Genre(s): Dark, fantasy, and supernatural

Status: One-shot

Graded or Non-Graded: Non-graded

Focus: Plot and Overall Enjoyment


Title
Your title has that dark, fantasy vibe that fits very well with your story. The relation of the title to the story is clear since the setting of the story is on a land that’s called Witch’s Hut and the main focus of the story is on this specific hut where a witch lives. It’s unique and catchy, though it’s not attention-grabbing.

Description and Foreword
The description has that Grimm brothers fairytale vibe. It’s definitely haunting and interesting, especially when it mentions how there are no princes or heroes in the story. That’s what makes your description eye-catching for readers. It turns other fairytales and fanfics on its head because we don’t get the typical hero or protagonist who gets the happy ending or fights until the end. The description is also complete in parts.

One concern that I had was that the “wraith” part was never really shown in the story. We weren’t introduced to a bony wraith, but a beautiful witch, so that part of the description feels a bit misleading. There were no mentions of a wraith that is skinny or bony, just an evil witch in a hut. Because the wraith was mentioned in the description, I had the expectation that there would be a sort of big reveal of the wraith and that it would be a scary scene. The only indication of a wraith in the story was the feminine face of death huddled in black.

Lastly, for a minor grammar concern, there is the issue of pronoun-antecedent and missing article. Let’s take a look at the last part of your description:

No hero, no prince, no knight. It was a tale of brutal winter and cold beauty, of a family lost to clutches of a hungry wraith as skinny and bony as a tree, and a tale of a man who lost it all to the cold grip of winter, a winter he had come to love and adore.

In the second sentence, you use the pronoun “it,” but it is not clear what the “it” is referring to. What is “it”? Are you referring to this story? If so, a clearer indication would be using the pronoun “this” [like: This was a tale of brutal winter…]. Are you referring to the hero or prince? Are you referring to something else? If so, you might want to clarify the “it” in your second sentence by replacing the “it” with the word that you are referring to. Finally, the second sentence in the excerpt is missing an article. Since you are referring to the specific “clutches of a hungry wraith,” you should include “the” to introduce it. Here is a revised version:

No hero, no knight, no prince. This was a tale of brutal winter and cold beauty, of a family lost to the clutches of a hungry wraith as skinny and bony as a tree, and a tale of a man who lost it all to the cold grip of winter, a winter he had come to love and adore.

Plot 
The plot reminds me greatly of Hansel and Gretel. There’s always that one hut in the woods that people are too scared to go near and somehow the main character(s) has to. The concept of a witch’s hut in the woods and a witch who eats people and children is not something that’s new. I think you do provide a new twist to it by showing it as a dark tale with an even darker, sad ending.

It was cool to understand the reason behind the eternal winter in the woods. It’s hard for those that she had captured to escape and risk freezing to death on their way back to the village, and that explanation added an extra layer that solidifies the concept of a forest with eternal winter. It’s not just thrown in there for kicks, but it serves a purpose for the witch.

I feel like the plot doesn’t go full circle or it doesn’t give proper closure on the story. Usually, dark fairytales (and even just normal stories) serve as a way to tell morals or lessons. Readers pick up something from the story that makes them feel satisfied after reading. From Hansel and Gretel, the lesson is to not trust strangers and to be resourceful (when Gretel pushed the witch into the oven and when Hansel used his environment to leave a trail to get back). Hansel and Gretel were smart kids who could think on their feet in dark times. What is the lesson that I have to learn from The Witch’s Hut? What can I take away from this story? Is it that we should listen to warnings or to old people? To fear the outside world (since it was mentioned that their beliefs are caused by this fear)? Is it to believe in superstitions? Is it to not wonder around woods?

[At first I thought the lesson would be to be brave, but at the end of the story you wrote that everyone else used this tale as a basis for a new superstition so it inspired more fear.]

Next, it’s kind of confusing on why the village is named “Witch’s Hut” [or more specifically, just a hut]? It’s stated in the first paragraph that the land is called Witch’s Hut because of its never-ending summer (and partly because of the winter forest), but that doesn’t make sense. A “hut” is a shabby building that is usually one storey. A village is definitely not a hut, so it doesn’t make sense that those who had heard of the story would name the place “Witch’s Hut” [especially after the fact that the witch’s home is the real “Witch’s Hut”].

