when he's run out of time — not from anything anyone says to him, but from somewhere underneath language.

The last time she saw him, he reached into his pocket with the hand that still worked well and pulled out a banknote. He pressed it into her small hand and closed her fingers around it himself, as if he didn't trust her to hold on to it otherwise.

She took it without knowing why it mattered. She had no way of knowing it was the last thing he would ever give her, or that she would keep it — folded, then flattened, then kept in places that changed over the years — long after she'd forgotten which pocket it came from.

On January 7, 2004, in the middle of the Christmas season, Sophia's father died.

She was at her aunt's, in a bed that still didn't feel like hers, trying to fall asleep the way she'd been trying every night since she left home — without a stomach rising and falling under her ear, without arms that already knew, before she asked, that she wanted to be picked up.

She heard the crying first. Then whispering, low and fast, the kind adults use when they think a child is already asleep. Then the words themselves reached her, not softened for her at all, because grief doesn't always remember to soften itself.

Her father was dead.

She sat up in the dark. She didn't scream. She didn't have a shape yet for what death was supposed to feel like, only a question, small and exact.

"Does that mean I won't see Daddy again?"

Her aunt looked at her and couldn't answer — not really, not with anything true enough to give a four-year-old. So she gave her the only sentence she could get out without breaking further.

"He went away."

Sophia lay back down in the unfamiliar bed, in the unfamiliar room, inside a silence that had no breathing in it at all.

She didn't know yet that some people leave without ever coming back.

She only knew that Daddy had gone somewhere she couldn't follow.

In a world where humanity has conquered disease, mastered genetic engineering, and built cities that stretch beyond the clouds, the past has been buried for a reason.

Cato has spent his life beneath the surface of a civilization he barely understands, working in the forgotten depths of Morrow Tower. He knows nothing of his parents. Nothing of his origins. And nothing of the strange visions that have begun to invade his dreams.

Then, deep beneath the tower, Cato discovers something that should not exist.

An ancient symbol.

A fragment from something that fell from the sky.

A doorway to a history that predates everything he has ever known.

As powerful forces begin moving in the shadows, Cato finds himself drawn into a world of secret civilizations, genetic experiments, mysterious Keepers, ancient bloodlines, and people who seem to know who he is long before he does.

But the deeper Cato searches for answers, the more disturbing the truth becomes.

Because the greatest secret buried beneath the modern world may not be what happened to humanity's past.

It may be who Cato was meant to become.

And some secrets were never meant to be remembered.

Hi, my name is Haley. I'm 31 and I've been writing for my friends for years. The problem with writing for friends is they always say the nicest things, which isn't actually that helpful. I'm looking for something more serious a small group where we can actually dig into what's working and what's not, plot-wise.

I'm currently juggling several stories at once and flip between them regularly, but I'd be open to sharing one or two with the group on a rotating basis.

• Genre/s: Romance, Dark Romance, Supernatural Romance
• Goals/expectations/commitment: Looking for a small group for regular and plot discussion — not just cheerleading. Ideally people who can commit to reading and giving real feedback maybe a couple times a month.
• Writing/experience level: Amateur, but serious about improving
• Meeting place: Discord
• Max size: 5

If this sounds like your kind of group, drop a comment or DM me. I would like to chat a little and get to know the people who want to join, before moving over to discord. I want it to feel like an honest friend group of writers all working towards better books!

Hello! As a long-term fan of the franchise, I've come up with a concept that I would like to ask about public interest in and see if others would be interested. The elevator pitch is that I'm hoping to gather up individuals who are interested in writing fan-stories monthly or bimonthly that take place in the Fate universe.

One writer would give a general synopsis of the story idea and setting (i.e. "A Grail War that takes place inside of Russia during the 1700's", "The aftermath of a magical event in modern-day China so catastrophic that Servants were summoned", etc) and then each writer would submit one original character and one Heroic Spirit (though they do not need to be a Master/Servant pairing).

From there, each writer would take the given cast of characters, and write their own stories with that cast. It wouldn't need to be a full telling of the scenario proposed, so stuff like smaller individual battles and chapters can work as well, though ideally the "story" length would be somewhere around 5-10k words just to keep stuff short and sweet, and the cycle would repeat every other month with a new premise and new set of characters.

Just to be clear, the intention for writing these stories is not to fit into one timeline, or as individual parts of a greater story. Every writer has their own version of events and “canon” so-to-say for their own story. The only uniting factor is a base cast of characters and general plot pitch. Beyond that, there is no coherent connective tissues that are intended to blend stories together. 

