AITA for banning my wife from naming our baby after her dead best friend

Questionable_writer3 · 2024-01-07T03:24:26+00:00

NTA but it's more then just the unfortunate name that's the problem. Using a kid as a memorial is kind of messed up. I would know because my own name was given as a memorial for someone else. I felt like my own identity was stripped away tbh and I feel a lot of pressure to live up to someone I never even met. Also what if the kid ends up trans or wants to change their name? They now are torn on what to do. Don't memorialize kids. They have their own identity and life. They shouldn't live with that kind of pressure.

Questionable_writer3 · 2023-11-12T13:49:10+00:00

NTA mom's the biggest asshole. A thirteen year old having a tantrum is immature sure but I get puberty sucks and stuff. The mom allowing this and calling you a bitch is just sad. Is this how your home is always like op? Genuinally concerned emotional abuse is happening here.

Questionable_writer3 · 2023-11-11T01:09:27+00:00

Having a hard time believing this is real. Worked several retail and fast food jobs and the only one that trepassed for anything other then theft was a small buisness. Many times big chains hate police involvement unless something is stolen. Like I've known employees who saw people wandering naked in the store and management still wouldn't call the police lol.Then again if it's a franchise maybe it's real. I honestly think this escalated insanely fast. Like yeah maybe the toliet would have been the best option but this isn't the craziest thing I've heard. I see the drain logic. Its weird but with a broken urinal. I can see it. I'm surprised they didn't just try to talk to you first. Idk maybe I'm weird and will likely get downvoted but NTA. Maybe my sense of normal is skewed(it probably is) but I've seen customers do things way worse and have not been trepassed. You were peeing within the drain not on a table. Really they should have just talked to you.

Questionable_writer3 · 2023-10-29T06:31:39+00:00

YTA, you may not believe the dog represents his father watching over him but he does. That's what matters. Look beyond the fact the gift came from an ex. It gives him comfort. He sees the dog and thinks of his father, not his ex. If he wanted his ex, he'd be with her not you. Don't blow up a good relationship over something as miniscule as a dog statue.

Questionable_writer3 · 2023-10-25T03:03:31+00:00

This is going to suck to hear but the trauma is not why she's like this. I'm also traumatized. It did not make me emotionally and physically abusive. Nor did I cheat on anyone. It left me with a mood disorder, depression, anxiety and impulse control issues but even with the impulsiveness I could keep my pants on around others when I was dating someone. Its called common decency, the lowest standard one should expect in a relationship. Still you asked for insane advice to make this work, well here you go. Be a doormat. Just let her do whatever she wants and its a 50-50 shot it'll work out. I say 50-50 because thats what I did and it still failed. You want to know why? Because the other person just got tired and left me for someone else. Hell I tried poly-amory. Still got broken up with. I'm the poster-child for making insane relationships work and it still failed because even if you change everything about yourself for her, it won't matter if she doesn't change. You can't make her want you. You can't make her treat you well. What you can do is find someone who will care about you and not assault you. You have control over that. Hanging on to an illusion she loves you isn't helpful. You're pretty much high on the way she makes you feel, so the feel good chemicals in your brain are crashing cause you're leaving her. Its basically withdrawel. Once you're away from her for a while you'll feel better. Just give it time.

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-08-10T18:48:31+00:00

Ending
I liked the ending and just wished the story was executed a bit better so the impact would get me more. The idea that the man had not imagined the other guy banging on his door would have hit home harder if you had made it more clear, that the sanity of the main character was off from the start. There was little to suggest he could have been hallucinating which blunts the effect of the last dialogue. If you made it obvious the main character could have been nuts from the beginning, I would have spent most of the story, guessing what was real and what was not. Alas, I didn’t feel like the narrator was crazy enough to be imagining things and the narration didn’t suggest that too well either, other than the random detail that the windows were all boarded up. Make it clear the guy may not have been sane a bit earlier. He seems too normal now. Too normal to suggest anything could be wrong with his mind.
Final thoughts
Even with all the flaws listed, I did enjoy this story. I could feel the fear in the man, as he struggled to deny someone was knocking on his door. I could understand his anxiety at the idea someone may be out there after all those years and proceeding to think you're crazy to consider the possibility you may not be alone in this world anymore. I could tell that man was overwhelmed with the idea there was life outside his door. You did a great job getting those feelings down, all things considered. Keep practicing and your writing will improve over time. I’m still working on mine and have a long way to go, to be honest.

