Thank you for your message! I’d be happy to share my thoughts.

Okay - I won't hold back! Bear in mind - these thoughts and questions are all offered with the intention of helping you improve your storytelling abilities - which you definitely have!

So with that in mind … here we go!

I was immediately puzzled at the beginning. Amy's obviously talked to the man who was at the door, (because the first sentence is about her closing the door and he leaves) but then you say she’s got “so much blood” on her from what we soon discover was a rather savage murder?

Wouldn’t he have seen it? Did she open the door a teeny crack so he only saw her eye? Even in that case, he might have caught a glimpse of her bloody hand holding the door mostly closed.

And if she did open the door just a crack, wouldn't that make him immediately suspicious?

The man at the door is lost to the story. He has no purpose in it, but there should be a meaningful connection, even if it's that immediately Amy's freaking out about what he saw or what she said or something!! - but it is inconsequential and it's confusing because of the blood etc., as I mentioned above.

That scene is supposed to be central to the story or at least connected to it. The opening line of a story is what is meant to draw the reader into the action. This is unrelated and immediately raises confusion.

How was she able to pretend to be Lawrence’s mother and why would she think that the man at the door didn’t know “she” was there? This implies that she had only spoken to him through a closed door or he didn’t actually see her. This contradicts the opening line, in which she closes the door.

Plus, because he'd have seen her, given the first line of this story, how would she expect to get away with pretending to be L’s mother? That would come out at some point with investigations. The mother will come home in a couple of hours, she'll have an alibi for where she was etc. - This whole thing about Amy pretending to be the mother doesn’t make sense.

Also - why is she so covered with blood when we later learn that she isn’t the one who committed the murder?

And if Lawrence is the one who committed the murder, why is he able to threaten to say she did it because she’s the one with blood on her hands?

And a huge question - why doesn’t he have any blood on his? (Or we assume not, based on him saying she’s the one with blood on her hands). This makes no sense.

Why is she concerned with “contaminating a crime scene”? They would want to contaminate it to hide evidence that they were there or that they were involved, wouldn’t they??

And how can they hide this murder anyway? Mother is coming home in 2 hours, a guy was at the door and talked to Amy, there’s blood from here to next Thursday. She answered the door … this is full of holes.

Why is he so angry with her? We don’t get any motivation or relationship with between them or why he killed his father or why he would want to blame her for killing him …

There is a lot about this story that leaves loads of questions and creates confusion and contradiction, and things just don’t add up. Your characters need to have motivation for everything they do. Readers want to know who’s who, how they’re connected, why they’re involved in the main plot of the story. They want to understand what’s happening.

This feels like you dropped random ideas into place as you went along, without connecting the dots.

When telling a story, it needs to make sense. Readers will notice little details that don’t add up or don’t connect or that contradict other each, and it can make them stop reading.

There you go - I kind of hate dumping a whole lot of this on you at once, not knowing you or how you might take it, but I'm taking you at your word and trust you understand I'm offering all of this in an effort to support your writing journey.

Fiction can be tricky. It's too easy to get caught up in letting imagination take over, and forgetting that we still need to be very grounded in reality or at least "believability" - things still have to make sense, even in fantasy or sci-fi - readers still need to make sense of what's going on and WHY everything is happening as it is.

Okay, gonna send this now and duck! ❤️😂