Zachary Holbrook

@mckinley One thing you could do to make this story more interesting, either as a novel or short story, is to deepen your setting more. Give it some unique trait that makes it stand out from all the other dystopian worlds. Maybe the forest is full of man-eating monsters that are scared of music, so singing guards have to remain on duty 24/7 to…[Read more]

@mckinley Yes, they are my younger sisters.

@mckinley The biggest suggestion I would make is make Ember more active. Her father calls all the shots in this story, and though she makes a decision at the end (to honor her father’s memory and care for her family) we see very little of her acting on that decision other than a few sentences at the end.

This story would possibly work better as…[Read more]

Keylori Shan (conflicted warrior)

Anya Talij (former scholar on a quest to resurrect her husband)

Abelous Velg (pacifist military chaplain)

@kb-writer

Wayne being the murderer was a little bit too obvious, since he explicitly states that he framed her on the first page. One thing that might make it more interesting is if Christian has to uncover Wayne’s relationship with Clara, instead of Wayne telling it to him (and revealing his motive for the crime).

I like @k-b-writer ‘s idea of a battle fought over what is revealed to be the last living tree in the village. The MC should have some personal connection to the tree defender. Perhaps the tree defender is a terrorist who the MC fought before. The terrorist is fighting so ferociously that the MC thinks he must be defending some powerful weapon, b…[Read more]

I agree that clarifying the exact nature of the Hunger would be helpful, although it wasn’t a problem for me personally. As soon as I learned it could be cured with bread from Eloh I knew that the Hunger was allegorical, so Dasha trying to cure it by winning the race didn’t look like a plot hole.

Overall, I’m impressed by this story. The deep…[Read more]

I have a website where I’ve posted reviews and information about writings, as well as a link to my published flash fiction: authorzacharyholbrook.weebly.com

@kari-karast Toklaham Veruzia is the pseudonym I used to go by. I ditched it in favor of my real name when I was published in Havok magazine, but I wasn’t able to change my tag on my Story Embers account.

@kari-karast It’s Japanese for “Good morning. I like Japanese” and comes from a phase in my life when I taught myself enough of the Japanese language to impress, if not communicate fluently with, several Japanese speakers I ran into. I didn’t have a reason to use the language on a daily basis, so I stopped studying it as other projects filled my life.

@kari-karast

My younger sisters, Maddie and Cami, are both on YWW and will be attending the conference in North Carolina this year.

I wouldn’t worry about perfectly timing your structural beats in a short story, at least not as much as in a novel. The dystopian setting is cliched, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it lets your readers become familiar with your setting quickly. If you wanted to expand the story, you could add a plot twist at the end– what if the…[Read more]

Where do I submit my word totals? I added ~2000 words to my short story on Monday.

Candle is beautifully written. If you were too revise it and submit it for the short story contest, I think you’d have a good chance at winning.

One suggestion I have is to come up with a better title for Auburna than ‘the evil woman’. She’s called that a LOT, which was distracting for me– is she the <i>only </i>evil woman in this world? ‘The Da…[Read more]

@edmund-lloyd-fletcher I’ll read it

Do you want the Lie the villain believes to answer the question “Why is man evil?”? It sounds like the SV comes to believe “accomplishing the mission/winning praise is more important than the lives of my allies”, which could show that evil comes from misaligning one’s own priorities with God’s priorities.

Or you could phrase the Lie as “I know…[Read more]