> lists a bunch of suspicious things, including a feeling "that something could stir beneath" the suspicious mounds of dirt.

Gregor and Justin didn’t find anything suspect however,

Pretty standard teen angst, pretty standard werewolf/vampire mass-produced YA fodder. It doesn't get more stereotypical than this. It could have been readable with stellar prose, but this story does not rise to that level.

I couldn't make it to the end, sorry.

>>Hap
Teach me, zenpie

I like titles that pop, and this was the first title in my slate that popped, so let's do this.

This is a little outside of my genre, but the good thing about that is that hopefully I can get right down into the details of the story and let you know how much it has going for it outside of the plot itself. For example, the narration.

I liked your characters, author. They were fairly distinct, despite how many there were.

I think this story is an interesting look into what happens when a story gradually goes from stellar narration to a style that's rather dry. The first scene with Gregor and the dean had me very interested—I was watching Gregor's actions and trying to figure him out. As the story goes on, and especially after the chase scene, I'm no longer curious about what's going on, because the narration is spoon feeding me every emotion and gameplan of the characters.

See: show vs tell narration. It's a hot button topic among amateur writers like us for a reason.

But on the plus side, it's an easy fix in this case, and can save you a ton of words. There are a lot of instances of you showing me what the characters are doing, and then telling me why they did it. And it's often obvious.

“Well, I’m not Ryan,” replied Gregor, turning away. He couldn’t stand staying one second longer with those revolting creatures.

You already had me thinking he hated these guys. And when he's turned away, I'm thinking it looks like he can't stand being around them. And then you tell me what I already know. So you can delete that second sentence and save me having to think "yeah, I got that, cheers, mate."

And there's a lot of "second sentences" in this story, especially near the end. The impact is stronger if you stick to body language and dialogue (and not inner thoughts).

But that's all from me. Thanks for the read!

More than a little melodramatic, but hardly the worst Vampires VS Werewolves story. There's a lot of editing bugs, though.

A vampires vs werewolves story, it took until the second scene for me to understand what was actually going on. That being said, I actually did enjoy the contrast of some of Gregor’s first words being a lie about his own name; it was amusing.

Gregor was a decent main character; a mess of a man living on the fringes of society but still trying to do right in his own way – and yet having no real idea of how to do so. Him being a new leader made sense in that regard – he was still trying to figure things out, despite being a grown man and a father.

The biggest problem with this story is that the arc isn’t strong enough. It is actually a good arc – the idea of Gregor believing that werewolves are on the edge of society, have to be, or else they’ll lose control and hurt people, is an interesting one, as is the idea of the younger generation rejecting it and living like, you know, normal people – but I think the story suffers somewhat for lack of establishment of the situation. This is a short story, of course, which makes it hard to do, but we don’t really get much grounding in the “you need to live on the fringe of society” thing before we’re shown that, no, you don’t. Indeed, the first werewolf we learn much about the life of – the nurse – is the one who is the “deviant”. As such, we don’t really have much grounding in Gregor’s position, which weakens the arc of the story.

Incidentally, Ten Scars is a really nice title.