First off, to clear confusion, this is a Saw Fanfiction. This is set up to be an opening trap, and it is supposed to be confusing. The idea is original and my own, but I borrowed some aspects from the Saw films.
I awoke in a dark room. All I felt was a huge weight on my shoulders. The back of my head really hurt, and I couldn't see a thing. I tried to get up, but my arms were strapped to the arms of the chair I was in.
I screamed. "Help! Please, help me!"
I heard a groan somewhere in the room. I squinted to see who it was, but I couldn't.
"Help! Help me, please!" I screamed again.
The other person moaned and woke up. "Whoa, what- help! I don't know where I am, help!" the voice screamed.
The lights blasted on, assaulting my eyes with more pain than fire. I winced lightly. "Ow, Danielle?"
"Rebecca?" I heard my sister scream. "What- what's going on?"
"I don't know! But... calm down. We have to keep calm if we want to get out of this. Okay?"
"O- okay." Her eyes teared up as she began crying loudly. I watched as she wept.
I looked at her for a moment. "What's that on your neck?" I asked.
"What? You have something on your neck too. It looks like-" She screamed agonizingly and looked away.
On closer examination of her, I saw that it was a steel necklace...with shotgun shells embedded into the links.
I screamed once more, "Help us! Please, for the love of God, help!"
A TV turned on in the corner. A white faced puppet with red spirals on its cheeks turned and looked at us. "Hello, Danielle. Hello, Rebecca. I want to play a game."
My eyes widened. "What? Who are you?"
"For years, you two have robbed banks, searching for a better life for each other. You, Danielle, always used a shotgun to destroy people's lives. Rebecca, you always used a pistol to ruin many others. Well, today, we will see how easily you take each other's lives. Around your necks are armed necklaces with live rounds of ammunition from your weapons of choice. In the center of the room is a switch locked exactly in the middle of its handle. To win this game and live to tell the tale, one of you must die. To win, simply push the handle towards the other. But this is not the only... trick question of this test. You are both in bare feet. As you move closer to the center of the room, broken glass will become thicker over the floor. Live or die. Make your choice." The TV fizzed out.
"What do we do?" Danielle asked me.
I looked at the lever in the middle of the room. "One of us has to die."
"But...who?" The look of terror in her eyes made me want to cry.
"I don't know," I exhaled, sneaking slowly to the middle of the room.
"Wait, what're you doing?" Danielle said shakily.
"What do you think I'm doing? I'm going to choose life!" I yelled, not believeing the coldness in my voice.
She began desperately scooting towards the switch in the middle. I picked up my pace, my bare foot splitting open on the broken glass.
I screamed in agony, but then bit my tongue. "Danielle, I will win this!"
"Why you? I'm your little sister! I have a longer life ahead of me than you do!" She screamed aloud when she reached the already darkening glass.
The glass only got thicker and thicker as I pressed on towards the center of the room. 10 more feet. Just 10 more feet! Must...beat... Danielle!
I had to stop for a moment, agonizing over the pain in my feet. I swallowed the pain and kept going.
"Damn it! Please, let me go!" she began crying fiercely. "Rebecca, do you remember..." she trailed on, not moving.
I naturally tuned her out as I had done so many times before. She always had a talent for rambling on and on, making me care even less about her. "You know, Danielle, I honestly don't give a damn about what we did when we were little. All I care about is getting out of here alive!"
My foot touched the lever. I kicked forward forcefully. The lever flew towards my sister.
"You bit-" she started. The shells went off, firing one at a time into her head. Her skull was destroyed. After all of the shells went off, nothing remained except a bloody mess on her shoulders. Her head was completely gone. Blood splattered from her neck, flooding the floor with the scarlet liquid of my younger sibling.
The necklace around my neck and the handcuffs holding me into the chair unlocked. I threw the necklace across the room and ran away from the glass. I slumped up against a wall and fell to the ground.
The puppet in the TV rolled up on a tricycle. "Hello, Rebecca. You sacrificed your sister to save yourself. But now you realize how much your life means to you. The door at the end of this hallway will lead you home. Go enjoy your life."
I'm honestly really confused right now. It was an interesting plot that sucked me in, and I really like the kinds of stories that confuse you in the begining, but I never figured out what happened. It's probably just my brain.
Could you give more of an idea of what the necklace symbolizes?
So what I've peiced together is that they robbed banks and killed people so now one of them has to die. But I think you should explain more of how they got where they are, and where they are. How did they escape cops all these years?
Seeing as they were killing people for so long, it makes sense that they wouldn't try to sacrifice themselves. But did Rebecca feel angry or upset with her choice? Did she ever feel guilty? How could she just walk home after that? Its a good story!!! But I think if you didn't leave the reader with so many questions it would be a lot better.
Spelling
"What do you think I'm doing? I'm going to choose life!" I yelled, not believeing the coldness in my voice.
