Fear Walker, Adult Psychological Thriller

[sterile marten]

@sterile marten I’ll work on making time to look this over. Most of the stuff in bookshelf doesn’t interest me, but I think this looks appealing.

[sterile marten]

That rly rly rly means a lot.

[sterile marten]

@weak ingot here you go if you’re interested

Read as much or as little as you want, I wouldn’t force anyone

[sterile marten]

I'm just going to update my train of thought here as I keep reading:

Three and a half pages in, nothing has happened. We see Harrison walk through the setting and enter his apartment, but besides that there's no progression. I think if you're writing thriller, you need to have a keener sense for more initial tension.

You do have pretty complex prose though so far. I think you could vary the cadence of your sentences a little better, but your language is fairly mentally evoking.

Eight pages in now, and I think Harrison actually puts it better than I could: "It was literally business as usual and another repeating gesture in time—nothing alternating from routine."

The story starts to pick up at the top of page 10, and we finally have our first bit of dialogue.

I don't know if the first nine pages are necessary, honestly. They just involve Harrison walking home, waking up, going through his routine, etc.

In a movie, that could be a charming montage. But I think in a story hundreds of pages long, it just ends up dragging.

I think the dialogue page 10 and after can be improved. A lot of it feels like "as you know, Bob" dialogue.

Which basically means that the dialogue feels like its just there to convey information and comes off as awkward.

So, for example: the boss, when referring to the anonymous investment the bar is receiving, blatantly comes out and says "Why reveal this otherwise cryptic information?" when revealing it to his staff.

This is something the readers need to make an inference on--not have the boss say.

There's some other dialogue that relate to Harrison's autism that come off as similarly forced, like things that Allison and Harrison wouldn't say to each other, like "I know you have autism" just feels awkward. I think that's something the readers could find out through narrative summary with hints of it being thrown in to scene earlier on.

@sterile marten I'm going to take a break for now but these are my suggestions so far.

[sterile marten]

That’s a fair take

[sterile marten]

I wanted a way to mention it early on, but I see how you can think that it’s forced.

[sterile marten]

. A lot of the first chapter serves as bread crumbs and foreshadowing for later on. However, I see how it can seem slow to you.

[sterile marten]

lol yeah, that was a self awareness moment but I guess it’s not necessary

Overall, thanks for the honest feedback.

I’ll be taking mental note of this