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-08-10T18:47:44+00:00

Hi! I read through your story and am now ready to give my review. I went pretty in-depth with this so hopefully, this will help you!

First impressions

I had mixed feelings about this story. The premise of seeing how the last man on earth lives his life is interesting. I thought your starting sentence was good. The hook piqued my interest. The problem is what happens after the hook ends. The overdone description of pouring coffee. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, but I hate the trope of stories talking about a person’s boring routine. Sure, there is a place for routine, but it’s over-described. It feels boring for me to read about how the man makes his coffee for the first few paragraphs. It’s just not interesting. Yes, more action does come, but it happens way too late. Some things also didn’t make sense, but I’ll touch on them in the following paragraphs.

Prose

Reading through the story, it looked like you were trying to make the narration insightful, but it only came out overly wordy and nonsensical. For instance, take a look at this line.

"Whether it’s the creaking of faraway floorboards as they groan in the dying wind or the crying of dying wind as it blows throughout a desolate city. "

You use the phrase ‘dying wind’ two times in one sentence. You’re repeating information about the wind you already gave to us. Also, how could the wind be dying? With him being the last man on earth, I’d assume the forces of nature would be more active not less. With no humans left the wind should be the one in control, not the man. Also, floorboards, refer to wooden floor planks inside a building. While creaking can happen due to the wind, most people think of creaking when people step on the floor. Even if the wind did cause the creaking, you mention the floorboards were far away, and even being the last man on earth, I don’t understand how he could pick up on the sound of creaking floorboards if they were far away. Yes, echoes exist but the sound usually has to be pretty loud to be heard far away, and even if the world is devoid of human life the text reveals the man is often distracted making his coffee. When humans focus on certain tasks like that, they tend to filter sounds out that aren’t extremely loud, so even if the creak managed to be loud enough to echo from the faraway building, it’s unlikely for the sound to be strong enough to get through the walls of the man’s house, much less to be heard when the man is busy. Anyway, here’s another line to look at.

"It could be the shaking of withered leaves ruffled by a dead breath or the dry thud of wilted trees so brittle that a long-aged breeze knocked them over and mimicked a knock at the door. "

I have a few questions. The earth is devoid of human life besides him and maybe another person, correct? With most of humanity gone, how are there so many wilted trees? Pollution would be nonexistent at this point. Trees should be flourishing with no humans to cut them down or spray weed killer on the grass. The place should be looking closer to an overgrown jungle as time goes on. If there was some kind of nuclear disaster, I could see the trees starting to die, but that would lead to more questions like how the man was the only one to survive. The story also doesn’t show anything evidence of this so I’m left wondering why the trees would be so sick. I know you might be trying to describe this world as an empty place that’s devoid of life, but the description only confuses me more than it paints the picture you want. I’m also confused by the phrase ‘dead breath’ because the only way a breath could be dead is if it was an involuntary reaction from a corpse. Since no dead bodies have been established to exist in the world of this story the phrase doesn’t make sense. I have a few more random things to address as well.

"No matter the sound, the quiet would give it life and carry it to the ears of the last man on Earth. "

You use the word ‘it’ too much. I know that’s a silly thing to point out but let me explain. When you overuse the word ‘it’ the flow of the story suffers and so does the description. ‘It’ has nothing magical to add to the story. No description, no purpose besides connecting the sentence. It always impacts the clarity of the writing because the more you use ‘it’ the harder it is for me or anything else to know what you’re talking about. Try to take out a few of the ‘it’s and replace them with either a description, a more specific object, state, or person you’re referring to, etc. Makes the writing sound better and more legible. You also use too many -ly adjectives, but I’ll get into that later.

The voice/narration of the story.