Believeing should be believing
Overall spelling and punctuation was really good, you should be proud of that. The idea was creative and interesting, it really sucked me in, but at the end, I'm left hanging thinking there should be more.
This is a Saw fanfic. This is meant to be an opening trap so to speak, and these are always vague and straight to the point. There is never much background.
Hi Noir!
Now I know you said you only wanted me to read this, but I'm going to give you my comments anyway as some of them might be helpful and I like helping people!
Building Tension
We're going to use your first sentence as an example:
There's two ways you could go with this - you could either make it shorter and play on being more dramatic that way (The room was dark.) or you could move a few words around to change which ones you're emphasising and make it more dramatic (I woke up and the room was dark) or (The room I woke up in was a dark room).
I'd also suggest you want your second line to be more simple. When we're building tension, the cleaner our sentences are, the better. There's a lot of extra language which can be cut from our writing, like 'just' or 'quite' or 'all'. I like to think of these as variation words and while they're useful sometimes, they're not generally needed. So that second sentence could change to (I felt a heavy weight on my shoulders).
Fan-Fiction
Oh, this is like the saw movies! You need to state that somewhere, Noir so people know it's fan-fiction, otherwise they'll think you're copying ideas! It's very important in the literary world because plagiarism and copyright infringement are both against the law and we uphold that on YWS so I need to ask you to edit in a line that says something like 'This is inspired by the Saw movies and ideas are borrowed from there'.
Quick One!
This sentence didn't quite make sense and felt out of character. The instructions have been misleading but clear until now in that the context of the sentences are confusing, but the sentences themselves are direct with no hesitation or uncertainty. It feels weird for the puppet to hesitate and stumble over their words now.
Overall
I like this! There's a lot of fast paced action and it's very engaging. I think you could have a tiny bit more description and move a little slower to give yourself more time to define the characters. At the moment it's difficult to separate their personalities as they're both very frightened and they react to that in similar ways. I also think they're a little too quick to decide that one of them has to die! Most people would look for an alternate first because try to avoid scary truths like that and watching them frantically search for those better options is what makes people really human and help us to relate to them.
My main comment for this is it feels like there needs to be more struggle! The game is over too quickly because Danielle doesn't make it to the switch. I think she needs to get there and start pushing the other way so that they're actually having to fight each other for this and can see each other, eye to eye and so that Rebecca has to really watch her die.
This was a fun read - good work on the gore and horror elements. Those were very chilling!
Heather xx
Woo, finally getting to read this story in its entirety! First off, I agree with Swordsman...to some people, this might seem like an unrealistic way for the sisters to act, but in all reality people will go to extreme lengths to save their own lives. This has sort of a Tarantino flavor to it, which makes it automatically awesome in my book. It's grim and to the point, and it shows that you're willing to take some risks in your work.
Just a tip, but there's something I learned a long time ago that helps smooth out dialogue; when you have a long line of dialogue composed of several sentences, it helps to put the speech tag in the middle of the dialogue, after the first sentence. For example:
In this case, you should probably change the comma after the dialogue to a period, since exhaling isn't really a speech tag, it's an action. Also, may I suggest rewording it a bit? To me, sneaking implies moving unobserved through an area; since Danielle can clearly see Rebecca doing this, maybe say that she's 'creeping' or simply 'inching' or something. Just a suggestion, feel free to ignore.
Like I said before, I like the twist you've put on this. It's a little unexpected, but it works the way you've written it.
This part, I'm not sure about...three lines later, Rebecca is ruthlessly running to sacrifice her sister. I can see that the sisters do have SOME affection/love for each other, but this line just makes it hard to accept that Rebecca is so willing to kill Danielle. Not a big deal, just thought I would mention it.
Overall, good fanfic. I've never seen the Saw movies, but this sounds pretty spot-on. Keep up the good work!
Very dark and, though I hate to admit it, is very acurate about how people in general tend to act. I work at a Prison so this kind of personality is around me all the time. Unfortunately this is an accurate depiction of how people would act given the situation. But your description is very good and your portrayal of the characters was well done.
Probes! You posted! I'm so happy!
Rebecca. I can't believe she's doing that. It's so cold. xP
~ As I mentioned before, it's clearer and easier to tell when you're reading a MC's thoughts if you italicize them, and remove the quotation marks. That also makes the "I though furiously" tag unnecessary.This was good! Gorey and messed up, but good. xD You want twisted in horror, methinks, though I won't read it for anybody but you. You're welcome.
Anyway, your spelling and grammar is good, description very nice. I look forward to seeing more from you.
Keep writing!
~Shady
Thanks for the review, but more work from me will be...iffy.
This is just a comment. I just wanted to say that I hate Saw movies; I have never seen one and I never will. This story made me sad, but nice job.