Final Girl by Mpho Nkoana - Short, Thriller - After losing her family in a tragic house break, a young girl leaves her hometown in the hopes of her not facing her deadly past. 15 pages - pdf format

New writer interested in feedback on this work, please be nice

I liked what you were trying to accomplish with your story. This was a thrilling story.  You leave it up in the air as to whether or not the authorities arrived in time. There were some credibility issues. Most of the characters died rather quickly after they were attacked.  Rachel keeps going full strength for quite some time.  Perhaps if her early wounds were less serious due to some quick move she made or bad aim on the villain's part. That would make the story a little more believable. That’s just my impression. In any case, I liked the way you stretched out the ending.

There are a number of places where you used the wrong word. For instance, you opened with “A wooden floor scattered with blood…”. I think you want to say, “A wooden floor splattered with blood…”

There are a couple of problems with sounds being capitalized. The object making the sound is not supposed to be in all caps. The sound is. For example, near the bottom of page 6, “The DOOR BELL tingles” should read, “The door bell TINGLES.”   Also, TINGLES should be in all caps everywhere it appears as a sound in the story, not just the first time.

There is an awkward sentence on page 2 after the slug line introducing Bonnie’s home. You have a sentence that starts with, “Rachel sticks her head out…”.  It would be easier to read if it were three sentences. I would write it as, “Rachel sticks her head out the window. She puffs smoke from the cigarette in her hand. The late night wind hits her alluring face as she contemplates her tragic past.”

When writing, it is best to keep the sentences simple. Think of it as feeding a baby.  It works better to slide in one spoonful at a time. You do not want to turn the baby food jar upside down and shake it all into the baby’s mouth. A sentence should not have more than two verbs in it. It is better if it has only one. This applies to action text. In dialog text, you could have a character speak in run-on sentences as a way of displaying a hyper personality.

My favorite part of the story was the way the past came back and connected to the ending.  Some of the facts revealed at the end were creepy and made the villains a little more nasty.

P.S. –  I didn’t know what a final girl was. I had to look it up. I learned something new.