Reviewing The Future[Closed for Catch-Up]

Nighttime

Book: Nighttime
Author: loveeboat
Review Type: Beginning

Warning: If you want to read this story, read it first then read this review. This review contains spoilers.

//This was kind of a full-story review. It was a short story, so the chapters I would read for the beginning review ended up being the full thing.//

First Chapter "a"
• It was very poetic, and reminded me of an eerie short story you'd find written by someone old and long dead. (That's a compliment by the way, I just couldn't think of any specific author to compare you to.) Overall it really embraced the theme of "night". But, there were a few issues.
• No variation in sentence length. This was a problem I saw through your whole book actually, but mostly in the first chapter. (But you don't have this problem around dialog!) In the description you tended to have every sentence like this, adding more detail with a comma. It gets monotone. You have amazing writing in those sentences, but people are prone to skim over it when there's no sentence length variation. Throw in a few shorter sentences. Mix it up. Great writing doesn't mean you always write long, lengthy sentences that go on for paragraphs, never really ending, never really knowing when to stop, and hit the road for a final show...... Long sentences aren't always bad, there just needs to be fewer of them. And in some cases, making it shorter actually helps the sentence. For example, one sentence that stuck out to me as being too long was: "the only visible light that enters in travels through a slit along the bottom of her broken bedroom door that leads into the small hallway". Rewording it can do a lot of good. One way you could do this is: "light travels in from the hallway through the slit at the bottom of her broken door". Same message, same description, just a bit less overly-lengthy.
• This is just a side note that maybe only bothered me, but it seemed there was a bit too much dramatization about a hangnail. Yes, they can be painful, but when people think "pain" they don't think hangnail. Maybe switch it to a splinter? I don't know, do what you want. It's really only a small thing. It just seemed she was making a big deal over something really little, especially compared to the problems of her life.
• You had a lot of sentences starting with "she". Try to mix it up a bit.
• The comparison between night and day was really good in this chapter. I could see the different switch in both times of day.
• Try to do more show than tell when you describe her personality during the day versus night. You straight up told us her personality traits, when there are other, more subtle ways you could go about it. Instead of saying she's confident, say tomorrow she'd be walking with her chin high and shoulders back. But when you blatantly told us she was a coward—that was good. That worked well. It showed us her deep fear in the moment.
• I don't remember where in the chapter you did this, but you compared the heavy footsteps to a marching band in a fair. Most people associate the thought of a marching band, and a fair, with joy. But the main character(MC) fears these footsteps. The comparison didn't fit.
• The end of the chapter was confusing. I got it after I read more, but at the time it didn't add up. You talk about footsteps outside the door, then the next mention of a person is outside a window. It makes the reader wonder—is it the same person? I figured it wasn't, considering the MC liked this person, but there was no further mention of the footsteps. That person just disappeared, which created a cloud of confusion. Where did the person outside her door go? Are they still there? We don't know. A simple fix would be to have your MC think something like this: "now he(Archer) was here, the footsteps would never bother me". Just to clarify that whole thing. You're leaving it for the reader to assume, which is a bit much.

Chapter "heart"
• Great twist—usually the guy likes the MC no matter what. It's different, and different is good.
• This comment actually applies to the whole story, I just really felt it at the moment where he said he didn't like her. The one thing with having this so early is that you run the risk of having people dislike Archer. I'll go back to this later in the review.