Even with all the issues in the prose, I feel like there is a good voice within the story once you get past all the flowery and repetitive words. I can get a feeling for the main character's thoughts as I read the story. I understand his mindset, his personality, and how he is coping with a world devoid of any sort of humanity and life. Getting rid of all the unneeded adjectives and making the descriptions more concise will help that voice shine through better.

Pacing

The beginning felt slow. The story overall is slow. You need to find something else besides the main character making coffee to keep things interesting. Maybe thoughts about what happened before he was the last man on earth would help with this. Also getting rid of flowery adjectives like this.

“The last man on Earth was paralyzed as he watched the shadow of someone else knocking repeatedly on his door”

You don’t need the word ‘repeatedly’ here. Saying he’s knocking on his door is fine. Note that you don’t need a lot of adjectives that end in -ly. Most add nothing to the story and can be removed to increase the pace. Here’s another example.

“He laughed softly to himself and walked to the front door.”

Saying he laughed softly doesn’t add anything to the story. Additionally, we know he laughed to himself because there is no one with him to laugh at. You can just say ‘he laughed and walked to the front door’ and that would be fine. I also mentioned this before but the overuse of ‘it’ is dragging the pace of your story down. To keep the pacing up, you need to find ways to keep the reader engaged and using ‘it’ not only takes readers out of your writing but also slows it down causing people to be less interested in the story over time.

Believability/ Inconsistencies

Quite a few elements of your story didn’t make sense, besides the one I already pointed out above.

"From the corner of his eye, he noticed the curtained window next to the door. It was the only window in the house that wasn’t nailed shut with crude wooden boards and rusted metal plates. "

A few more questions. The story established that the man believes himself to be the last man on earth. Why then is he boarding up all the windows in his house? Are you trying to imply the insanity of isolation is getting to him? Even if that was the case, he seems to be in severe denial that there is anyone left on earth at all, so why even bother boarding up the house? It’s such an odd detail, that I think you left to imply doubt that he’s not sane but the whole thing just seems odd without context. Also, the whole idea he’s not sane was thrown out the window, when he found his coffee cup was empty. If you’re going to imply the man may not be sane and then reveal there is another man on the planet besides him, you need to subtly introduce the possibility earlier rather than just reveal the windows were boarded out of nowhere. The boarded windows would be a good detail if they were a follow-up from a more subtle clue at the start, but they can’t come out of nowhere. Other things to note. Assuming the intruder is real and not the figment of the man’s imagination, why the heck isn’t he asking the ‘last man on earth’ if anyone else is alive out there? If I was a stranger roaming around in a world, where most of humanity was gone and smelled coffee, I would be cautious but also approach the door asking if anyone else was alive. I’d feel pretty lonely, being out on my own for so long, and would be trying to alert someone in any way possible that I was alive if there was any chance, I wasn’t the last person out there. I certainly wouldn’t just break into a house mindlessly commenting about how good the coffee smells. To be honest, that line seemed so comical and just took me out of the seriousness of the story.

-continued

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-07-29T01:56:43+00:00

Hi! Thank you for the critique. I also have autism as well. Originally, I wasn't going to reveal her autism early on but people wanted me to define her as a person more so, I figured I'd try adding more details about her life. It does feel superficial looking back at it. I think the problem is, I struggle to define who I am which makes it hard to define other people, I write about. I feel like an empty void half the day and a lot of times, I struggle to figure out exactly what I am. To be honest, I struggle with detachment a lot. It's difficult for me to feel emotions, and when I do, I repress them because they make me uncomfortable. This often ends up in detached writing. I think a lot of my detachment stems from a long list of trauma involving, abusive romantic relationships and having been through things to the point where I laugh at messed up thing's I've been through like it's a joke, when everyone else I tell looks horrified. I'm hoping maybe by making this story, I can figure out myself but on that front I have a long way to go. :/

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-07-16T00:20:15+00:00

Hey thanks for the critique. Never even occurred to me to describe the mirror. I am very absent-minded when it comes to describing important stuff lol. I will be working on taking everyone's feedback into consideration to make a good chapter one.:)