Another concern is that it is not clear what motivated the witch to start the blight on the village. I thought it would have been hunger, but she’s been there for years and years and it was never mentioned that anyone got lost before the blight or that there was a tragedy before the blight that Moon Bin had not experienced. What is the reason or the motivation behind the sudden blight? What made the witch want to slowly pick away at the village? What was the catalyst to this disaster?

I also wonder though what’s so special about Moon Bin for being the one with all of these creepy prophesies and the fact that the witch left his eyes on top of the oven. It was never made clear in the story. Is it just because he was the most handsome in the village? How was he chosen to be the main target of the witch? Why was he the one who was left as only eyes in a jar?

Finally, the reveal that the woman allowing him to stay in the hut is a witch is not handled effectively. In your story, you mentioned how wealthy people come to the hut to exchange wealth for information and this is what showed Moon Bin that she’s a witch. It doesn’t really sound like a logical conclusion to make with that information. You never explicitly show that she uses magic to get the information or to change some stuff in her environment, so Moon Bin arriving to that conclusion seemed out of nowhere. Perhaps you can elaborate more on what certain characteristics really confirmed in Moon Bin’s mind that the woman who took the face and form of her wife is the witch that he always heard about.

Characterization
In the story, Moon Bin’s defining characteristic is that he’s a coward.

He reveled in the fact that he had to care for his sickened mother, yet in reality the fear was too great for him to even move anywhere beyond the threshold of the family’s hut.

He was always too scared to go to the forest, to help out in search parties, and he never asked his childhood love to the fest. Even at the final parts of the story, he was scared to leave the hut and go back to the village. He never took any risks. For a short story (and one reminiscent to a fairytale at that), I can understand why Moon Bin’s character isn’t as fleshed out as he could be [Honestly, he’s sort of flat as a character]. We just get to see that he has this one defining characteristic, and the plot/mystery of the story is the one that we focus more on.

The development of the character is where the concern lies. He’s a coward until the very end. We don’t understand what changed except for the fact that he realized that the crones were right. He did have this burst of bravery though when he went into the woods alone, but that wasn’t treated as much of a development since this resulted in him being captured and him becoming a coward once more. Also, it was fueled by grief and anger, so it’s easy to understand why he would act impulsively. He never tried to fight back or to try and leave. He stayed in the house even after finding out that he was living with a witch that caused all of these bad things to happen to his village and to people he cares about, and that makes it hard to root or to like the character.

Grammar, Sentence Structure, & Word Choice
There were a few issues in your writing, though they aren’t repeated a lot. A quick run-through and edit would be able to correct these concerns.

1. Long dash and hyphen

Now the happiness was gone and dread settled over the village- even the crones seemed to stop their cackling.

The issue that is repeated the most throughout your story is the misuse of the hyphen. A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark used to connect two or more words to create one idea (examples of these are mother-in-law and well-written). The hyphen in the sentence above tries to connect “village” and “even,” but that doesn’t make sense. I think you were using the hyphen as a way to show a break or change in thought, which is not the purpose of a hyphen. That is the purpose of a long dash (—). Here is a revised version using the correct punctuation mark:

Now the happiness was gone and dread settled over the village—even the crones seemed to stop their cackling.

2. Semicolon

This concern also happens a lot in your story. To clarify, a semicolon (;) is used to connect two ideas (usually in the form of independent clauses) together. It can also be used as a super comma when it comes to a list of huge number of objects. Take a look at this excerpt:

He pressed on and tried to see the usables through the snow; a track of paws, the droppings of some animals- anything to keep their belly full and warm.

The part “a track of paws, the droppings of some animals- anything to keep their belly full and warm” is not a complete idea or an independent clause, so a semicolon should not be used there. Instead, you should use a colon (:) since you’re introducing an idea with the first part of the sentence.

He pressed on and tried to see the usables through the snow: a track of paws, the droppings of some animals—anything to keep their belly full and warm.

3. Word choice

The people riding were incredibly rich and full of show off, with rubies on their fingers, emeralds binding their clothes, trading wealth for information.

