Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27675561-20160126210241/@comment-24101790-20160128201448

There are a lot of issues here. I was originally going to let you revise them as you posted the story, but unfortunately there is a lot wrong here and the more I read, I realized that it really wasn't up to quality standards and should have been in the writer's workshop until feedback could be given.

Formatting: There really shouldn't be multiple speakers speaking in the same paragraph. "He interrupted, "Something happened last night, with my dad and Sam." "What? Sam? What happened?" I said... He continued". It tends to muddle who's saying what and result in a lot of misattribution. Additionally dialogue needs to be uniform. You can't use a hyphen for one person ("He continued- "My mother went into my sister's bed room...") and only quotations for others ('He interrupted, "Something happened last night, with my dad and Sam."). Also, why are two lines in red text?

Grammatical issues: it's=it is, its=possession. "it's (its) tone.", "it's rate", "It's eyes", "it's posture", "it's detail", "it's back", etc. Who's=who is, whose=possession. "and who's house they were going to stay at."

Punctuation issues: You seriously overuse ellipses. Your story is about four pages long and you use ellipses 70+ times. It tends to make the story come off as melodramatic. A number of times they feel completely unnecessary. "...made myself comfortable... I remember listening to the sounds of crickets and other bugs just outside" You also tend to use ellipses incorrectly. When an ellipses indicates a pause/continuation, the following word shouldn't be capitalized unless it's a new sentence or a proper noun. "Get... Out...", ""Get out... Now!... (now...!)", "Maybe I really am just... Crazy...", etc.

You also tend to use hyphens as em dashes. " it's detail- It was slightly transparent". The em dash can be used to replace commas, semicolons, etc, but your use of them feels fairly randomized. (Especially when you sub commas and semicolons out before dialogue introduction.)

Wording issues: Redundancy issues. "Often Cody's little sister Sam would come in and we would play with her too, she'd frequently come in and play with us. She'd often switch back and forth from playing with the dolls in her room to playing with us and all our Legos." That's three times in two sentences you state the same information with different wording. Compound words should be joined together. "bed time", "we made pop corn", "bed room", "giant bull dog", etc.

Story issues: a lot of the inner monologue comes off as awkward. "No problems here ... I'll always wonder, that voice... I believe it's always there to be with me as long as I try to be a good person and do the right things. It's worth it, to have that still small voice with me. I think it has to do with always being at church on Sunday and doing what I'm taught to do- to be good." It goes from being in present to being reflective about the event.

Story issues continued: Cody's dialogue at the end feels out of place and untied to the character's encounter. "My mother went into my sister's bed room... And she started yelling at him and hitting him, and then the police came this morning. My mom and dad had this huge fight... And my dad is gone, now. The cops took him away." Also why do the parents decide to prevent sleepovers entirely if it is an isolated event and the dad is in jail. Maybe I'm missing a key event here, but it feels like it was really only stated to set up the ending line.