The Lotus Murder - Comments

I meant to comment on this like a week ago. I am the worst

I adored this. Fictional Fiction is in itself interesting, and your rendition is uniquely your own. Not only did you happen to incorporate key facts put in by Agatha Christie in her novel, but you managed to make this story your own. Incorporating more description and activity than Christie gave you in the first place.

The first chapter was a little scattered. I had to read it twice (but that might have been because it was very late at night when I first read it). I would have liked more continuation and more of a flow from the intro into the story plot. I viewed it as a prologue rather than a chapter, though, so you could consider changing it to that, if it enticed you?

The second chapter has much more of a chapter flow and the consistency (and dialogue) that a chapter would have.

Geoffrey is an interesting character. I'm not entirely sure if you mentioned his age, but you often called him "the boy", which makes me sooo curious if he's in fact a very young man, a small child like "boy suggests" or a man with a boyish physique? Maybe you're just using boy as the gender?

I also just like Geoffrey's personality. He reminds me a lot of Sherlock Holmes...sort of a devil may care attitude, and everything has to be for him, not for someone else. Also reminds me of House (like the doctor from the tv show) because he would only take cases that intrigued him...also a bit of a jerk. Haha.

A grammatical suggestion, take the parentheses out of the description and replace them with comma's or longer dashes. It's a personal preference, so parentheses may be kept if you strongly prefer it that way, obviously

Alfie is actually adorable. The poor guy. Just trying to do his job and Geoffrey seems like the type of person to always ruin it. Haha.

You have an incredible use of description. It's excellent in describing things, places and events. I'd love it if you'd expand more on your description of emotions. Although not very many emotions have happened in this story yet... remember that emotions can be felt physically and emotionally. So, your heart soars and your chest physically hurts, etc.

This was really well done. I hope you continue to write (this and other things). Good luck!

This chapter was really good. I enjoyed it very much. Keep up the good work. :)

Crime fiction is amazing. The only thing I know of by Agatha Christie is her play And Then There Were None. My high school did that production and it was good. I've always been a huge fan of crime fiction because of the way authors write the descriptions of everything involved in it. The details are just amazing.

I must say that you have a career ahead of you in crime fiction writing, because honestly Chapter 1 sounded more like a prologue than a chapter.

I did see a few slip ups in Chapter 2 though.

Not just because the color was awful, but because only one person he knew knew how to drive that car. Just that one. - this sentence reads a bit funny with the two 'knew' next to each other. Try and re-work it so that it reads smoother.

Also, you had a sentence with parentheses, and I realize that the stuff within the parentheses can be omitted, but in my personal opinion it looks cleaner if you bracket the words with commas instead because the commas do the same as the parentheses.

Overall, great piece. I loved it. I subscribed and recommended it. So I am looking forward to reading more when you do write more for it. :)

I'm a massive fan of crime fiction (although I've never read any of Christie's works) so I've fallen in love with this already! Your plot is well-thought out and intriguing so far. I'm really interested to find out what the lotus petals have to do with the murder and how you'll incorporate that throughout the story.

Geoffrey as a whole is a really interesting character already. I love the devil-may-care attitude he has going on - not something you see very often in detectives within these types of stories and that really does add a lot to the story as a whole, as well as making it fairly unique in that respect. I have a feeling that his childish nature could also prove a curse though, so again, I'm interested to see how you progress with that.

Your writing style in itself is lovely as well, really easy to read. I did notice a few slip-ups in tense though, so I would read over carefully and make sure that everything is kept in the same tense as you write.

Interesting, well-written and a wonderful main character. I like this very much!