%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 Review #4811024 |
 | The Audition  [13+] A young college student's first attempt at an audition doesn't go as planned  |
| (3.0)| Gifting Pebbles | Things I Loved  This is review one of three of the review package you won in Rach's Mad Hatter's Tea Party . Congratulations on your winning bid, and thank you for supporting!  I enjoyed the vibe of this short story. It's got all of the necessary ingredients to make a successful spooky tale—an empty theater, creepy sounds, and a mysterious dark figure. The combination of those things definitely creates that tense okay, something's not right here king of feeling which is so important for these types of stories. Maggie being alone and the thunderstorm outside continue the buildup of the atmosphere and make everything feel even more eerie. The idea for the plot is pretty straight forward and solid. Maggie's nervousness about the audition is relatable. I think a lot of readers will be able to connect with her nerves and anxiety, especially those that've ever had to do something outside of their comfort zone. The setting is ideal for a spooky encounter. I was a drama kid and theaters are some of the most intense spaces I've ever been inside of. They're like batteries that soak up all of the raw emotions of those on stage and hold it. When they say you can feel the electricity in those spaces, I think it has to do with this charge and storage of energy. There have been many times I stepped onto stage and was overwhelmed by the surge of that power. I can also speak to strange happenings in the theater. One time when I was a stage manager, we were using walkie-talkies with earbuds to communicate between front-of-house and back-of-house. And out of nowhere, we start hearing this baby crying and a mother's gentle shushing to calm it. At first we thought maybe our walkies had inadvertently picked up on the frequency of a baby monitor. But then, we realized we were inside of a rural high school that was quite literally in the middle of nowhere—there weren't any homes or other structures for miles. So, there was no way we could be picking up a baby monitor! It was very creepy and made all of the hairs on our necks stand up. We were putting on a production of Frankenstein so it really enhanced the mood. Descriptions of the overcast sky, the empty hallways, the dark theater, and the single spotlight shining down on the stage helped reinforce the creepy tone of the story. They were effective in creating an unsettling feeling that something out of the ordinary was going to happen. Iceberg of Ideas | Suggestions I would suggest you make a few passes through the entire story to clean up some easy grammar, structure, and punctuation mistakes. You've got a few small articles that are missing in front of words and other instances where they're present when they shouldn't be. When your mind is racing and the words are flowing, our fingers sometimes type faster than our minds can keep up with them. It's always a good idea to re-read your work several times just to catch those little clerical mistakes. While you do a decent job at showcasing the ingredients for a creepy and tense atmosphere, I think they're not being utilized as effectively as they could be. A quick example is in the opening of the story. The reader is told Maggie is nervous. Rather than being told Maggie is nervous, let us experience it through her actions, reactions, inner thoughts, and physical response to her environment and the stimuli within it. If you need to explain something to the reader, it's almost always a better idea to find a creative way to feed the information to the reader without hitting them on the head with it. Spoon-feeding can be distracting and ruin the immersion created in the reading experience. To piggyback off of the last comment, I would suggest creating a new and more dynamic and engaging opening sequence. Currently, it's all exposition, backstory, and setup. While it's good and important for the reader to know this information, ask if it's necessary to font-load the information via telling or if there are more creative ways at giving that same information in ways that allow the reader to experience rather than having it summarized for them. A more gripping opening that jumps into the action of the story enables us to hook a reader right away rather than hoping they trudge through our setup. New Beginning Example ▼ Something like this gets us immediately into the action of the character and still gives the reader the valuable information: Maggie is in college, she's nervous, and she's auditioning for something. The ending of the story is quite open-ended. Sometimes that can be very effective. But here, I don't think it works in the way you were probably intending. We have this tension that's built up throughout the story and then it culminates with an encounter with a mysterious figure. And Maggie just runs out of the building and thinks well, that was creepy. The End. It's a little too vague. The creepy figure was never explained and left me asking what it was. Adding a little more mystery—like a clue or something that hints as to what it is or what its purpose is—would make the ending feel more complete and satisfying rather than being a hasty retreat. I'd suggest giving Maggie more depth. What else is going on in her life? How can you infuse those happenings to further probe her psychology and use them in her actions? For example, why is this audition so important to her? Why is her phone on silent well before walking into the theater? Why continue into the theater if it appears no one else is present? It doesn't have to be a fully-explored backstory, but giving the reader small glimpses into a life lived beyond the focus of the story can help make the character feel like an actual person with a real life. Lean into the dorm mate. Rather than summarize and tells us about past conversations, show one of them to us. Let us see how their interact with one another. Maybe the dorm mate gets out of class early because of the impending weather and walks in on Maggie practicing her audition. This sets up the weather element and sets the scene for the audition. The two can discuss the audition, her nerves, the weather, you can even do some foreshadowing by having the roommate be surprised the auditions haven't been rescheduled because of the storm. While minimal dialogue in this story is believable because Maggie is alone for most of it, I think it's a great opportunity to explore and use Maggie's internal dialogue. This, too, can be handled with subtlety. Maybe she tries to convince herself that she's just seeing things because of her nerves, debates whether she should continue into the dark and quiet theater, etc. These internal glimpses can be very effective tools to show characterization, build tension, and progress the story. I think you could push some of the descriptions in the story a little more. Describe how the theater feels. Is it cold, is the air stagnant? You could describe the hollow echo of her footsteps. Personification could be used as a great tool to further enhance the tension and atmosphere and make the theater become a character itself. Example ▼ I'd suggest dragging out the buildup of dread a bit more. Maybe Maggie hesitates more before going into the theater, pauses and notices other small out of place things that contribute to the foreboding feeling. It will enhance the payoff of the mysterious and creepy figure showing up when she leaves because the setup is more founded. Colony Consensus | Overall Impression This story has all of the cool and vital elements of a great spooky tale! You've got the beginnings of an awesome creepy atmosphere, the perfect environment and situation for something eerie and scary to happen, and definite intrigue in the the appearance of a mysterious figure. With some refinements and honing in on the small details and fully developing those elements, this story could really pop! Overall, you've done a good job assembling all of the parts! Now you've just got to properly assembled those parts. It's headed in the right direction, keeping going! Write on! Belly-Slide Scale of Enjoyment | Rating  Keeping it cool!
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You responded to this review 04/13/2025 @ 10:58pm EDT