and here we are! so, i read your smiley thing like a few hours after you released it. my comment was half assed on it, i apologize for that ieghsdg, i think i was hungover that day so my communicating skills were bare minimum. that aside, happy together is really great. the way you started it was wonderful. i remember reading it at first and being attached into it. the instant start of drama is good, i love suspense and drama and you catered to both of those things very well. the internal writing for this character is also really good. you feel her dread. you feel as if you're understanding her perspective and how upsetting it is. some writers (professional ones too at that), don't put that life into the situations, and even though she's a minor character; she's still human. and that's important, at least to me.
my next point is your dialogue. this is a huge struggle for many people, myself included. you do it really really well, seamlessly well. when reading your interactions, i forget that you're the one pulling the puppet strings, that you're the one doing it all. it's done so nicely that i think there's two people in each interactions, three whenever there's a third party and that's excellent! that's what you want to do with writing! make your characters and their interactions so believable that it's more than just one person essentially talking to themselves through writing and more like there's several people there.
i also liked that you described lionel not at the start, but in the middle. it flowed really well and was an interesting way to do it. so many times, i personally get caught up and stressed at describing everything at once, you know? like who is this character. let me describe them right away. but that doesn't matter and placing it later on is great. it's a good way to introduce them better than giving the reader too much information at one time. i liked that a lot, and was like oh! this is who he is and this is why it matters.
lastly, the area with smiley introduced. it was great, it was amazing. you took that character from before and made her more important than the victim she was. suddenly she was someone and as the reader, you just sat there like oh no...because dramatic irony. you knew what was going on, you realized that oh that's the..oh no it's not a good thing don't text her back, but the characters didn't. cyclical and well threaded, YOU made that happen and gave it such a good sensation that it was delightful. it was exciting to read and i wanted to know what came next. would they die? would they realize something was off? would they have a good evening and the killer (smiley) would just fuck around and then put the phone somewhere else? that's amazing stuff to have in writing.
i struggle with reading writing a lot, i get unfocused and can't keep up well with the story..but your way of doing it kept my attention and allowed me to enjoy a really fantastic piece. so thank you for that and thank you for taking the time out to write it. you did a great job!!! >W< be proud of yourself and your work! smiley is a spooky boy and he's such a wonderful character.
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@ NP, i have like 2 things in my library. cannibal corpse is more of actual writing if you want to check that out.