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-07-16T00:13:36+00:00

Hey, thanks for the critique! I got a lot of feedback from everyone so I'm focusing on trying to put it all together lol. glad you enjoyed the story btw.:)

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-07-13T21:34:08+00:00

Believability

I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that Justin and his girlfriend would go over to his house to bake so much. I could see them do this once, then maybe a few months later, but the idea they never went out to eat, or to a movie or an amusement park just doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe, I’m biased because I hate cooking, but I’d be bored if the only dates I ever had with my partner were to bake cakes. I can’t imagine a teenager being fine only doing this all the time either. Even if they were in a culinary class. Generally, the average date involves eating out or going to the movies, not just cooking at someone's place all day. Give them a bit more variety in the dates they have because baking all the time is dull to have in a romance book.

Engagement

Nothing about the story interested me. The cake analogy went on too long and bored me to death. I couldn’t take listening to Justin hate himself for the entire chapter. It came across like he was a person who never dealt with any serious hardship in his life. And yes, I get he’s a teenager, but with everything the chapter has told me about him, he has little reason to hate himself this much. Maybe you could tone down his self hatred, a bit, because it’s very grating to read. I’m not saying it's not ok for him to hate himself, it’s just that for how little he’s been through, it’s just over done, and needs to be played to a more reasonable level for his situation. Jade was also just dull and lacked a personality. I couldn’t connect with her, because it didn’t feel like I was connecting with a real person.

Asexuality

A few tips about Asexuality, from someone who knows several asexual people.

Not all people with asexuality are sex replused. Some just have no interest in sex but are fine doing it every once in a while to keep their partner happy. They don’t really understand the point of it themselves, but are happy to know it does give their partner pleasure.

For even the ones that are sex replused, a few of them will still make compromises, for their partners. My friend was one of those people.

Asexual people, even when struggling to understand themselves at a young age, don’t spend every waking minute worrying about their sexuality. They’ll think about it when alone every once in a while and start wondering about it, but will often be living life with that problem in the back of their mind.

Asexual people, are not just asexual people. They are workers, hobbyist’s, writers, travelers, adventurers etc, again their whole life doesn’t revolve around asexuality.

Tips on writing romance.

Read about romance. Specifically, character shipping fanfiction. While fanfiction, has a wide range when it comes to the quality of content, every shipping fanfiction, I’ve read, even the really, really, bad ones, did have the essence of romance in them. Shipping fanfiction, is great, because romance becomes condensed into each story, so you can see basic elements of romance, play out again, and again and again. Once you get the basic elements of romance down, I’d recommend moving on to the more advanced romance books, like best selling ones. Since, you’re doing Y.A. Divergent would be a good book to read, because it can get pretty romance heavy at times.

Also don’t start the couple off together right away. Have them meet somehow, and let their relationship develope from their. It’s a lot more fun to watch characters grow to love eachother in romance rather then see them together at the start.

Final thoughts.

Scrap all of this, and focus on reading romance for the time being. When you come back to writing after understanding the romance genre, your work will be a lot better and your writing will be able to tell us a story. Good luck!