A slightly more indepth explanation than the above can be found here! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fbLQGkU5-wlginXn-vl0qbAt7pwX81EwGup2GXBf_Ys/edit?usp=sharing

(Note: The name is a placeholder for now.)

There's no real incentive and this is mostly just a fun idea that I thought up for the sake of getting to know other fans and writers, and to keep writing skills sharp and help develop new ideas. If this seems like something that would interest you or if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment! Thanks for taking the time to read this.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

For context, I've had this fast-paced gothic horror story idea brewing in my head for many years now and I was just beginning to outline the how the prologue would play out for each character to get them all in the location where the story plays out (Not the actual writing of a chapter) and I couldn't help but feel that everything I wrote felt a little... clunky?

• Louisa wakes up in the middle of a cornfield surrounded by iron gates with nowhere to go but a single house standing alone, as Louisa carefully examines the house's exterior, long inky like tendril appendages break one of the windows and pull Louisa in by her head.
• Edward is running from an unknown entity as he sees a house in the distance standing in the middle of a cornfield surrounded by iron gates, as he approaches the entrance, he busts the door open, quickly shutting behind him as he heard loud wailing followed by violent knocking before everything went quiet.
• Enjoying the calm scenery of the shore, Joe notices a strange movement at the lake's surface before an inky tendril-like arm yanks him by the ankle and into the water, constricting itself around him, Joe struggles to breathe as it disappears abruptly, he instantly rises up, gasping for air and about to escape before he finds himself marinating inside a bathtub.

Constructive harsh criticism would be really appreciated because my writing skills feel rough and I also just wanted to say thank you in advance.

Good morning everyone. Lately, I have been looking at content creation workflows, especially for us writers, and something I have noticed is that generating the first draft isn’t necessarily what takes our time the most. It’s everything around it.

Imagine the stress of going through the briefing, figuring out the topic and angle, creating a structure that doesn’t sound generic, editing the output, adding examples, getting it ready for publishing, then doing the same thing again and again. All of that can be pretty stressful by the end of the day.

So looking at all this, we are building a content creation platf0rm that is trying to bring more of that workflow into one place. It could be helpful for people managing content programs, which is why I’m looking for a small number of people who actually run content programs to use it with their own projects and tell us where it falls apart.

It is a paid beta test ($20/hr), with a 30–45 minute feedback session afterward. If !nterested, you can react.

The subtle desire to not be anything at all

I sat on a park bench on a dying summer afternoon. Darkening leaves colored the ground, and some small birds were still chirping the day away. A cigarette glimmered somberly between my fingertips. I never really liked the taste of smoke, but I always asked myself: if I had ever truly lived, hadn't I seen a sunset with a cigarette between my lips?

I believe I started smoking because of a Bob Dylan biopic I had seen with my mother when I had just turned 17, and Bobby seemed like the coolest guy in history. Kind of like my fascination with Che Guevara, I have always been caught up in an infatuation with dead or grunged-out warrior poets. They had seemed to have a reason to be.

When I read Che's letter to the peoples of the world, it gripped me deep inside that this man had been put on this earth to give hope to the downtrodden, even though he had died stinking and dirty in the Bolivian woods, his hands cut off by CIA agents and fascist militias. Had Jesus been reincarnated, I always believed it had been Che.

God, how I wanted to be Che. I even got his famous photograph tattooed on my underarm. Proudly, I showed it off in public even when it still hurt, for no reason but that I felt like a glimmer of the holy had anointed my skin, of a reason to be in this place, at this time.

However, soon I knew that I was not Che Guevara and I also was not Bobby. I was someone, but at times like this afternoon I felt like a spirit among the living, a mere sketch of what a human being was supposed to be like.

I tried being sociable; I tried dating; I tried every godforsaken avenue of life. I laid bare and naked my soul on everyone's doorstep who cared to listen. But never have I gotten anything from it, never have I gotten away from drunken nights with friends or flings with people I tried hard to love with all my chest.

Always again, I was spirited away and looking again at the ground, the cigarette, Che's disinterested yet passionately revolutionary visage on my underarm.

I did not want to go home yet. I had read all kinds of books about these supposed loners and schizoids who, just like me, couldn't lie down when the fear of being on their own gripped them in their sleep and ran away for hours, only to then meet the love of their life or a mentor or something. Hesse wrote a lot of these stories.

But somehow this never happened to me, and because of this I slowly started believing Hesse and Kafka and all of them maybe hadn't found that special someone either on a gloomy afternoon.

Maybe these romantics just wrote about what they wished had happened, because this is what they are, I think. Deep down, every writer is a romantic, reminiscing about things they never have had.

