Why is this a prologue and not simply Chapter 1?

There’s something potentially interesting here, but it’s a little too coy and evasive—doesn’t tell me enough of what’s going on and who’s speaking to persuade me to read on. Even just saying what industry would supply a little bit of a hook to hang my curiosity on.

And just what IS the blossoming idea? That you might “feel something more”?

This paragraph is confusing to a reader – as it is intended to be, I understand that. But it seems to have also confused the writer.

The first sentence mentions “a moment” when a thought occurred. But then that’s expanded to a comparison as “the industry boomed” and “a flower sprouting from the dirt”. Surely those are not “moments”. Those are significant periods of time. It takes (generally) months to years for an industry to “boom”, which is compared metaphorically to the days or perhaps weeks when a flower might sprout from a patch of soil. Where is “the moment” in all of this time?

Clearly the first person in the story is being set up as some kind of monster, whether psychopath, sociopath or whatever isn’t clear yet, but it’s a person who wants to cause pain and suffering. Okay. It’s been done, of course, so if it’s not going to be derivative then it has to be different in some way/s. (One wonders with some trepidation whether that means the character is going to be even worse than Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, or what, exactly. So if the writing isn’t truly compelling, then I’d probably take a pass on it – even though gore and mayhem won’t put me off a good book.)

And the “growing and blossoming” metaphor is … off. When it grows and grows to possess the narrator’s soul, well, that’s not a good thing. Not beautiful to most people; it sounds more cancerous.

So, it’s confusing and intentionally mysterious and … choked with a noxious and unrelenting weed growth – with a flower, apparently. I’m not liking the images, but I guess I’m not supposed to.

@CWOTUS It’s not meant to be cancerous. Rather, a flower to most people is a representation of rebirth or new life after a harsh winter. It’s the blossoming of an idea rather than a downfall due to crippling revelation. It starts with a moment, then snowballs into more moments, more time to consider the idea. An idea must begin with a thought in a moment. There isn’t a comparison with the moment and the industry booming, but more an expansion of the idea into a full fledged belief.

The narrator’s “flower” seems to be a germinating idea where s/he can hurt someone and feel bad about it. That’s not a pleasant image to me.

Anything that “grows and grows, possessing my soul” is also unpleasant – especially when the source, the thing that’s growing, was “a thought that I could hurt someone and feel bad about it”. And the image of burgeoning, uncontrolled growth that “takes over” anything, like kudzu (the image that occurs to me) is a representation of metastasizing, cancerous, noxious growth.

@CWOTUS But how can you make the assumption without even knowing what the story is about? Also, the idea is that they have come to care for people—not have grown to want to hurt them.

Wanting to “take away her smile or his laugh” is the most compelling line. I feel like some of the phrasing is kind of indirect. Some of the lines are phrased as hypotheticals, like “believed I could,” “like I would care,” etc. If these were written in a more direct way (present tense?) the writing might flow a little better.

Also yay for writing questions on fluther! And welcome. :)

Too much confusion and mixing of metaphors; it needs to be a little clearer as to what is going on for me. And no idea where the industry booming fits in.

Yeah, it’s fairly interesting, but it very complicatedly mentions so many things without explaining them, and those things for me don’t really flow or go together well, so I react to it like the person may have something interesting to say, but is either (I hope) writing to himself, or is communicating in an annoying way. Unless I had reason to be encouraged to put up with reading about themes without context until the author gets around to giving the context, I’m probably going to drop it.

Not bad, there was a moment I believed I could feel something more but the moment passed and I was left confused as to what was going on.