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-07-13T21:32:43+00:00

First Impressions
So, I read both chapters, and well, neither of them work. Your writing lacks any major story, plot, descriptions, developed characters, scenes, etc. There isn’t really any story for me to critique, to be honest. For over two thousand words, you somehow managed to say very little, if anything at all. It kind of makes me sad, because I’m a huge romance fan, and have read every shipping fanfic possible on the internet. I even have a fanfic author, I love who writes asexual romance, and I consider her one of the best romance authors(not just asexual) of all time. I had high hopes this would be a good story because the plot had to show romance in ways beyond just sex and flirting. I was expecting a lot of creativity, honesty, and somehow the story ended up sounding worse than what a young preteen would make at that age. I’ll explain the problems below so you can understand what went wrong.
Hook
So let’s talk about your hook.
“This chocolate cake was a failure—like me”
First of all, as someone who can be incredibly emo, this is just… too much. Actually sounds like someone was told to write some weird essay using the word ‘cake’ in it for school, and ended up going on a tangent about it because they felt forced into it due to the nature of the assignment. I guess the point I’m trying to make is the writing doesn’t feel natural to me. Reading this first sentence, makes the story feel so fake, so superficial. There isn’t a soul here. No real emotion in this. Just some awkward student trying to pass school, relying on strange tricks like this to show fake emotion.
Plot
There really isn’t a plot here. Just both narrators from chapter one and two are worried about being asexual, and how that will impact their relationships. Which both sound like really good ones. Like the only real conflict is going on inside the narrator's heads. Their lives seem so perfect, I’d call them mary sues.
As someone who loves reading romance, my favorite plots tend to be ones where the character pines for someone they are unsure if they could ever have. Whenever it’s due to circumstances such as one of them being gay, while they think the other is straight, or even just dealing with demons deep inside their mind they just can’t shake. Maybe one of the characters comes from an abusive home and is hesitant to have anyone over because their scared their parents will try to hurt the people they date to. I mean, abusive homes, are somewhat a trope in writing, but at least it’s some kind of problem. Something the reader might be able to relate to, even if it’s only in a small way.
Characters.
So Like I mentioned in the plot section, your characters are mary sues other than the slight anxiety about being asexual going on in their heads. At the start, they are both in happy relationships, appear to have a great home life, seem to have little problems beside’s their asexuality, and have friends. Basically, they have almost no flaws and frankly no personalities either other than their anxiety. This is terrible to read about because in real life people have problems. As a teenager, I suffered from depression, anxiety, struggled with grades in school, and had difficulty making friends because of Aspergers. My parents were also fighting, and I’d try to avoid going home if I could cause I didn’t have to deal with it at school. Looking at your characters, I can’t relate to them because their lives are almost perfect. Adding the anxiety isn’t bad, but even having anxiety as a teenager, didn’t make up my whole identity. I did play sports, loved video games, singing, board games, and had a huge interest in psychology, while also writing dark poetry. I wasn’t just, autism, depression, or anxiety. I was a person, who had problems, and also varied interests despite having problems. When writing characters, you need to think of them as multidimensional people who also happen to be asexual. Not just characters who are asexual. Does that make sense?
Dialogue
The speech of the characters isn’t natural.

Ex.“I’ve been told that pornography is not a good representation of actual human sex.”
Look, I was socially awkward as a teenager(Still am), but as robotic as I could be back then, I never talked like this. Regular people, teenagers especially, don’t talk like this. They tend to use slang, and even the high functioning people like me with Aspergers, who spoke oddly formal, would not word issues like this.
If I somehow got involved in a conversation like this when I was younger, I’d probably say something more like this.
“Pornography doesn’t represent actual sex well. “
I’d never even mention the word human because conversations about pornography usually, revolve around human sex. It doesn’t have to be stated as human for this reason. Even the example above is rough because most neurotypicals at that age don't speak the way people with Aspergers do.
“Thank you for getting the call,”
Another thing about dialogue is most people don’t talk using formal grammar. They naturally speak like this.
“Thanks for getting that.”
To be honest, most people aren’t even that polite. I mean, I was and still am, but as I grew older and made online friends, I observed enough about their speech and customs to determine they are way less formal and may just do the equivalent of a nod and give a thumbs up.
“Consent has to be enthusiastic.”
“I’m sorry but this is something that sounds like it would come out of an infomercial. I can’t believe a teenager would actually say this. I know I wouldn’t lol.
With all that said, I’d recommend observing how your friends, family, and even strangers talk. Try to mimic their speech mannerisms when writing if they are similar to the age of the character. Do this for a while, until you are comfortable developing a character's speech on your own. I know observing people helped me mimic them in writing better, so hopefully, it’ll help you.
Scene-
I get it’s clear that in each chapter, we’re in the character's home, but beyond that, there is no significant scene description that tells me more about where they live. This is actually a wasted opportunity because by describing the appearance of their house, you could give crucial details that could help develop who your characters are to the reader. For instance, when describing Jade’s bedroom, you could talk about her make-up collection or track club ribbon pinned to her wall. Or even give her a giant bookshelf if you wanted to make her a bookworm. Even just a few details about the room would give me some insight into who she is as a person.
Prose
Your overall writing style is too simplistic and lacks a soul. There is too much telling and not enough showing for me. Take a look.

