The Confession

Hey, it's me Nike, here to review.
For starters I would like to say, welcome to Young Writers Society (YWS)! I hope you enjoy the site and find great friends. This place will really take you with open arms and appreciate your writing.

About your story, to be honest, I wasn't as pulled in as one would expect. You have a good plot, the mystery is there... but there's not enjoy pull to that mystery. This site helps people improve in their writing, that's why it encourages people to review, to help other writers get better. So negative reviews should not put you down, but they should pull you up.

I wish you put more description in the story telling, not when the MC speaks. Because honestly, I can't imagine anyone speaking like that. If that's how your character is, I won't tell you to change them up. But make it a little more realistic.

I will be reviewing piece by piece, it helps by showing you what exactly I am commenting on.

“I still remember the look on her face. Her eyes practically begged me to stop, but I couldn’t.” I looked down in shame at my shaking hands curled up in my lap, while Doctor Kennedy looked at me with a straight face.

I’ve been in this place for six years now, Overbrook Asylum for the mentally ill. At first I didn’t think I was crazy, but the longer i’m here the more I realize just how psychotic I really am. It’s not my fault that I am the way I am. I didn’t realize what kind of people my parents were until I was about ten. When I was little I just thought my dad liked to drink out of glass bottles. I used to tell my friends that my mom was a nurse. There was always needles lying around the house and her friends always looked sick to me, so it made sense. What else was a naive child supposed to think?

“Suddenly, I’m walking along a narrow, crooked stream. I can smell the thick musky smoke and pine needles coming from the deep red embers in the distance. It’s unnervingly quiet; I can hear the crackle and pop of rocks shooting out of the hot flames. It’s chilly outside, and the little clothes I do have on are sopping wet” Normally, my sessions with Doctor Kennedy are short and quiet. I don’t want people to know what really happened; I’m fine with being looked at as a monster. So, the revelation of my dream last night is a shock, even to myself.

“Is this just a dream, Or could it be a memory of the night too?” she asks me in a concerned tone.

I rolled my eyes and said “ If I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t be here right now”

She snapped back “Well, Megan, Why don’t you tell me what you do know? Start from the beginning of that weekend and work your way to the end. I want to know everything you remember.”

I took a deep breath and traced back as far as I could “ It was two weeks after my sixteenth birthday. My parents had been planning the trip for weeks; They said that it was to make up for everything they’ve messed up in the past. I’m not surprised they had an ulterior motive for the trip, they never did anything for me unless it benefited them in some way. We drove out of town for about six hours. The majority of the ride was silent, except for the one time we stopped. My dads phone started ringing, then both of my parents looked at each other with a look of apprehension.

I remember the exact words that came out of my mother’s mouth were “We can’t talk about it in front of her”

I couldn’t help, but to chime into the conversation and say "talk about what?” My dad looked at me through the rear view mirror with a devastating look as he turned up the radio. We got off at the next exit. Only my dad got out long enough to call the suspicious number back. I don’t remember the rest of the drive, I don’t remember much else, until that night. I was getting ready for bed when my parents disappeared into the woods. I didn’t think much of it at the time. So, I continued to my tent. Everything was fine until, I woke up coughing on smoke. I could feel sweltering heat against my back and everything looked orange through my tired eyes. After I reclaimed my consciousness, I realized what was happening; Everything was engulfed in flames. I panicked, so I ran. I forgot my parents were with me, until I saw a figure in the woods. It resembled my father’s height and size. I ran towards it- I was wrong. At one point this man may have been my dad, but now he was the man that wanted to kill me. As I approached him he began walking towards me holding his hand behind his back. I grabbed his arm and said “ Where’s mom? It’s all gone; everything is on fire!” When he pulled his arm out from behind his back, I saw a tiny sliver of light bounce off of the blood thirsty edge. I began running as fast as I could. I felt the burning of the cold air as I struggled to breath. I tripped on a small thorn bush in my hasty escape, and rolled down a hill. In my miserable attempt to get back up, my killer caught up to me. He sat on top of me he put the thick, cold blade to my throat. I looked to my left and noticed a large rock, just within my reach. I begged my father as he sat on top of me to just let me go, and in a moment of distraction I grabbed the rock and slammed it against the side of his head. He lost consciousness and collapsed to the side of me. I don’t know what came over me, but I didn’t want to stop. My anger, much like my father’s drunkenness, made me into a beast. I finally took control of my spiraling world and ended his. I sat for a moment and took in the wet smell of iron. I sat for a moment and thought about what I had done; I’d never been more proud of myself. Along the way back to the camp site, I noticed a vehicle off in the distance. When I got closer to it I saw the figure of a sleeping woman leaned against the passenger window. In the back were a couple gas cans and a few lighters. I knew the pain my mother had dealt with all her life. When we couldn’t afford her medication anymore she started taking matters into her own hands. That’s how she became a drug addict. She had no intention of becoming the person she was, but I had no more sympathy for her left in me. All I’d done for the past three years, was clean up her messes and protect her. I ripped the door of the truck open and she fell to the cold hard ground. She looked up at me in fear and screamed. She begged for me to let her explain, but I didn’t want to hear anymore excuses. I counted each and every time I stabbed my mother; I counted 36 times. 36 times my mom pleaded for me to spare her life. 36 times my mom begged for me to give her one last chance.”

