The Monster of Me: Chapter 1

Hello, saw both of your chapters in the green room and thought I'd help get them out. Plus, I was in the mood to read something from this genre. Let's get started, shall we?

First, I love the title for this story. I don't know if it fits with what you intend to write, but it's a very intriguing title.

I awoke from the white frost on top of the mercy seat, thorny and uncomforting.

Add "of" to help cement the relationship between where the narrator woke from.

The ripping pain touched down in my mind, and it clustered and echoed throughout my entire body.

I really love the imagery in this sentence and I love this sort of materializing of the pain's movement. However, "touched down" seems an odd action choice for the pain. "Clustering" and "echoed" makes sense because you're treating pain like its a bunch of atoms or pin-balls in an arcade game. But "touched down" and "rippling" seem to contradict one another. The first seems to imply external and the later internal.

But that's just my ten cents.

With a silent scream I let the heat of agony overtake me, trying to find my way to the only sanity, to not my own two feet, but the white gates of Heaven.

This is an oddly structured sentence. "With a silent scream" is a preposition and thus needs a comma after it. Then the transition of thought flows well until you get to "the only sanity". I think you trying to mesh too many ideas into one sentence. It sounds like the last two sections are trying to define what "sanity" is in this case. If that's true, I would put period after "sanity" and start the next part as "Not to my own two feet ... " as this will clarify what fragments of this sentence are connected.

... feeling the wrath of a thousand lambs watching from the tip of my world.

I will agree with your other reviewer that "the wrath of a thousand lambs" is an odd description. Granted, it sounds interesting as it might be a Christain metaphor like "the mercy seat" at the beginning of the chapter was. So maybe this could be a warning that the narrator may not be out of the woods yet. And/or a protective eye may be still watching them. If that's the case, you're playing VERY loosely with this metaphor, but it would still fit the story theme/plot and be interesting.

On the other hand, I do believe the beginning of your chapter and the end works hand-in-hand. If I understand correctly, they were in a limbo-like state from the stroke (or dreaming that they were) and they were brought back by the doctor? If so, it completely works.

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Overall:
Didn't see any issues with grammar or typos, so kuddos.

You have a lot of poetic imagery here, and I like it. But I also liked that it didn't take away from your attempts to also have this sound like a modern-day speaker or take away from the natural voice of your narrator. Also, I disagree about your main character not being relate-able. They certainly seem very realistic. Granted, we don't know a whole lot about them. But their monologue helps us to relate to them and feel that they are a real person.

However, the ending isn't very climatic. I'm curious why this person had a stroke at such a young age. Or, at least I'm assuming they're young since they're still in school.Though, they could be an older individual that went back to college. Regardless, other than that, there's not much to the plot to force my urgency to read the next part.

But that's about all I can really say about this piece. I hope something from this helps.

Hey there! MJ stopping by for a short review

All I saw was a white and manila blur leaning against the wall, but he introduced himself as a neurologist.

When did he introduce himself? You can't just skip parts like that and say "Oh, it just happened".

I felt a tear itch my cheek and I closed my eyes, feeling the wrath of a thousand lambs watching from the tip of my world.

Frankly, that's a really weird way to end the story, and I didn't understand it at all. The wrath of lambs? Lambs are portrayed in literature as peaceful, calm creatures, so that's a weird way to phrase wrath.

This felt more like two stories meshed into one, and it was honestly very confusing and so short I didn't get enough of the plot to emphasize with the characters. What was the first line supposed to mean? How did it tie in? It sounds for the first and end line that this character is some sort of sheep, but you describe him as a usual boy for the rest of it. Your descriptions were very vivid, and your writing style is generally good, but you need to figure out what's going to happen and when, because I was so confused I couldn't really think of anything to critique or compliment as far as plot.

Overall, I thought that you had very vividly painted descriptions that made the story feel more intense, but that beauty got lost in the chaos that was the plot. One character was introduced, and we only know that he had a stroke, and that was it. The plot is simply that someone had a stroke, and to make this more of a coherent chapter, I would include more information, like maybe show a scene at home or start this in the middle of class when Mr. Michael gives them the assignment. Make the MC relatable and someone the target audience, teens, can really emphasize with. And take a few minutes to write out some sort of outline for the plot so it doesn't feel as unplanned and chaotic.

Hopefully this review was helpful, and sorry if I came across as harsh. You have potential as a writer, but you just need to slow down a little and take your time to put quality work out there. Improvements definitely need to be made, but other than that, this is not a death sentence. This could still be a good novel if you carefully edit and take some suggestions into consideration, not necessarily mine but the suggestions you get from unbiased reviewers and biased friends/family.

Best wishes,
MJ