Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25866200-20141213235500/@comment-24281984-20141215181603

Well, first, you need to check your spacing on this. You only need one indent per paragraph, not two. Make sure to hit “Preview” before submitting work in the forums and as an article to make sure the formatting is correct and you can hit “Publish”.

You have too many commas. The short sentence “The room, to some, might lack features, but to me, it's fine the way it is.” has four that could be cut down to two or made into two separate sentences. Too many commas make the phrasing look choppy and impedes the flow of your story.

So far this reads like a monologue instead of a story. You don’t need to go off-topic by adding redundant commentary like “Oh, well.” “Shame.” and “They lead their own lives. Anyway…” If you’re writing a story in first person then you should avoid starting any sentence with “anyway” or “back to the story” because you’re writing a story, not delivering a monologue. Only put down what information needs to be there. Don’t break the suspense to insert unneeded information.

“I enjoy blogs, they give insight into other people's worlds, and in some cases, minds.”

An example or two of this would be effective here. What blogs, specifically? How exactly do they “give insight”?

Could you have picked a more awkward and immature-sounding ending than “Bye bye!” How many blogs have you seen that end with that? How many webpages online have you read that end with those two words? Is the MC a very young child or something? With how much information we’re given on them, they very well could be.

… This was written by someone on death row? No. People on death row do not write like this. They don’t write something this awkward, jumpy and pointless with a childishly silly ending message. If this person is just being “overly positive”, well, that doesn’t cut it. Try looking online at what people on death row have written to get a sense of what they really sound like because this story feels more like something a bored child on his mother’s laptop would scrawl down in a moment of boredom.

All in all, this feels so poorly thought-out and rushed that I’m not even sure what you were getting at here. There’s nothing scary, there’s nothing really interesting and it doesn’t feel connected enough to be a story. If you do plan on using this plot- and admittedly, it does sound like a fairly interesting one to use- then like I said, research. Know a little more about what you’re talking about before you start writing.