Dark Revenant: The Memoir - Chapter 1

Hello there!

I quite enjoyed reading this chapter. I liked how easy the story flowed though the content being a bit heavy. I know that the character is writing this as an entry to free himself up from the heaviness but I felt maybe this could have been a bit slower, reminiscing even.

The story moved so fast that it was a a bit jarring. And when Ryan says, "Those were the first words he spoke to me" I expected it would be significant of some sort or even a joke so I don't know why it had such an effect on him. Is it because no one even glanced at him while he was living in the streets but this nice Scottish man asks for his name? If so, mentioning that would help us understand Ryan and his state of mind a bit better, I think.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, the man had a funeral and yet Ryan paid his bills? I mean, I can understand how he stayed in the man's house assuming no one came to claim it. Maybe elaborate on that?

Is Sady Rich significant to the story? If not, I'd suggest you to write, "An hungry woman, hungry for power and recognition started all the negative rumors about me. Next thing I knew, I had no job there."

I have to agree with Asith. The chapter on second read feels like a info dump, too much information for a first chapter. So take care of that.

Otherwise, I liked the story. I like the perspective from which it is written. Keep up the good work! Keep writing!

Cheers!

Okay, I really like this premise, but let's revise it, shall we?

I really really enjoyed the chapter from the introduction, to the description of the murder, to the Scottish man. It was after that that it started to lose me. I think you should ask yourself how much of this necessary for a first chapter. Is mopping the floors really where you wanted to bring your main character by the end of the chapter? If so, was the prelude necessary? If not, maybe bring him here later? Point is, I think the time-skips are far too large for such a small extract, and personally, I'd stretch this over two chapters, and use the first to focus on the attack and the Scottish man, which are easily the best parts. Especially the Scottish man; he's such a great character, it's such a waste for him to die within a few paragraphs. Now, I have no idea where you're planning to go with this story, so if you're going to do more flashbacks later on to add on to what you have here, then I suppose you can disregard this.

As for your writing itself, it's pretty great! You have wonderful control over sentence structure, and your story-telling is never boring. I detected a few tense mess-ups, but nothing major. The narration is definitely your strong-suit, so you should use that to your advantage.

I think there's a lack of description in some parts of the story. You are good at description, but you've only used it in a few select scenes! I think it would be nice (and a good way to fluff out the story, because again, I think it moves too fast) to really show us what the settings are like. And I don't mean just visually -- you've got a decent amount of that -- but tell us what everything sounded like; what it smelled like. It would really help in immersion. Your narration is great, but immersion never hurts!


The criticisms I've pointed out are actually fairly minor. Your story is strong, and I think I'm going to read more of it if you post it.
(Your paragraph and line formatting is a little hard to read, but I imagine that's just some technical difficulty with porting the story onto YWS)