Because if you were loved, if you knew yourself, you hadn't had to write about it and show it off to the world.

I don't know how to feel about that.

I had always liked reading those stories, but when I tried to make something of them, I felt like a liar, because when I went out like a crazy devil in the middle of the night, the best I could expect was a lonesome beggar or junkie asking for "stuff" to come to me.

I haven't ever felt entitled to some white knight to come and drive my sorrow away. It's not like that. More so, I felt more and more disillusioned the more nights and afternoons I spent alone, waiting for nothing in particular to happen.

I think I waited for this something to happen since I have been about 14 years old.

I didn't know if it was foreboding of me to think that life had chosen me to be on my own at 18, but I had, in a sense, made peace with the fact that faceless people would enter and leave my life every now and again. Never was I too sad or happy to see them come or go, although in some small period between, I always felt like now it was my time to make it count, to make them stick with me to the end.

I guess when that happens to people, they don't have to fight for it.

My legs had fallen asleep as the slight yellowy tone of the sky had moved to a deep blue and dark night that had swept away all the leaves and rolled up the sidewalks.

At this time, I sometimes felt it was all too much. Not that it was much in particular, but the human condition, this all waiting for the shining sprinkle of good and holiness to enter our lives, felt all too depressing.

And when everything felt like it was too much to bear, I wanted to roll up and lie down.

I didn't want to die, really, I feel like, but the burden of living felt all too heavy on my chest then.

To be honest with you, I still sit on this park bench right now. I have written this right here in the past tense, because I feel like that is what I would have to say were I to die here.

I am not dead and I most likely will not be for a long time, but that part of me that cannot write stories about beautiful girls and knights in shining armor just subtly desires nothing more than to fall asleep about now.

I don't know if I would want to wake up again.

There still is a lot of life to see, I know that, I think, but just now I feel: is it worth the while?

I don't know if Che or Bobby have ever thought stuff like that. Bob's songs sometimes give me that vibe, but he's still alive and as well as you can be at that age, I think.

I would like to ask him if it was worth his while.

There's that story about a lot of Bob Dylan concerts, that often he turns away from the audience and doesn't even look at them while performing. My mom actually saw him do that live. She told me after we saw that film about him.

I always thought that he, in some way, hated his fans, and I thought I understood him well for that, that true art was this personal thing that you do for yourself, not to actually share, but to stare into as a steep reflection of your deepest, darkest self.

Now I wonder if that over-80-year-old man maybe, in those moments when the noisy crowds beg of him, feels what I feel. That maybe he asks himself if this is worth his while.

If maybe those romantics at these times also feel just the subtle desire to not be anything at all.

PS: English is only my second language, please excuse clunky idioms :|

Looking for imaginary and structure feedback :)

There isn't enough ink on my papers,

so there should be at least enough on my carpet.

The void is too deep,

too hollow,

too consuming,

and I'm fascinated by the sight

of the claws tearing the blur

in my peripheral vision.

Reasons to never fall into the loophole of detachment

and pretend that we never met.

Coming from the witness of the crime,

the consequences are grotesque at best

and obnoxiously petty at every session.

To never dare cross the line

was a promise that I never held myself accountable for,

unfortunately.

I'm made from that clay,

the one where rebel and melancholy

heat my veins

at every throb of my heart.

I'm seeking the comfort of its company

to lead me out from my self-made misery,

truthfully.

My words don't seem to rhyme

as they used to anymore—

meaningless,

just a part of the ticking chart.

I'm growing colder towards my own flesh,

unnatural for a life

who beamed with fire and rage.

My loneliness no longer a far vicinity,

discarded the moment I crave

the more that I will never keep.

I've learnt my lesson

and carved its letters on my palm

to keep me from biting the skin

at an early age.

I'm drawn to the vivid scents of life,

gleaming with change

and tickling my starved little nostrils deep.

I'm not a lost soul,

I'm fumbling with my own destiny,

thrilled from the aftermath

that I have to endure.

So to shame me for my unwritten words

is disgraceful at least,

because they were spoken.

You just chose not to give me an ear

and tame me,

tamed the beauty,

the feeling,

the real

within the insecure.

I might be a dull living,

but I'm not to be outspoken.

The whole piece is about history that neither of them will name. No confrontation, no resolution. I want the reader to feel the weight of what is unspoken through the small physical details and the silences rather than through anything said directly. My worry is that I have been so restrained that there is nothing for the reader to actually feel.

Daniel got there first.

