Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5400198-20160722183409/@comment-24101790-20160722193003

You might not want to jump to conclusions. I actually deleted it because the story was not up to quality standards due to a number of punctuation, capitalization, and quite a bit of story issues.

Starting with the basic coding issues, this is how your story appears: " The Beginning I  ". Additionally when your story was posted, it looked like this:

" The Kind Man was sitting on his porch, watching the cars pass by. A knock from his kitchen window made the man shoot out of his rocking chair." Both of these don't factor into a story's deletion, but they do make a lot more work for editors and should be avoided.

Punctuation: Quoted dialogue inside dialogue should have single quotations rather than double. "“Well, it’s really easy actually. One person is the Seeker while the other one hides. When the Seeker finds the other person, they tap them on the back and shout, (')“I found you!”(') Does that make sense?”, “I’ll hide first. You go over to the house, lean against the wall and cover your eyes. Count to thirty and then shout, (')“Ready or not, here I come!” Go. Don’t you dare peep.”", etc. This is done because the second quotation in dialogue signifies the end of a quote.

Capitalization errors “What the Hell are you doing here?”, "Where the Hell did he come from?", etc. Remember that hell is only capitalized when it's referring to the actual place. "a little Egyptian Mummy (mummy)", "I’ll feed you and take you to the Barber.", "a game of Hide N’ Seek?”, etc.

Story issues: Description could use quite a bit of work. "He stood at around his height, however his body was entirely black with two glowing white eyes without any pupils.", "The Boy stared down at his side to see a long black branch-looking arm piercing him", "The Kind Man took out a knife and stabbed him in the nape, blood spewing forth from the wound and slapping the Kind Man’s face.", etc. Besides a black creature with white eyes being a fairly generic depiction, there should also be a little more description to paint a vivid picture more than that. For example what made the arms appear branch-esque? Were they gnarled? Was the skin rough-looking? ETC. As there are multiple types of branches, just leaving it at branch-like really doesn't create a vivid image. Lines like this: "His Dead Son said to him, 'Stealing, stealing, stealing kills.'" also really feel out of place/unreferenced in the story. What triggered that phrase exactly and why does it have such an impact?

Story issues cont.: The layout also needs to be addressed since you brought it up. Here's the major problem, it really doesn't have much place in the story. Usually a format like this is done as it has a bearing in the story. For example take a look at Jose Saramago's "Blindness", towards the end of the book, the paragraphs become blockier and create a sense of degradation/breakdown that coincides with the quarantine's structural breakdown. Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" contains 21 chapters (the general age when a person is considered to be an adult) to reference that this is a coming-of-age tale (of sorts). Its style/layout is used to enhance the plot, here it feels more like you're using this to freshen up an otherwise cookie-cutter story (man finds boy in the woods who is dangerous).

When using a style like this, you should ask yourself whether or not it has a place in the story. (For example, in a Tarantino film, sometimes the climax is shown early to build a sense of tension/anticipation. Caspar Noé's "Irreversible" is told in reverse to show the consequence of one's actions and reflect the character's desire to undo their mistakes.) Does telling the story in a disjointed/mixed order enhance the story or reveal a theme in your story? At first I thought it was going to be revealed that the boy was altering/distorting reality so the shifting theme might have more of a place in the plot, but it really wasn't. In the end, it feels like you could have told any story in this manner (skipping to events randomly) without it really enhancing the overall plot which doesn't set a good example.

Story issues cont.: The lack of build-up/fleshing out of events. "The Beginning I / The Kind Man was sitting on his porch, watching the cars pass by. A knock from his kitchen window made the man shoot out of his rocking chair." A lot of the initial Beginnings/Events are only a few sentences long and don't really do a very good job building up the plot or hooking the reader. Look at your first three paragraphs for example. A good opening should really pull the audience in and make them interested in the story. Your opening consists of a man on a porch, a boy knocking on a window, them smiling at each other in the woods and the man lying in bed while the boy stares at him. It really doesn't do a very good job of creating an involving atmosphere that will keep the audience reading.

Story issues end: There are a number of other story issues, but as this is getting on the longer side, I'm going to just focus on a few more. The lack of character names not only limits characterization, but also may confuse the audience. "the door swung open and out came a blond haired boy. His bright blue eyes locked onto the Boy and he ran at him, giving him a huge hug." Why not name the characters and help contribute to their personas (especially when it's implied that he is named: "The Boy replied with the name the Kind Man gave him.")? Usually when characters are left unnamed it's so the audience can relate to them by putting themselves in their place. Given the events of the story and the number of unnamed characters, this doesn't feel necessary.