Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26475017-20150616185333/@comment-26007602-20150616200624

Alright, here's what I noticed.

"As she states Riley was like my mom. I just can't believe that now she is gone." This needs to be in quotes or something. The way it is currently worded makes it seem like whoever wrote the newspaper article is the one saying this instead of Ally.

"...she looked down and saw a laptop power cord sticking out of her foot." The way you have this worded makes it seem like the cord is connected to Ally, as if she were a robot or something. I don't know how the story ends, but this whole scene doesn't seem important at all to the story. Does stepping on a cord and somehow embedding it in her foot really matter to the rest of the story? If it does then it's fine, otherwise you should remove it.

"Every single day Ally wanted to hurt Mary for everything she did to Ally." You need to explain this; go a bit more in depth. The vagueness here doesn't help the story and I'm not sure a "big reveal" will really add much. Better to explain the tension between these two.

Is read your dialogue out loud as well. The lines you have written don't sound like things people would actually say. Read this line:

"I am sorry but there is a killer on the loose and i dont want you to get hurt." Do you see wafts wrong with it? There's no emotion, no human aspect to it. She's simply stating a killer is on the loose when she should be concerned and worried. Put some fear, exasperation, something into the dialogue.

The conversation from Ally and Mary jumps all over the place. First Mary seems upset about Ally calling Riley "her mom", but then she's immediately concerned wth why Ally was at the park. There's no transition between topics. And why isn't Mary the least but worried that Ally found a freaking dead body of her friend? Nobody seems fazed by this. The fact that Ally finds a dead body and immediately asks to go to the mall is suspicious (as we know she's the killer) and ridiculous. You'd think shed at least act upset.

Finally, I advise you to read this. Your story has the makings of a clichéd OC story, and that link should give you some tropes to avoid. We don't need any more OC stories, and it sucks to see someone write a story only to find out it's been done a thousand times before.

As a side note, you can edit a post; there's no need to start a new thread every time you edit your story.