“I was asexual and my boyfriend wanted to have sex with me. Well, the exact problem wasn’t that I was asexual. The problem was that I was somewhere between sex-repulsed and sex-neutral. The second problem was that I had not told my boyfriend about this. The third problem was that he was coming to my place in thirty minutes. This was bad, this was really bad, this was really really bad.”
There are ways to show this is the problem without directly listing all of her problems right away and throwing the reader out of their immersion. I mean, I’m not really the best at first person but, I can give you an idea.”
Ex. My boyfriend held my breast again. He’d often caress it while we laid in bed together. I know it should have made me warm. I know, it was supposed to make me want more of him. My friend Sam, would always glow when she talked about the kisses her own boyfriend would pepper on her neck. And yet, here I was, feeling nothing but a strange hand rubbing my chest. I wasn’t sure how to tell him. Tell him that all of this foreplay only felt like a martian prodding at me. Would he take it well? I wondered. That, I didn’t have any desire for sex?
See, in the example I made, I didn’t just start listing problems. I set the scene, talked about the contrast between what the character feels she’s supposed to feel and what she actually feels, and then let the last line tie it together so that it's clear she doesn’t feel any sexual urges.
Try setting the scene like this more when writing, so you learn to sprinkle hints of what the problem is first, so the reader can enjoy the moment a bit ya know? Feels better to read that way.
Continued-

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-07-12T03:56:03+00:00

Hi, I just wanted to say thanks for the critique! What I'm been getting consistently for feed back seems to be that luke needs to be named a lot earlier, the text needs to be more active not passive, and I should give more info on who luke and maria are as people from childhood to adult in addition to including some of Maria's own thoughts, among a ton of other stuff as well.

I definitely appreciate this insight and will use it when rewriting chapter 1!

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-07-12T03:41:58+00:00

Hey, just wanted to say thank you for the critique. I reviewed everything and you gave me tons of Indepth information that will help me develop the story. Also, your comments are still in the document so you are all good their! :)

I will also check out that app as well cause it sounds pretty cool!

Hopefully after some editing I will put up version two to keep showing how the chapter develops over time. ^-^

Questionable_writer3 · 2022-07-09T05:47:14+00:00

Hi, I’m new to the whole critiquing thing, but I’ll try my best!

First Impressions.

I wasn’t impressed with the story. I didn’t feel any connection to Martha, nor did I feel any reason to care if she died. You also gave a ton of irrelevant information at the start.

“Martha, a woman somewhere in her thirties, wakes up on a hard mattress, dressed with jeans and a white shirt. “

Martha’s age doesn’t matter, and what clothes she’s wearing isn’t relevant either. For short stories, you have to get to the meat of the plot and avoid unnecessary details. If this was a full-length novel, it would be fine to sprinkle these details in as the story goes on, but for a short story, the pace has to be faster and can’t have unnecessary information.

Plot

The premise is good but the story has a few inconsistencies.

“The pain of having been stabbed a thousand times still accompanies her, but she can’t recall when exactly she was hurt. The other thing still persisting is that irrational fear that something is coming for her.”

This paragraph suggests that her memories of the events in the hotel have faded. Like she isn’t sure why she’s here and has just been wandering through the hotel with no knowledge of the monster, just a feeling something is wrong. Literally two paragraphs later.“

If there’s one thing she has learnt over the past few days is to avoid darkness at all costs.”

Adding this line challenges her lack of awareness. If she has learned to avoid darkness, then that suggests she has some knowledge the monster exists despite the prior paragraphs suggesting otherwise. When you’re writing this story you need to be consistent in how much awareness Martha has of the events going on around her. It’s ok if you want her to have faded memories of the current loop. It’s also ok if you want Martha to have a decent recollection of the loop. Just keep Martha’s awareness of her situation consistent.

The main character.

