Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27286893-20151125170010/@comment-27080023-20151125173251

Oh wow, look I am going to be honest because I assume that you are here for genuine criticism. I read to the end of the story, but I had to force myself to. Please do not be disheartened we all started somewhere.

It is written like it could be broken down into bullet points. Sam did this, then he did this, then he did this, then he did this... Do you understand what I mean? For a story to be good it needs more words, different ways of describing things.

Example: Sam was about nine years old. He went to a school called Carey Ridge Elementary school. He walked to his classroom, he was in 4th Grade.

Could be for example: Sam was nine years old, he attended a school called Carey Ridge Elementary where he was in 4th Grade.

THEN start the next sentence with him walking into the classroom. It is all just small sentences that are all very similar. It makes it difficult and quite frankly tiresome to read, it is just not exciting. And this is at the very beginning of the story. There was no hook to make the reader engage in the story at all, and coupled with the way it is written, well...

It is also just one huge chunk of text with no paragraphs. It makes you look at it and feel that to get through the huge chunk is a mammoth task. It needs breaking down.

Then it gets further along and the sentences get longer but the punctuation is off. There are now commas in place of where there were periods before.

There is no description at all in terms of what is happening until you get to the gore, and then you go crazy with description and it makes it look like it is just for shock factor, just gore for the sake of gore. I was not even slightly creeped out by this, I just found myself thinking "ew".

As for the story itself, it is a well worn plot, there are a lot similar already, the creepy murderous kid in the woods, the body in the closet that was found by his Aunt (who locked herself in her room and didn't attempt to get the hell out of there and alert help). I am not saying the plot would not work, over used plots can be written very well, but you have to have something that makes it stand out, so it is the same but different. You know?

I don't get why the Aunt did not call the police but the "thing" called them. That just wouldn't happen. Also, there are spelling mistakes.

I would scrap this and start from scratch, you could use the same plot but get rid of the plot holes and write it completely differently. Sorry if I come off as harsh, I hope I do not but you need to hear the truth. My first story was deleted and I listened to advice on here and now it is on the site, so I know how it feels.