“**NO STOP**!” Alex shrieked as he fell back, pinned against the floor.
“Nobody’s listening, Alex.” His uncle said calmly, grasping his fumbling hands and yanking them above his head.
Alex screamed and flailed against his grip, “DON’T—“
_WHAM!_
The knife plunged into his chest and blood gushed out, cutting off his scream midway.
I like to leave feedback, and these short stories are really easy to comment on. Please keep in mind that I make suggestions based on opinion only trying to help people improve. I’ll also try to stick to just the categories you asked for feedback on!
The pace is quick, which is pretty much how it has to be when the story is 5 sentences! There is a limit to what you can do with pacing, but I will just point out that the pace is very consistent. We start in the middle of the action and continue at the Sam space to the end of the action. It’s not bad or wrong, but sometimes varying the pace can add to the thriller genre by making things unsettling or uncomfortable. For example, if in sentence #1 Alex is sitting in a chair with nothing happening, the pace can be really slow. Then, all of a sudden, Alex’s uncle could attack them making the pace increase out of nowhere. Last, the pace could slow down at the end when Alex is dead… leaving us where we started but with this unsettling murder than just all of a sudden happened to us. Again, this is preference and really hard with only 5 sentences.
Creativity and originality is good. I mean, it’s not like you copied this from anywhere I’ve read. There are a lot of things I’m left wondering, which is good in a thriller genre, like “why would Alex’s own uncle be doing this?” And I think that was the point. It’s a bit unique and unsettling to make the killer family to the victim.
Generally, I think you met the prompt and had a good little thriller story. There are some things you could change/improve, but it works as written. Here are some things I might change to think about though.
When you only have 5 sentences using a complete sentence on “WHAM!” Seems like a waste. It just (to me) doesn’t add much and takes up 20% of your allowed space. This is something you could leave implied or work into another longer sentence that has more detail in it.
I would change the very direct title personally. The title can actually add more information to the short story without taking away from your requirement, which is a fun trick. For example if this story was titled “The Time my Uncle Babysat Me” or “Alex’s Family Reunion” it would add some context to where and how this is happening while not tipping off the reader to what is about to happen. They would read the title and expect one thing, adding to the shock when the same story is written.
You can try to add more unsettling details. This story is pretty clean and logical from start to finish. It makes sense, which is generally really good! However, with thriller sometimes a little detail that seems out of place gets the mind of the reader to start imagining things that are unsettling.
That’s all I got! Great work and I hope something here helps.
