Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24248644-20150101204426/@comment-25665684-20150101222010

Nicely done. This pasta has an original idea from what I can tell. The story went well until the ending, which was sort of cliche. Ambiguity is nice, but I think you need more buildup for it to be effective here. You were wise to focus more on the guys in white than on the torture. The really disturbing part is the strange men accosting the narrator for a crime he didn't commit, not the gore. There are some grammatical and punctuation errors, but you did a pretty good job.

The first thing I noticed was that the story opens in passive voice, which is generally frowned upon and basically considered verboten by many other authors. It doesn't bother me personally, but a lot of people just despise it. I would recommend changing the first sentence to something along the lines of '''"In the middle of the night a loud crash awakened me from a deep and restful sleep." '''Just my opinion.

Other than that, your punctuation and grammar errors were so sparse that I think I can revise them for you right here.

1. Paragraph 2: ''"What the fuck?!" I shouted. "Who the hell are you guys?!" ''Replaced the comma with a period.

2. Paragraph 8: ''"Did you or did you not kill Elisa Goodwin?" asked the voice. ''The letter "a" should be lowercase.

3. Paragraph 10:'' "The convict has spoken. You will be tortured to death," replied the voice. ''Fixed two errors here; there should be a comma after death and the "r" in "replied" should not be capitalized.

4. Paragraph 12: ''"Here's how it will work," said the voice. "First we'll cut off your ankle, then sear the wound with a hot iron so it will stop the bleeding. ..." '' I replaced the comma after "voice" with a period and removed the one after "iron". The former edit is definitely correct, but I suppose the latter isn't too much of a big deal.

5. Lastly, I encourage you to not begin a sentence with the word "but" because it's grammatically incorrect. This is a first-person informal narrative, though, so it might fly. You should check that up with a mod.

I think you're off to a great start. Another reviewer may catch something I've missed. Good luck editing!