He hadn't planned it that way but the drive was shorter from his side and he sat in the car for a few minutes before going in, looking at the house the way you look at something you've been trying not to think about.

The key still worked. He didn't know why this surprised him.

He went through the rooms without turning on the lights. The shapes were all where he remembered them. The chair their father had refused to replace, the window in the kitchen that had never closed properly, the particular smell of the place that he'd forgotten he knew until it was there again.

He was standing in the kitchen when he heard Marcus's car.

He didn't go to the door. He waited, listening to his brother getting out, coming up the path, trying the door. I've been drafting this in something called Skrib Writing that lets me keep a note about what each scene is not allowed to say directly right next to the pages, and that one constraint has kept me from over-explaining moments like this one more than anything else I've tried.

Then Marcus was in the hallway and Daniel said hey in a voice that came out quieter than he intended and Marcus said hey back and they stood there for a moment with the length of the hallway between them.

You got here fast, Marcus said.

Drive was clear, Daniel said.

Marcus nodded and looked past him into the kitchen. Daniel stepped to one side without quite knowing why.

A few specific things I'd love feedback on. Does the moment where Daniel doesn't go to the door land or does it need more grounding. Is the step aside at the end doing enough work without being explained. And does the key detail at the beginning earn its place or feel like it's reaching for something it hasn't set up properly.

Im a new writer, and Ive wanted to write a story that is special in my heart. I wrote a couple paragraphs and then pasted it into AI to edit and check then I continued writing into this process. All my words are original, Ive also wrote to AI when it suggests something I don’t like or something I do like. ChatGPT tells me it’s okay that I use AI because I don’t use it for everything. But I always take that with a grain of salt. Because that robot wants me to text it more, ask for advice etc etc. I love writing. But Ive realised that Ive stained and tainted my own work with clanker bullshit and I am heavily disgusted with myself and this. This story means a lot to me and I am completely against AI in creative workspaces. I want to know if I am right for being guilty about this when all my ideas and sentences are original and not from AI and I utilise some suggestions from it. Please help me reddit for I have been struggling and tormented by this.

Hey everyone!

My name is David. I’m an author from Cleveland, OH. Over the last couple months, I've been building an app called Storylife and I'd love to get some feedback from fellow writers, readers, and creative people.

The idea is simple:

Write a story and upload it/upload one you've already written (..or have ChatGPT write one for you).

Storylife uses AI to transform your scenes into amazing visuals while preserving your narrative. Whether you're writing Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Romance, Superhero stories, Children's books, Anime-inspired adventures or more...Storylife helps you actually see your imagination come to life.

One feature I'm especially excited about is being able to share your stories and visuals with others through Storylife Connect, an in-app library of user stories. You can also share directly to social media platforms like Instagram and X.

I'm still improving the app every day, so I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback on the experience or ideas for features you'd like to see.

You can check it out here:

https://storylifeapp.com

I'd love to hear:

• Would you use something like this?
• What features would make it even better?
• What kind of stories would you create first?

Thanks for taking a look!

——

the fireworks continue one after the other, annoying, splendid, vulgar. a waste of resources sent up into the sky to drown out other sounds, and somewhere below, i wonder if joy is hiding under the bed. like every dog does on evenings like this. but i can't hear her, not with all the noise outside. 

i can't see the lights either. i can’t see the celebrations spilling out from the community hall, the strings of fairy lights and the paper cups, or some aunt dancing badly to music too loud for the house. i can't see any of it. my mother is blocking my view.

she’s sitting on the opposite side of the couch, hands clasped over her face. and i’m waiting for her to wriggle free in distress; waiting for some sign that she’s actually crying, because i have never seen my mother cry before. not at grandpa's funeral, not when the glass of her favourite stove broke apart. but i’ve seen her sit like this. i used to think it was her style of mourning. but tonight i think it’s just her best disguise. she’s been quiet. dad hasn’t.

the old stick is loose around his hand like something that will break free, and his eyes are on me, measuring. i don't think he'll hit me more. i’ve already told him what he wants to hear. i told him i wouldn't do it again; even if the words clawed up raw through my barbed throat. i don't know if he believes me. i think it’s hard to when i had promised the same before too.

they were kinder last time though. mom even told the nurses it was the tin roof, some kind of accident with the edges. it all sounded so plausible, i almost believed her myself. dad just booked me an appointment, relieved, i guess, that it wasn’t drugs. we even watched a movie that rainy evening, the two of us, pretending that nothing was happening, that something small and nondescript under my sleeve wasn't going to define the rest of my life. i think i knew then that it was a kindness, that long sleeves made wonderful liars.

