Crime of Passion

A story told in flashbacks, on a loop leading back to the ONE ending established in the beginning, is a challenge in this format any way you approach it.

But the beginning of this is just about perfect I have to say. The first page establishes stakes, circumstance, and tone all in a concise and efficient way. While the second page really lays the noir on thick and draws you into the setting. (In hindsight the only misstep in the setup is how much real estate on the page Alfred Schumacher gets. That and being named at all implies he must be at least a semi important character, but then he's never mentioned again.)

There's things I do and don't like about the actual relationship set up here. The main character didn't feel like he had much personality, and while Cathering was intriguing, the "mystery" around her was very short lived. For a situation that leads such a brief relationship so quickly to murder, there needs to be either an already half cracked "hero", or a level of intensity between them that I just didn't get a sense of here.

Meeting your mom for Christmas was an unexpectedly wholesome respite for a story in this style and the most memorable part of this for me. It brought out the sweet/funny side of Catherine more while also highlighting the differences between them, and the nightmare along with concerns about something being wrong coming from the mom were both a good use of foreshadowing. (Although nothing like the events in the nightmare ever end up happening, making me wonder if more was planned.)

The mandatory murders I was kind of meh on. The first one I got to made me wonder how this old man with his life of organized crime had *gotten* so old to begin with, when he confronts a man who has broken into his home with a tommy gun and already killed his butler, and is just like 'whoa calm down son, why not take a walk and think this over' instead of taking the first shot while he was in a position to. Also,

You smirked involuntarily. This joker was terrified of death. "Hey Kern, lemme know what nonexistence feels like!"

...smh, these are some weak bants.

I considered the path that led through 'Walk away' the best and most satisfying after all. The one where you actually survive didn't feel very earned--in fact I was half expecting Catherine herself to end up dead as an example after you snitched, it'd have given some teeth to at least one of these alleged crime guys anyway.

I liked the way the details of the actual execution scene changed based on your attitude upon arriving there. (Although the path where you kill Catherine still has you referencing "murdering a man" to the priest.)

Because it was rushed for the...third extension to the contest, I was encountering a lot of typos and mistakes. Nothing to render it unreadable obviously, I enjoyed the game overall, but enough to be distracting and leave me waffling on a rating. This is one of those situations where a half point scale would be nice to have.

The funniest typo goes to, "...you straddled his body and vegans quickly and methodically plunging it over and over into his face, temples, and wherever else his head was soft enough to allow a blade."

Confound those vegans!

'Take care of it yourself' is full of tense switching, and I spotted it in a few other places as well. I know once you're used to 2nd person present, it's hard to not slip back into it when for instance writing a flashback, or in this case a whole story's worth, but this whole thing really does need a good edit pass and polish.

I think if you hadn't been so constrained by the prompt, I'd have enjoyed a noir romance that had some more room to breath and more varied outcomes. Or even if there had been more ways to end up a murderer instead of always just focusing on Kern. As soon as the protag mentioned guarding valuable art for instance, I began to wonder what a heist gone wrong to get Catherine out of her money troubles would be like. I wouldn't mind an expanded version of this at all, even though I know how it is with a story being tough to pick up again or even look at without loathing once it's been pushed out.

>>>You we're definitely expecting to just be flattered for your efforts, yet here you were being critiqued!

Indeed.

I like it quite a lot, surprisingly. Okay one thing it is not despite being advertised as such is a good love story. It isn't and it honestly doesn't have to be. The chemistry of the protagonist and Catherine is bland, the dynamic of a troubled seductress and a gallant stern gentleman has been done to death and frankly I think they're both unintentionally horrible irritating people.

However, the story is very crafty and very clever in it's plot. Normally I should criticize endings for being too samey, but I think it works this time. The electric chair ending scenes are really one of my favorites and yes I've noticed that you changed them up a little with every ending. I dunno, it gives a very nice motif.

Plus the canary and the canary and the cage thing. I like the comparisons drawn.

Plus crime of passion: the title can be interpreted in two ways. Most of the time it involves you killing that guy Kern who's holding Catherine's debt. You kill him so you can be with Catherine. One thing i really like is that there was another route where you kill Catherine in a fit of rage. It's a fun other way to implement this so called crime of passion.

Oh and I noticed it has a noir vibe, plus it's a period piece based on the references to 1950s or 1960s. I never grow tired of this stuff.

All in all very fun story, but really insufferable characters with a very lacking romance. Still, give it a read though, it's well written and the endings are very engaging when you get through the slow middle part.

I got the feeling you were trying to write something True Life-esque, and I’d say you succeeded. After a couple pages, I was hooked, and you’ve definitely improved in setting tone and making interesting characters from Wrath of the Edomite.

The main character's personality shines through in all of his dialouge, and the tone was evident in the majority of the story.

I feel guilty for tearing into this when all of your comments highlight the positives of any story. So any potential readers, I’d recommend you stop here and just rate based on your own experience. The below feedback both contains major spoilers and is mainly meant for the author.

Again, if you haven’t read it already, stop here.

There were some places where tone was weak, especially in the beginning, and sentence structure was a bit off. Usually just putting something you’d usually put at the beginning of a sentence at the end. There were also a lot of SPAG errors for something so short, especially writing in the wrong tense and forgetting to use question marks at the end of a question.

I'll note that the tone is still set well, and the sentences are still perfectly readable and engaging. These recommendations are really just to push your writing into high 6/8, low 7/8, territory.

I’m not sure if you were going for a comedic or lighthearted effect, but since this doesn’t have a comedy tag, I assume not. (If you are, disregard the following advice.) There are a few places the tone goes into more lighthearted and casual territory, which I felt took away from the general atmosphere and True Life-esque narration. See things like “You’re pretty sure that would be considered inappropriate.” Or “The head juror, or whatever he was supposed to be.”

There were no paragraph breaks in the description, which annoyed me a lot more than it should have.

The thing that really pushed my rating down was the first page, which wasn’t interesting, and did not pull me into the story like it should have. There are a few ways you could fix this.

The first way would be to make him a relatable character very early on. Sure, the protagonist is sentenced to death, but there’s no reason for the reader to care. All he’s done is judge everyone around him. To make this better, to make him more relatable, give him human reasoning for his actions. Maybe mention how “he did this all for the woman he loved, and he’d do it all again”, or something generic to fit all the endings.

However, he doesn’t have to be a fleshed-out character on the first page to make it good. Another way would be to make the scene more tense, mainly elaborate on what the character is feeling and thinking at that exact moment. If the character doesn’t seem to care about the fact he might die, why should the reader? You don’t have to make him relatable this way, just elaborate on what he feels. Even a line or two would do, something like “He prayed, to any god that was out there, to save him from his own mistakes. A horrible shudder ran through him as he awaited the juror’s words, knowing he could not escape his eventual fate.”

One more thing I’d recommend is shorter sentences, to pack more punch into the scenes that are meant to be impactful. As well as rearranging the sentence structure. Here’s an example from the first page.

“You’ve known from the moment this trial started what word would escape his lips, but it still felt like all the air was sucked out of your lungs when he pronounced the single word of doom. ‘Guilty.’”

If I was going to re-write this to have more impact, it would go something like…

“From the moment this trial started, you knew what word would escape his lips in the end. It does not change how all the air is sucked out of your lungs the instant he pronounces it. Speaking moves it into terrible reality.

‘Guilty.’”

It seems I’ve really been tearing into your game here, and that’s because I think you’ll really benefit from it.

In all, it’s a good story I’m sure people will enjoy.

This was genuinely garbage. Definitely the worst reading experience I’ve had in a long long time. Let this serve as a reminder to fix this.

1/8. Moron