Disturbing much? Please tell me that she was not immitating what happens between her and her father when he asks her if she wants to play. I mean she talks about how Ken is bigger than Kelly and when the door slams shut Ken puts his clothes back on.
Am i missing something. I loved reading it but wow. Is there going to be more?
Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.
--La Rochedoucauld
"An unexamined life is not worth living..."
---Socraties
That was wonderfully creepy...too true...and just...kind of...eww....
Good job though. Nothing to critique.
But that is not the question. Why we are here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come. -Beckett
I was just reading over this again, being impressed by your skills of succinct-ness and such, but when I read your comment about her being 5 or 6, I found it odd that she would have braces. Maybe this has just been in my experience, but don't kids generally have to lose all their teeth before getting them put on? And even then, it's usually not younger than 8 or 9.
Got YWS?
"Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed."
- Dale Carnegie
It's amazing how a story as dark and twisty as this grabs people's attention so. Luckily for you, I am dark and twisty...
The title grabbed my attention right away, as there is something disturbing to me about dolls. So, very good job with that!
Also, your short, choppy sentences are VERY effective in conveying both the little girl's naivety (she is just a child after all) and the darkness that such horrible experience at such a young age has put in her. (At least, it was my interpretation that her father had molested her, I suppose she could just have stumbled onto one to many scrambled soft-porn channels...)
I just have a couple of suggestions for you:
The first is the use of the passive voice. I've been using it consistently in this review, and you should know what it is. It is the use of any form of the "be verbs," i.e., am, are, were, is, etc. It's not bad to use these, especially in a rough draft of something, but usually if you take the time and effort to reword your sentence so that you use a different verb, it becomes a stronger sentence. You use "is" very often in this story. And while the lack of a complex style (though the theme is VERY complex) is partly what makes this story so good, I believe that you could make it an even stronger story with a creepier tone if you were to revise it.
Another: this is not romantic fiction. Haha...in any of its forms. It's not romance, and it's not Romantic.
"They were afraid of her, but there was nothing they could do."
The use of the past tense works in the sentence before because you are recalling a specific event that happened in the past. This sentence is back in the present and should be present tense.
"She frowns and let his plastic hand, his hard hand..."
It should be: "She frowns and LETS his plastic hand..." Also, I think you should combine the two parts: "She frowns and lets his hard plastic hand..." I think the use of the word "hard" is still effective and it reads a little more smoothly.
The fact she smirks at Ken's "panties" because "she is used to boxers" is well done foreshadowing. Also, at the end, her pink ribbon is fluttering...what is it fluttering from? The ceiling fan?
Anyway, very good writing. Creepy story, yes, but it wouldn't have been creepy had you not written it so well. Hope my suggestions help!
-Sarah
"And I am a writer
writer of fiction
I am the heart that you call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones...
Let me go if you don't love me" ~The Decembrists "Engine Driver"
Kay Kay>> Grif pointed out that too, which means that it is possible that what you think is going to happen doesn't necessarily have to be that way; in other words, it's possible that she isn't being molested by her father. With that said, this is a short story and will NOT be continued on in any larger story.
JC>> Glad you liked it!
Ari>> Haha, that makes sense. In a way, I'm glad that I didn't have to choose a specific age for my heroine. No mattter. She could be a little older and the story would stand strong. (Basically? Don't listen to my words and just take the story's word on things, lol.)
Sarah>> Aww... so it's not romantic fiction? Sadness.
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.
"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach
Woah that was amazing. The suspense was brilliant, the ending was perfect, really chilling. And now I'm a bit creeped out. Brilliant stuff. Too speechless to say anything more helpful.Wow.
"Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise." -Maya Angelou
Wow, Snoink, that was.......freaky. I can not say that I liked this. It was disturbing and I guess that is why it is rated R.
But despite the way it is totally inappropriate and weird and scary and other words that I can not think of, the story line was good. Your spelling was good. No typos seen. And um....all grammar = A++
I don't really know what to say. I cannot decide if this was enjoyable or not. I need to think.
(Many hours later) OK. I think you did good on this. Later
-- M.B.Author
Listen to advice and except discipline so that you
may be wise for the rest of your life
-- Proverbs 19:20
This was unfortunately well-written. Because of that, I did read the whole thing. Unfortunate because it was so disturbing. But then again, I'm sure you know all of the above. I'm just here to add my two cents and help solidify everyone else's
I kind of figured that by the time I got back around to critiquing this, it would be heavily unneccessary (seeing as there are three pages of opinion here), but what the heck:
In short, I felt incredibly dirty, reading this. It was basically doll porn. It was very psychological. You hated the girl, and yet, felt empathy. It was complex. Which was great -- you wrote it so simply. These short, detailed sentences, with complex implications behind them. It was very, very well done.
My only complaint is your vagueness concerning the age of the girl. I briefly skimmed the three pages of crit you have here (very briefly, I will add,) and saw that you have addressed the issue. My two cents is: the first time I read this through, I thought her to be in the ten to twelve-year-old range. Braces, and her vernacular ("Well, you must pretend." and the use of the word "whore"), in my opinion, suggest that she's older.
In a story like this, I think setting an age (or at least, an age range) is essential. It's crucial to the message of the story -- the younger the girl, the more corrupt her innocence is. Maybe you could add in different elements to imply that she's younger, I don't know. I feel like that issue needs to be sorted out. It would do tons to build the story, get the message across.
Anyway, excellent job. I liked this piece because it gave me something to think about. Send me an IM or whatever if you want to talk about it further.
Lyndsey
i thought you were shallow, but then i fell in deep.
The writing was very detailed and your choice of words and sentence structure and all that good stuff just made it a little more scarier, if that's what you can call it.
And what I liked about the story was that you subtly sneaked details in, like the color of her hair, or her eyes, or her voice. Better than just piling it all on a big plate and shoving it in the reader's face.
But this story was creepy in a very good way.
I am officially freaked out.
"Video games don't affect kids. If Pacman had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills, and listening to repetitive electronic music." --anonymous/banner.
Wow. I thought that it was very well written and definitely gave me the creeps.
It's hard to find a scary story that is actually successfull in it's delivery so I just want to say Good Job! I really like the idea behind it.
I love how this is pretty weird, but strangely true at the same time. My sister made me play with her barbie dolls all the time, so I can relate to this a bit, even though I'm a guy. Anyway, I didn't find this to be that disturbing, in my opinion. It might be because I'm a bit disturbed, myself, but you somehow made me think about what would/could have been actually happening while the girl was doing this, whether it was literally or figuratively. i wasn't altogether able to tell anymore after reading this. XD
Anyway, great job! Keep up the great work!
"I think it goes until it's done." "Don't we all."
(Basically? Don't listen to my words and just take the story's word on things, lol.)
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