Discussion of "Thou Shall Not Kill 5: Now, it's personal." by WBScott

My first post on this site. Please: comments are very much welcomed!

“Yet for the life of me I can't even remember having dinner, or why it took me so long to come back home.” -- Love this line! Good job filling in a hole that I left in my chapter.

“and I sure didn't want not to be able to tell the difference from dreams and reality.” – This is a little confusing due to the word usage.

“I didn't want to lose him like I lost Charlie because of these damnable dreams.” – I don’t think it would be a bad idea to expand on this, but it’s your story! ?

The whole exchange between Fr. Preston (Damian) and Miguel Sanchez, not Flores seemed forced and unnatural. From what we’ve seen of the priest so far, he tends to mask his evil side pretty well, and yet here he’s just a man that hired a mercenary. I don’t think it really fits the profile created for his thus far.

Great twist at the end! Charlie is the next victim, that’s awesome! I also love that Paige saw what Adara did.

I think you’ve got a great start here. A few pieces of advice: proofread, proofread, proofread!! I can’t say that enough. I need to take my own advice. As a reader, a few typos are annoying, but several are distracting. One thing to do is not to rely solely on spell-check. It doesn’t catch omitted words and mistyped words.

I’m not going to vote yet, because I want to give you the chance to revise this if you so chose to do so.

Welcome to SM, good luck and I’m looking forward to reading more of your work!

Damn, why did I write Sanchez it was supposed to be Flores. Your probably right about their conversation I wanted to continue that separate subplot and add to it, but I can see where it might not have enough direction.

I figured the best time to talk about why Charlie and Adara broke up would be in the next chapter, so I kept that previous idea alive from another previous chapter.

Welcome to SM, WBScott! I liked how you worked this chapter. I think I would have cut down a little on the "homey" parts in Adara's house and spent more time...explaining Charlie's relationship with Adara, maybe a little more on the Miguel/Father Preston scene (I loved this piece:.... "I gave you hope; I gave you salvation.” “You gave me 375,000 dollars.” Miguel rebuttled. “Save the Holy Father act for somebody who doesn't know any better.)and, perhaps a little more on the murder at the end. The end, by the way, was very good. As EA pointed out..grammatical errors happen, you just can't let them happen very often and you should work on formatting your work to make it easier to read. Overall a good job and I'll be looking forward to more of your stuff!

My vote: 4.5

Yours isn't the first chapter where Adara attempts to conceal her dreams from Franco. I understand her hiding them some (after the hushing by Preston in chapter 3), but I would think her family would be familiar. (Yes, she lost Charlie. But wouldn't Paige know? Is Franco ignorant or clueless to miss it?) Maybe I need to reread the first four chapters. Maybe I need to take a break from this altogether so stories don't have the potential to bleed together.

While it was comforting to see Adara dealing with her loss of focus as to what was real and what wasn't, I was frustrated when I was able to separate them.

The scene with Charlie achieved the tension and urgency the previous parts lacked. Would've liked it ratcheted up a notch. 3.

Wow! how to end with a bang! Very reminiscent of persophone's opener. Tying in Charlie added tension and meaty emotional complications-good stuff to build from- I might have liked to know just a bit more about Charlie's life and "crimes" though, to understand the murderers choice of him as a target. The dialogue with franco somehow didn't ring true to me- all these crazy events would have made him more persitant or frustrated I would think- unless he is the world's most sensitive man(lol) -I really liked the sassy dialogue of Miguel toward Preston- really hinted at the balance of power in that relationship and suggested some action in the form of a possible escape plan. Fun! Overall lots of good fodder to give the next group of writers!
Chloe

I'm a little confused by Franco saying that Adara never spoke to Esperenza on the phone. If it was a dream/vision, wouldn't Adara know that she had been asleep? The new twist of having her experience "daydreams" seems a little over the top to me.

In the exposition, you call Father Preston "Damian"--I was under the impression from the previous chapter that this wasn't, in fact, the priest's first name. Instead, I thought that Miguel called him "Damian" as a sign of disrespect/rebellion.

Proofread, proofread, proofread!

I would like some background about Charlie's character before the twist of having him be the next victim. How does he have other Gods? What's he like? We don't know much about Charlie at this point, and it would help to give him some more characterization before thrusting him so violently in the story.

Your writing style flows very nicely.

Overall, great effort--keep it up!