Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28529957-20160523045934/@comment-24101790-20160523052514

Here are most of the issues I found which resulted in me deleting it. Starting with the mechanical errors, there are a lot of punctuation (apostrophes missing from possessive words "Earth(')s oceans". Commas improperly used "its,(comma not needed) surreal, supernatural properties."), spacing issues ("sea, but do they really know?", "It comes closer ,", etc.), awkward wording ("and as I say found, I know that there could be larger creatures that no one ever knew about", "The first living organism came from the ocean, which evolved into all the living creatures (fish are classified as living), from the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and the creatures of the land.", "The shadow slowly forms into an (a) malevolent beast.", " It's (its, it's=it is, its=possession) eyes were milky white", etc) issues, but most of all, there are a lot of plot problems here.

Story issues: "In the ocean there is no chance of survival, you are no longer on familiar land" This line feels odd as you seem to be implying that the creature lurks in the deep but then there's this line: "I see a hand, a saviour, a rescuer, a warm freedom, fight to save me from the murky depths" which seems to imply he's just above the surface. How exactly does a creature shift so suddenly from the depths to near the surface without pressure changes destroying it? (See giant squid and what happens when their bodies are found up closer to the surface) Additionally, since you mention the megalodon earlier, doesn't this line feel out of place, "I can see it clearly, were I not so close I may have called it a shark, but there was never a shark that could have grown so enormous, at least the length of a cargo ship." as the megalodon has been recorded at around that size judging from fossil records.

Story issues cont.: There are a number of lines that need clarification. "Coiling and uncoiling, a behemoth of corruption." How exactly does this creature exemplify corruption? Remember, you need to be descriptive and convey to the audience what you are trying to say instead of dropping phrases that sound interesting, but mean nothing without explanation/focus. Speaking of focus, there really isn't a lot of plot to this story to get the reader invested here. The protagonist is out in the sea for unexplained reasons (it seems they want to be eaten in some lines or be saved in others) and they randomly come across a gigantic creature, then the story ends. This really feels like the teaser to a full story rather than a complete plot.

Story issues end: Why is the protagonist doing all this in the first place? Do they want to die? ("Willing the monster below me to take my life.") Do they want to study the creature? (The introduction seems like they researched and thought about the concept of deep sea life) You don't really explain what their goal is and that gives the story a very vague and incomplete feel. Then there's the ending: "I see a hand, a saviour, a rescuer, a warm freedom, fight to save me from the murky depths, and yet, as we brush fingers, the light fading from my vision,(.) (paragraph break) It touches me". This feels really anticlimactic, unnecessarily vague, and pretty non-descriptive. There's really a lot of work to be done here. I would strongly suggest re-writing it from the ground up as there are a lot of mechanical issues and the plot needs a lot of re-tooling and focus as this story is not up to our quality standards.