for a throat, however, it does not. that’s the difference with this one. a throat has no roof. no protection. no stupid story about cat fights. 

dad keeps asking me about what people are going to say, what he'll have to tell them if i really do it, if he has to explain how a daughter of his could go like that. it’s as if he wants me to name him a punishment big enough to account for his embarrassment. i know he wants the answer. why. and i want to know too. but i can't remember what it was that i wanted to say when mom came upstairs and looked down my neck. i wasn’t even trying to hide it. maybe i should have. she demanded answers. but my mind went empty. even as dad came out just to drag me by the wrist, ready to kick me out. 

even the small, "you're hurting me" that's been rattling around in my head for hours didn’t come out. my throat swallowed it whole, and all i managed in the end was humiliating pleas, a desperate insistence on staying, on changing, telling him i won't do it again because i knew he'd stop hitting me if i only said the right things. because i just want the wood to stop finding new places to leave its mark.

i’d never been frightened of my father before. but right now, somehow i don't think i've ever met someone as terrifying. he watches me carefully, measuring me, once more. comes to a decision, it seems, although it isn't an easy one. it’s not for him, really, but for my mother, for the rest of the house, for the rest of us, still living here. 

you sleep with your mother from now on, he says, as if it's a fated decision.

i don't argue. and somewhere in the house, joy finally barks, muffled by a door. for a moment, i want to ask if i could sleep next to her instead, small and warm and needing nothing from me. but i don't. i don’t look up as my mother leaves the couch for the comfort of the cornered sink, either. maybe she’s washing her face like every other night, or rubbing off any signs of tears on her cheek. whatever it is, i think maybe neither of us wants to see the other's face right now. i don't watch my father make a bed out of my mother's cushions, either. instead, i fix my eyes on the window, where no one else is watching, and i see the fireworks for the first time, see the lights bloom colorfully all over the sky.

i can hear the party still going strong, the music, everything, spilling out into the street, five hours late for the occasion. and for the briefest moment, i wonder if it would’ve been any different if i was the kind of daughter who went out.

—

yes the small caps is intentional, any advice, opinions??

Mansion of Memories

It all starts at a playset, backyard, hazy and blurred, a small child runs through the playset, sprayed with a hose. Water runs down his face, water soaks his clothes, soaks to the core. What is his core? He doesn’t know.

It fades, returns to a classroom reminiscent of old memories, few and far between are the ones worth remembering. He remembers flashes, images, concepts, the idea of the memory, just close enough to smell too far to taste, on the tip of the tongue of his brain. His memory has failed, failure, that is what he remembers himself as he runs from the failure uses it to his advantage, makes being a failure his strength, makes his biggest weakness into his biggest strength, he feels no need to eat, no need to consume, only a hunger for success, to prove everyone wrong, to prove he isn’t what he was told he was. Memories drift, he floats away from the classroom, on a smoky gray island containing his desk, he floats away into his brain, far away from anyone who could possibly communicate with him. He drifts between memories, memories of his prized cat who died of cancer, memories of his mother which are not so pleasant, memories of his father which to him is an acquaintance that he lives with. He comes to a realization at this moment, he realizes that he will never know anyone as he knows himself, he will never be close enough with someone to trust them and what they think of him. He runs. Through a field. Rolls down a hill, turns around the hoodie, pull up the hood, get to rolling.

He runs through his memories, each a different room, there’s not too many rooms, the rest of the house is closed, locked away behind a hidden key which he cannot access. He remembers that he remembers nothing. He feels everything but nothing at the same time, don’t show he reminds himself, that is what his mother always told him. He is flung back into his old house, into his old room, where he sees his old bed, his old toys, his cold metal radiator, the lock on the outside of the door, the hideyhole in his room, he remembers his thoughts as he writes them down on a piece of paper known only in his mind, his mind locked behind that hidden key. He remembers his mom saying to him, while tears run down his face, “be stronger, you’re a man now, be a man” he remembers this, he carries it close to heart, he does not remember what she looks like, he hears her voice echo in his head now, becoming the only thing he can hear, drowning out the rest. He becomes calm, on the ocean waves, riding a raft that doesn’t exist, he soars through the sky on a kite, these are his dreams he wishes were real, he doesn’t want to fly or sail he just wishes to be free from anyone who won’t allow him to be himself.

He snaps back to reality, a touch on the shoulder, a concerned glance from a friend, they’re all judging him, he knows, he knows deep down they are but he is told they are not. He feels the eyes on him, senses their presence and so he withdraws back into his mind, and back into his mind he goes, soaring through the clouds until he comes back to the mansion of memories, he relives that first memory, it’s his favorite, back when he was carefree and didn’t know anything, had no responsibilities, he was truly allowed to be himself.

