Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-29164101-20160719174208/@comment-25428589-20160719182901

I'm afraid some pretty serious changes need to be made before this story will meet the Quality Standards.

Before I begin, please use source mode to edit on this wiki. When you first posted it, it was very difficult to read, as it was posted via visual editor. Please go here and change your preferred editor to the "Source Editor", to prevent issues like this in the future.

Now, onto the story itself. Starting out, there are a number of issues with your SPUG (spelling, punctuation, usage and grammar). A couple of times, you switch tense, saying, "He was short for air and he started wailing in pain. I tried to ask him what’s [what was] wrong, and he yanks [yanked] my shirt, looking me dead in the eyes with this look of agonizing pain and fear [missing period] “It burns!” he yells [yelled] with this teary tone of voice [missing period]" Here, you switch from past to present tense mid sentence, while describing the same event, which is grammatically incorrect, and very distracting. This happens a few more times throughout the story, and should always be avoided. Additionally, there are a number of occasions where you miss out punctuation at the end of paragraphs, or include random capital letters in the middle of sentences. I'd recommend properly proof reading this entire thing a few times to eliminate those.

The most major issue I see with this story is the storyline itself. Everything just seems to happen without any real reason. Why does John decide to kill so many people? Sure, he was clearly disturbed from the beginning as you later reveal, but what actually caused him to tip over the line and go totally insane? There are lots of other unanswered questions too - what was in the weed John gave to Sean? What was it that John carved on the floor? You mention it, but never properly explain. The ending is very unsatisfying, John just kills himself, with no reason for him to do so? I found the whole idea of the bite marks and lacerations quite interesting - was John actually in control of his actions? Was he being used by some kind of parasite which lived inside him or something? You never really elaborate, and it just results in an anti-climax.

It's really difficult to feel sorry for the characters John kills, since we know nothing about them. We're barely introduced to Sean before John attacks him, it's difficult to find him relatable. The same is true for all the characters John kills - you mention the death of his parents as though it's nothing, quickly moving on, the deaths of the police officers from the explosions are glossed over, yet you expect us to feel sorry for them? It's difficult to engage with the story when it's only faceless characters dying.

The whole thing is over so quickly, I really think more should be added. Potentially add some information on the police investigation. Additionally, due to how insanely quickly everything happens, there's no real build up of tension, which kinda makes the entire thing fail at feeling creepy. Also, the whole "insane serial killer stabs and shoots lots of people" thing is pretty overdone, you really need to introduce something new to the idea to scare people.

Overall, you really need to expand on a lot of the reasoning behind the different characters' actions, and make those dead a lot more relatable, otherwise it's going to be really difficult for people to engage with your story. There are a few elements of this that I quite like, but you need to tie them together and elaborate a lot more before the story will feel finished. Best of luck improving your story :)