The word “show off” is not used properly in the sentence above. In the sentence here, you used it as a noun, but it does not match with the meaning of the word. A “show off” is a person who has a habit of attracting attention, so it is not clear how the people riding were full of a person who have a habit of attracting attention. You might want to use a better word instead.

4. Dangling modifier

Standing proud on the valley between two grand mountains, the people of the village have been shout out of the outside world entirely and so the superstitious belief grew and manifested into something more.

All of the people in the village are standing proud on the valley between two grand mountains? Clarify what the modifier “Standing proud on the valley between two grand mountains” is referring to. Is it the village? Is it Witch’s Hut?

5. Typos

Howwever, his eyes had asked all the questions his mouth could not and would not say.

The typo above makes the word “howwever” a misspelled word. Delete the repeating letter to correct the typo.

Writing Style 
The writing style really reminds me of old fairytales. They’re very straightforward, but they still maintain a certain whimsy to them. Your writing could still use more descriptive details to give a better image of the world that you’ve created. Since you have created your own world and land, it would provide a more vivid image of what this magical land looks like if you add descriptions to the setting. Aside from the fact that the village is set in between two mountains, we don’t have any other details about what the village is like or what the houses there look like. Adding more details about the village can also add to the dark fairytale vibe and get your readers immersed in the story. What are the houses like? What are their roads made of? Who serves as the leader of the village? What do people wear? What does the forest look like? What does the witch’s hut look like?

On a positive note, the descriptions of what the witch would do to young Moon Bin are really well-written and they add to the dark vibe of the story.

“Don’t go out into the forest, little boy, for the witch of winter will take you away. Out of your plump little cheeks, she will make herself a bun for the settling of her raging heart, a bun so sweet a normal man would get a cavity, yet she would be delighted by it, soothed by it, and you would be there, feeling her teeth sinking into your cheek, tearing flesh from bone, and would do nothing for you could not move against her shackles.”

These descriptions are really vivid, and they definitely add to the creepy vibe of the story. Good job!

Flow 
Overall, the pacing of your story is good. It really helps that you started at the very beginning of the tale (and the history of the land) rather than the start of the conflict to give an idea of the lay of the land and Moon Bin’s background.

Although, there are some parts need that need smoother transitions. Here is an example:

As a child who grew up in eternal summer, winter seemed like death itself, but he pressed on anyway, for the sake of his mother and his lover.

In the sentence above, you mentioned Moon Bin’s mother and lover, but before this sentence, there was never a mention of a lover. Honestly I got so confused on where the lover came from since she was never mentioned before. I don’t even know how many years has passed since his father disappeared. Providing a smoother transition here would be to include a sentence or two about how Moon Bin got a lover or got married, or even how many years had passed and a summary of what happened during those years.

Presentation
The poster in the story definitely gives a creepy and dark feeling. There were also no jarring blocks of text. The only gripe that I have was the image of the sword at the start of the chapter. Moon Bin doesn’t have a long sword, neither did the witch, so the sword with cloth around it seems out of place.

Overall Enjoyment
Overall, it was a quick and easy read for me, and honestly, I didn’t have as much questions as I did in the Plot section while reading it without critiquing mindset. It takes me back to the fairytale books that I used to read when I was a kid.

The description, at first, was really long. Usually, long descriptions can bore readers, but after thinking and re-thinking for a while, I do see how it is needed that you go at a length to describe how it isn’t your usual fairytale. I think a lot of readers would appreciate that you try to stay away from the usual pattern or direction of a story. We don’t get that usual happy ending, but a creepy cautionary-ish tale. But again, providing caution for what? It still isn’t clear to me what I can take away from this story. I wish there was more to it than it is, like the legend has pushed someone to hunt down the witch or the people of the village tried to leave the cursed place together to have a better future.

I would have liked more description when it came to world-building. When it comes to fantasy and fantasy worlds, details like what the land looks like from the protagonist’s perspective would create a better image of the fantastical elements in the story.

I enjoy it to an extent. The ending, I think, is what threw me off because it felt open or unsatisfying because I didn’t know what to take away from it. Moon Bin was dead, people are still in fear, and nothing much changed when it came to the witch.


 

Thank you for requesting from the shop! Make sure to credit the shop in your Foreword using the banner and send the karma points to the owner.