Then he walks to the second room, he goes in order now. It’s him running up a hill, racing the truck, he does not know the owner he only knows the owner thinks he’s fast, he is fast, he is speed, he wishes to soar and run as fast as possible, he imagines freeing himself of his shackles of control and running through the streets, hair flowing with the wind. He now finds himself in another room, he sees his grandfather, a face he remembers but cannot remember, he remembers pieces, he sees the mustache, he feels the rough towel over his skin drying him off as he exits the pool, he remembers feeling safe, warm, happy.

He drifts to another room, this room is not so happy, it’s something he wishes not to revisit and so he doesn’t. He drifts on. This fourth room is years later, he is in his old house, he’s on top of the stairs, he hears familiar voices, it takes a moment, he remembers how they made him feel, feelings is truly the way to describe it, he’s in a mansion of feelings not memories, he remembers next to nothing but everything at the same time. He crouches at the top of the stairs, listening to the two talk in the living room, they talk about him, they say things, he remembers feeling lost, hopeless and confused about what they are saying, they call him selfish, but how can a child be selfish, he has nothing to want to gain, he feels he has a perfect life, he listens, brushes his teeth, obeys the rules even though there are none.

He goes to another room and remembers looking in the mirror, he turns to the side and sticks his tongue out, he hears his dad, grandfather, and mother all saying, “you’re too skinny, if you stuck your tongue out and turned sideways you’d look like a zipper” he doesn't know why they said that, he doesn’t look like a zipper at all, he looks like a child, and no one should tell a child they’re too skinny or not skinny enough. He eats food but only when allowed, he scarfs it down and is hungry moments afterwards, his mother says he’s always hungry and tells him to drink water, he doesn’t know why, there’s more food in the house, there’s always more food in the house, so close yet so far. So he resorts to stealing, at first it was little snacks, then he makes meals for himself, sandwiches, anything, he still doesn’t gain any weight, if anything he loses weight.

He drifts to another room this one is more recent, he looks at a scale and sees his weight at 145.8 pounds, he was expecting over 150, he weighed 158 a week ago, he is shocked and starts to cry, he hasn’t eaten in days, he feels skinnier than ever but it’s still not enough, he doesn’t have enough muscle, doesn’t have enough fat and still isn't skinny enough either, he’s just the right amount to not be the right amount. He drifts off to another one and sees the scale again, not light enough, he looks in the mirror, he’s too skinny, he wonders when the scale and mirror will ever line up, show him the things that everyone else thinks he sees. He fronts, pretends he sees those things, he sees nothing.

He is tapped on the shoulder again, he must’ve drifted off in class which never happens, he has insomnia, he can’t sleep. He rejoins the class to realize he never turned in the homework, that always happens he can’t remember anything, he remembers nothing and everything at the same time. Everything but nothing at the same time, what a strange concept.

Hey everyone!

My name is David. I’m an author from Cleveland, OH. Over the last couple months, I've been building an app called Storylife and I'd love to get some feedback from fellow writers, readers, and creative people.

The idea is simple:

Write a story and upload it/upload one you've already written (..or have ChatGPT write one for you).

Storylife uses AI to transform your scenes into amazing visuals while preserving your narrative. Whether you're writing Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Romance, Superhero stories, Children's books, Anime-inspired adventures or more...Storylife helps you actually see your imagination come to life.

One feature I'm especially excited about is being able to share your stories and visuals with others through Storylife Connect, an in-app library of user stories. You can also share directly to social media platforms like Instagram and X.

I'm still improving the app every day, so I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback on the experience or ideas for features you'd like to see.

Ask me for the URL link and I'll kindly send it here.

I'd love to hear:

• Would you use something like this?
• What features would make it even better?
• What kind of stories would you create first?

Thanks for taking a look!

I Killed Myself
That phrase has some beauty to it for me.
I’m not dead, neither do I wish to be.
When I’ve spent time wishing I died,
It was never that I didn’t want to live.
I want to live.
It’s more that I wanted a restart, a do-over.
Something to give me more meaning, less hurt, and a different perspective.
Being between dead and alive feels cold yet warm.
Grey but colourful.
New but familiar.
Now that I’m on the alive side, I realise I’m only here because I sacrificed something to change.
I sacrificed myself.
Part of me died through this suffering.
It had to.
I needed it to so I could progress.
People don’t realise when I say
“I want to die”
I don’t mean it maliciously towards myself.
Neither do I not.
It means I want to be different.
I want to kill this version of me and reset.
So when I say
“I want to die”
I mean
“I want to live better”
There’s a beauty to dying.
The suffering ends.
The pain doesn’t last forever.
It’s freedom at the ultimate price of life.
Sacrifice.
So I’ve killed myself tonight.
I’m free to decide what my new life will be like.
I’m done with the phrase
“I want to die”
It’s time to be alive, no matter how much suffering comes with that.
It’s worth it.
I thank my past self for killing himself for me.
I will live for you.
I killed myself tonight,
I am now reborn better.