Soon after my confession to Doctor Kennedy, I was permanently admitted to Overbrook with little, to no communication to the outside world.

This is Kaos here for a review!

Starting off to point out the giant block of text that you have in the middle of your piece, I strongly suggest that you chop it up into paragraphs rather than just letting it sit there because it messes up the flow and pacing of the other paragraphs as well and is overall hard to read here.

I'm going to delve deeper for this and the first thing that I'm going to say is: Do your research. This is something that really felt lacking in this piece and if you're going to do something like this but don't really know a lot about it, you're going to have to research the topic. I found a lot of the things in this short story to be quite tasteless because it seems like you /only/ focused on the fact that this is about someone whom is diagnosed with _______.

That's right, you didn't really bother to put in why they were there or what they were even diagnosed with which makes me think that you didn't try to do your research. Another thing that I wanted to point out is when the character calls themself 'crazy'. This is something that can be seen as offensive and I suggest you take it out of the piece because rarely do people of this nature call themselves 'crazy'. There isn't really much of a story outside of this because it's all based around what situation the main character is in and rather than using a character that you would usually write, you load the character with their label. Just like how people of the LGBT+ community are not solely LGBT+; they're just people. As for the actual story and if you're wondering if this isn't relevant, it is.

If you're going to write a story about this type of thing then you're going to want to portray it right rather than just throwing in whatever you think it is. Don't base the character solely on their label. For a better example, if a person is apart of the LGBT+ community like I said before, they are not a LGBT+ person, they are a person who happens to be apart of that community. Done with that example, moving on. There are grammar errors that sprinkle through the work, small and minor ones that could be fixed if you proofread this over. I suggest to use a grammar checker as well, but don't rely on it since they don't catch everything.

The second half of the piece is tasteless as well with the ending of that the main character is permanently admitted to this Overbrook Asylum. We don't really get to see any of their healing or anything after that and this ending that you make makes it seem that all people of this way should be locked away forever and everything of that sort instead of any other ending you could do. Give us something more and give us something real. I suggest trying again with more knowledge on this type of thing to get a better and more accurate representation.

I hope I helped and have a great day. I didn't mean to attack you so much as the work and if I did, I'm quite sorry for that.

Heya, Kayleeamber8899! Casanova here to do a review for you!

Anyway, overall this short story just seems rather lacking. I don't know if it's because it seems slow, but it also feels like(In the gigantic block of text I'll get to in a minute) it's moving too fast? Like, besides that it's really slow, then suddenly everything unfolds rather fast, and I didn't like the combo. I say play it out a bit more, and even it out with the rest of the short story.
Besides your main character your characters are robotic and bland. What I mean by this is that they seem to have practically no emotion, and it seems like they're background characters in a play. Something/someone who's just there, if that makes any sense.
Your dialogue is a bit too simple, you're not really portraying any emotion and it's the typical,"he said," "she asked," kind of dialogue. Play around with it, I think you might like something like,"he snarled," and,"she sobbed," better, as it really gets the emotion into it as well. Play around with your phrasing as well, different phrasing might help you experiment different ways to convey emotion.

The next thing is paragraph breaking. Now, we break a paragraph at a different thought, idea, and/or dialogue. Here's an example-

I’ve been in this place for six years now, Overbrook Asylum for the mentally ill. At first I didn’t think I was crazy, but the longer i’m here the more I realize just how psychotic I really am. It’s not my fault that I am the way I am. I didn’t realize what kind of people my parents were until I was about ten. When I was little I just thought my dad liked to drink out of glass bottles. I used to tell my friends that my mom was a nurse. There was always needles lying around the house and her friends always looked sick to me, so it made sense. What else was a naive child supposed to think?