Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-30891328-20161231190406/@comment-30402176-20161231191424

Confusing.

From what I understood, the protagonist meets a ghastly, undead version of himself who stalks an old lady in the woods. After this encounter, the doppelganger starts sending him messages on his phone. Nothing grave happens afterwards - the narrator abruptly ends the story informing us that he has to go back to work.

My first, and perhaps, biggest criticism of this story is the layout. This story is presented in a single, uninterrupted paragraph. Paragraphs are vital for clarity - especially when you are about to include the dialogue between John Michaels and his undead self. The spoken dialogue passage should also be rendered in italics, to separate it form the prose.

Next, the spelling errors - just because so many people include them in their stories, that does not make them good, or necessary! Fixing those all up would be a nice start.

Now, I'm also unsure about why those two picture files have been included in the story - what are they for, exactly? I can't see John, nor his undead counterpart in either - nor do I even see the old lady in the story. They look decorative at best, but do not really illustrate what is going on.

Overall, I would say that this story needs a lot of improvement. But don't give up.