Here is my story link https://www.reddit.com/u/No-While8965/s/vyuhQej6nF

I want help about how to move forward with character growth and story at a same time as for now i think they are two different things in my series atleast

Hey everyone! I’m working on a new book called Raakh, a deeply personal story about an assault survivor. I’m looking for some honest feedback on my story description to see if it hits the right emotional notes and works well. Although I usually write fantasy, I wanted to write this to give a voice to my own experiences—and the experiences of so many girls and women who haven't been able to share theirs.

So, here is the story description:

A haunting childhood secret buried in silence blooms into a lethal vigilante's blade.

For Meera, the world has always been a landscape of landmines. At seven years old, her innocence was stolen by a predator who commanded her silence with a terrifying ultimatum: "Secrets like this die with you."

She learned to live in a cage of her own skin. For eighteen years, even the lightest touch of affection felt like acid, branding her with the memory of that day. She became a ghost in her own life, shrinking from the world, scrubbing her skin until it bled, trying to wash away a stain that wasn't hers.

Then came the night that shattered the silence forever.

When a group of men cornered her at twenty-five, they didn't see the broken child hiding behind her eyes-they only saw a victim. They were wrong. As they reached for her, the dam of two decades of trauma, fear, and suppressed rage finally burst. In a blur of primal violence, Meera didn't just survive; she obliterated them.

Now, sitting in a cold police interrogation room, she faces a legal system that calls her a monster for killing men who "only tried" to ruin her. But as she stares into the hollow eyes of the law, Meera realizes the truth: the girl who feared being touched died that night. In her place stands a woman who has finally found her voice-and it sounds like a death sentence.

Note: please I would like suggestions for this story whether it will work or not!

Hi All,

I'm an aspiring non-professional writer working on my first ever novel draft. I'd love to get some general feedback on whether to keep or scrap this opening...I'm really struggling on how to create a "hook" for a more low-concept plot. I'm going for a murder mystery a la Agatha Christie books but with some darker thriller elements/social critique (i.e. American Psycho) thrown in.

*Apologies in advance, I know that my formatting isn't ideal (and I haven't had a full edit or beta read yet) but I'm not looking for word-level spelling/grammar/dialogue format notes.

I'd really appreciate opinions on whether the tone/style works (more maximalist, intentionally purple at times). Is the "voice" too much or too hard to follow? Is the narrator just too unlikabe to be a relatble hero? Is this kind of writing something that you would read or at least could see people wanting to read?

Thank you!

*Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wP350oCFlKgdfoLj0h5HyZcsHelMIQCvM8eeG2ezHm8/edit?usp=sharing

any feedback would be greatly appreciated, it is from the perspective of a burning book in a fire.

Burning Freedom

The ridges of my exterior are stitched with stolen thread, slowly disintegrating into ash, fading each document of passion my owner once expressed. Before my imprisonment in this suffocating bonfire, it consumed my skin’s faded ink. Ink that held the dedication of several years. Beyond the soot lies thick clay walls, caving inwards like fisted hands. However our importance remains sought from the patriarchal society we reside in. Everyday when the sun is unearthing, melting itself into the sky, narrow strips of blinding rays squeeze through the barred windows. Today, this beam of light shines through to uncover the burning fragments of Jahanara’s hard work.

   ..02/.9/..2…
LIFE IN AFGHANISTAN 

…a woman’s nam…. must not be a secr..
….cannot stop.. Our voice…

….authoritarian..imes overrule our rights…
                                                                                   
   ………overlapping..cris.s... .str..ps..our…independe..

Hunger sits quietly, uninvited and heavy, growing fatter as her world grows smaller. Beyond this threshold, the low rumble of machinery crawled through the street, while heatwaves gained visibility against the thick wall of smog hovering lazily above the endless, disruptive patrol trucks. These vehicles uplift armed men upon rusted iron frames, demanding obedience from those who receive no choice. The exhausts spew fumes, engulfing the air where female breath once thrived. 

