Response to Corey Good's "Chieko and the Sea of Trees"

  I like what you got here. The idea of someone who is so obsessed with killing himself he spends and absurd amount of money to travel to this historic suicide forest only to have a realization that he was wrong. You do a very good job of telling what is happening in preparation to Albert's suicide, as well as giving a crystal clear description of the setting. Also I oddly like the dramatic shift from all introduction and setting to all dialogue. I gives em this notion that the beginning is him mentally preparing himself so there is no dialogue, it's all internal perspective and that is suddenly interrupted when someone does talk to him.

  A few things that took the story away from me was first on the first page. In three sentences he says "I don't matter" in some way or another. I think you should just say it one time, specifically just keep the last one and cut the previous two. From then on out don't say this because it takes away from Albert's character. We get it, he hates himself. The second thing was more just me being confused. On page 3 you say "I cut my way through the trees toward it." You give all this very detailed description of what he buys but don't mention that he bought a sword big enough to cut through a thick forest. A simple addition in saying he bought this is all thats needed

  The last thing is the dialogue part has way too many dialogue tags. It started to bother me because I was really enjoying this conversation because it lead me to think what was going to happen at the end but I kept getting distracted by "I say", "She replied", ect.

  You've got a good story here but the realization that Albert had and in the end not killing himself seemed a little forced. If you expounded on the dialogue and made this connection that he was selfish and that he shouldn't kill himself more clear.