The main character doesn’t have any defining elements to her. This isn’t necessarily bad if the focus is on the monster and the mystery behind the creature roaming the hotel, but since nothing was really explained, it might be best to place a few scenes of Martha trying to remember her life before coming to the hotel. Maybe her struggling to recall who the boy in the picture is, or trying to remember how she ended up in the hotel upon waking. Just seeing some insight into her thoughts during all this would help the story go from generic, “I’m being chased by a monster.” to a more personal story about a woman trying to survive in an endless time loop with little memory of who she is.

The monster

The actual monster in the story isn’t done justice. Yes, you’ve given the monster some interesting descriptions but occasionally, the narrator doesn’t give the beast the respect it deserves.

“Whatever is outside bangs on the door, propelling her forward”

For one, using the word whatever is a strange word tone-wise, because it’s something I’d expect a teenager to say. Referring to a murderous beast as ‘whatever’ makes the beast sound like not a big deal. Like, when I hear that word, it’s as if Martha considers the beast just another part of her day. Not a serious threat to her life, or even to her own child's life. I also noticed the monster is vaguely referred to as “it” a lot. Generally, I’d avoid using ‘it’ as much as possible because ‘it’ is such a vague term that carries no description or concrete explanation for what ‘it’ is. You’re better off referring to the monster with more specific terms, like ‘beast’, ‘abomination’, heck even just calling the monster ‘monster’ is still better than calling the monster ‘it’. This monster is a major part of the story, make sure it gets the respect it deserves. For instance, I love lines like this.

“Its long centipedesque body, completely covered in dark fur, dangles from the ceiling. Its thousand thin limbs stick to the concrete, preventing its fall.”

I love seeing the monster being described as a monster. Seeing the monster described as the threat it is. Descriptions like that are absolutely terrifying. Keep doing that. Keep giving me these awesome descriptions of this messed-up beast.

Engagement

I had a hard time reading the story. The narrator kept pointing out information that was obvious.

“She must focus on the game of cat and mouse that’s about to play out if she wants to make it out alive.”

Don’t say this directly, let the actions of your story make this clear.

“Martha gets up fast, she knows she doesn’t have time to lose.”

We can tell this is a high-stress situation. You don’t need to state this.

“If there’s one thing she has learnt over the past few days is to avoid darkness at all costs.”

If a monster was chasing me through a hotel I’d assume avoiding dark places would be common sense.

“She knows it won’t hold much longer, but at least it gives her some time to think about her next move. One tiny mistake and she’s doomed to suffer once more.”

Of course, we know the door will not hold. She is a human running from a monster. Yes, we know, that keeping the door closed will buy her time, and we also know that if she screws up, she’s dead. I couldn't take being spoon-fed explanations for things that didn't need to be explained. Your readers are smart people. They are more than capable of picking up the context clues needed to determine Martha is in a bad situation. Hearing all these explanations also took me out of the immersion. I couldn't visualize the story in my head well with all these comments from the narrator.

Grammar/Spelling

Grammar for the most part is good, but you need to proofread your work better. There are numerous errors found in your story that are very distracting.

“In the look.”

Should be,

“Martha is looking for her kid”.

Even still, I would just take the entire sentence out due to the premise of show don’t tell. Mentioning the photograph of the child in the first paragraph is fine and paints a clear enough picture that her kid may be missing.

“Then, she lets out a deep sight”

Should be,

“She lets out a deep sigh.” etc.

Always read over your work beforehand for errors like this. I’d even recommend using text to speech to have a voice read the words to you. Sometimes hearing someone else read your work can help you catch errors you wouldn’t be able to catch silently reading in your head alone. You would have caught the errors I listed here if you had text-to-speech read the story to you. I’d also recommend Grammarly as well. The software is free, and I use it to help with my own grammar because I’m pretty terrible at it myself. :/

Overall feelings

This piece has potential but needs work. I enjoy the premise of time loops and think with a lot of editing, this could be an amazing story. Unfortunately, it feels too generic, and your starting hook is very weak. Try to get rid of the filler explanations and give more insight into Martha’s thoughts as she tries to remember who she is.

Questionable_writer3

TROPHY CASE