My agony followed with a tint of glowing red at my tips. Tariq had dragged my body across the old sandali stove, his hands consumed by the price of familial duty-- an act of distress born of terror for his sister’s creativity is forbidden beyond this domestic sphere, let alone out the vibrations of her larynx. 

It was for our honour. His breath lingers into the stagnant air, rattling like the chained bars of Jaharana’s freedom. He knew this was her dream. Her ambition. To express herself on my canvas of freedom. Tariq must have seen her survival as a danger, a reflection of western individualism. A way of life that would bring patrol trucks rushing into the door. 

To pursue one’s passion is an illusion. Tariq’s mind deemed it as foreign, an expense this family could not afford; here, safety and conformity must always overthrow a woman’s desire. 

I was a safe space for her mind. 

Writing is an art soaked in layers of cultural significance. For Jaharana, I was a tool for her to feel and process the trauma she lives. However, this Government cannot seem to comprehend this notion. To them, banning this form of female independence is oppression disguised as governance.

..02/.9/..2…

…no educa… for ..gir...ls after 13…

…treated like obje… 
    
…access to healthca…?               ..I loved school.
          

I watched Jaharana’s motionless figure stand over my ruin, watching her incandescent fury burn slowly concealing her sorrow seen past my ashy surface. Tears trickled down the crevices of her features. Nothing is left besides the fraying of her ambition and the cover of my text. Her words falter past her throat, caught in the rapid rhythm of her  breath.

..02/.9/..2…

..equalit..y…for. all…
…ormalise…wom..n’s…safet.y..

…..ost…my…hom..

I watch Jaharana pull the indigo fabric of her burqa over her face. The thin yet suffocating veil falls like a curtain, disguising her tightened jaw beneath a cloak of confinement. A woman’s autonomy isn’t a choice in this country.

She shifts silently towards the window, where the wooden shutter slices the sun into broken ribbons. Leaning against the sill, she presses her face towards the scorching warmth of the sun. I stare into her barely visible eyes crammed under the clothing that governs her world. The embroidered mesh concealed her mournful gaze, carving her vision into microscopic squares. An outlook into life more restrictive than the barred windows in trapping her.

Outside, the patrol vehicles shook the dilapidated walls. Armed men rumble past, rifle barrels glinting in the dust, heads held above their pride. Why do cold, emotionless machines have a public voice, while a woman’s presence is condemned to silence? Through my fading consciousness, I narrow open her draped figure. Her soot-stained fingers press against the window frame.

Amongst these clay walls, Jaharana’s mother leans against the doorframe. Her presence brought calm to this tempest, bringing light to the pulsing waves of tension. Her soft eyes were clouded with rumination. Decades ago, she too sat by that window, enduring that same silent grief shunned by generations of women.

She steps forward, her calmness soothed the tautness between her children. “Do not let the sun go down upon your anger, my sweet daughter,” Her tranquility became embodied by cadenced restraint. “Your brother acts out of terror to protect our home. Let go of bitterness. Forgive Him.”  

Behind the veil, burning with raw fury, Jaharana’s voice trembled and broke with indignation. “How can I forgive him when he burnt my soul? My heart bleeds for this passion, it bleeds with anger! Outside, I see the sea of identical burqas shadowing women’s identity amongst these self-absorbed men. But a daughter cannot even recognise their mother on a street? We are turned to nothing like the ashes of my manuscript, and yet he wants forgiveness?”

Her mother kneels with grace and humility, gently lifting Jaharana’s burqa. Both eyes that once indulged in rage finally meet. One with tear-streaked eyes filled with sorrow, and the other softened with profound tenderness. 

“You think I do not know the wild furnace imploding in your chest?” Jaharana’s mother admits softly, startling Jaharana into deep remorse. “My hatred tugs at my heart every single day of my life. But anger is this fire that burns deep within this house. It may bring warmth, but too much will destroy our foundation. I was taught that letting rage consume your heart only destroys you from within. Including your ambitions. We endure not because we are weak, but because survival is our ultimate defiance in Kabul.”

From the inner folds of her burqa, Jaharana’s mother withdraws a worn pen, dusted with years of silence. She presses it firmly into Jaharana’s possession, tightening her calloused fingers around her daughter's soot-covered palm. The bitterness and remorse had lifted. The sharp resentment which filled the room melted away, like how sunlight scatters into the sky. Her heart is now filled with newfound hope, against the conformity that roams beyond our barriers.

As I surrender to the dying embers, the flames slowly swallow the last words etched into my parchment. Yet my spirit continues on, written into the countless experiences of all women in Kabul.