This is the story about a woman battling a physical and metaphorical demon. I really don’t know where to start with this endo comment (Not in a bad way, I promise!!). I love the thriller/horror vibe you have, but you don’t rely heavily on gore or “jumpscare” scenes. The anticipation and tension you build within the story reminds me of how Stephen King creates tension surrounding small details within his works. Whether you like King or not, the point is that you take this traumatic event and focus on building up a suffocating sense of dread within the reader. I’ve never been great at writing tense scenes, so in a craft sense I was really impressed! I also enjoyed how you described the monster. There are explicit details, like the eyeballs and the arms, but you do leave room for the reader to fill in missing details. It’s hard to describe monsters without making them feel cheesy, but you do this in a way that reminds me of cryptid/biblically correct angels (if you haven’t seen the biblically accurate angels, please look them up they’re so terrifying but I feel like you’d enjoy that). Sometimes in stories it can be monotonous to have small details like walking up and down steps or describing small movements, but you use these small details to increase your tension. I also really enjoy your voice. It reminds me of a “Puritan” type of character, yet we, as readers, know that this story is set later than that time period. It’s a nice touch of bringing seemingly outdated values and times into a “present” while exploring your character’s internal struggle with her overly toxic feminine values and her true core values. Moving onto suggestions, there were a few moments within the narrative that I felt were “fluffy”. I mean this in the sense that some of your paragraphs in the beginning feel a bit wordy and almost poetic (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but it did bring me out of the immersive world you built. Other than that, you did a fantastic job and I don’t really think you have a lot to change.
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