Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-9041013-20161002184002/@comment-28266772-20161003150858

Annotated version of your story below:

Throughout history, man was fascinated by the nature of dreams. From the beginning of time, we knew there was something special about them; we treated them as if they were omens, signs, messages and even prophecies. The Old Testament goes on to say Joseph; one of the Judeo-Christian patriarchs had a knack for interpreting dreams. The same book almost always depicts a prophet receiving divine messages through dreams. The Jews, however, aren’t the only ones who made the subject of dreams into [into is unnecessary and clunky in this sentence] a part of their religion; Greeks had the god of sleep, Hypnos and the Oneiroi who were the personifications of dreams. The pan Slavic mythos held that Morana or Marzanna is a goddess associated with dreams, and this is where my story begins. '[these two examples feel a bit weak, and that last bit of ‘this is where my story begins’ makes no damn sense. What? His story begins in the pan Slavic mythos?!]'

A few years back, I was a war crime investigator for the UN, [.] sounds impressive. [?] Not really, '[woah, well if you say so. Don’t know why you’d bring something up just to immediately dismiss it]    anyway my then-girlfriend, now-wife Sonia had to move into [into can be deleted] for a few months to Poland, for some course I had to take as part of my job [this doesn’t feel natural of authentic; war crime investigators take their job fucking seriously and this guy’s attitude is dismissive and disinterested. It doesn’t work] '. We arrived at Szczecin, which is a major city in northern Poland, to get all our documentation and legal stuff sorted out, I won’t get into that '[why even bring it up then? You give a reason for the guy moving to Poland. Don’t bring something up if you’re just going to dismiss it three words later]'. Then we went to this city named Elblag in the northeastern part of the country. '[So why even tell us about Szczecin? Just start in Elblag] We got ourselves a room in a local four-star hotel, can’t complain about it, [comma – also again these are just words for words sake. They convey literally nothing. He can’t complain about the bleaching of Australian coral either but he doesn’t mention it because it’s fundamentally irrelevant. The same thing applies to his hotel too] 'really. Seeing as how my course wouldn’t start until a week later, I decided that it’s [it was] a good opportunity to have a little fun abroad. By the time we arrived at that hotel so [delete so] we just unpacked our stuff and decided to rest the night off [rest for the night.], I spend [spent] my first night in Poland in the warm embrace of my sweetheart, to put it lightly.

The next morning I woke up before Sonia [if you’re naming her, then name her when you introduce us a few paragraphs ago] and decided to get to know the town I’m [I’d be] in for the next few weeks so I could know where we can spend our free time [everything after ‘weeks’ is unnecessary]. The first person I came across was this elderly glocke [not familiar with this word] who tried selling me that day’s news [.] I told him I don’t really understand Polish and he decided to tell me the relevant news on his own, much to my surprise, his English was pretty much impeccable aside from the obvious Slavic accent. The old glocke [do you mean ‘bloke’?] told me about the current political issues they [no ‘they’] discussed in the paper, [and] all the celebrity gossip and the sports news. However, there was one thing he told me as if he knew that by heart, apparently, a couple in their forties was found dead last night in Elblag. I told the man that it’s [it was] tragic and all, but stuff like that happens all the time and he chuckled nervously say [saying] that when the bodies were inspected – [no dash] they were clean as a whistle, no wounds, no trauma external or internal, [and] no substances in their bodies, nothing – as if god himself simply devoured their lives.

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I’m gonna be a huge dick and stop here. I usually make an effort to read every story beginning to end but I don’t think the problems are going to suddenly disappear half way through so let’s start with the basics. This story is riddled with mechanical issues. There are spelling errors, word substitutions and tense changes in nearly every sentence. I’d let this go but to make it worse you just go on and on about the most boring things. It takes 600 words to start the actual story. Just start with “I was in Poland and walked past an old man who told me about a murder”. You don’t need 600 words to set that premise up.

Nonetheless I have the intense feeling that English is not your first language. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it is to write a story in another language and commend you for giving it a really good go that’s better than a lot of natural English speakers’ attempts. What I would recommend is that you look carefully through this wikia’s advice guides and read as many stories as you can over a long period of time. This’ll help sure up your grasp of English grammar and vocabulary.