Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-44935662-20200131095817/@comment-24101790-20200131141431

There were capitalization: Mis-capitalization of words: "Dear lord It's (it's) all coming back to me Harriet", "I only talked about it briefly with you since It (it) was, at the time, just a mundane job watching over highland cemetery.", "Keeping an eye out for nosy tourists and teenagers fooling around the above ground Tombs (tombs).", "Oh, harriet how much I wanted to wake up and be greeted by the warmness of our sun!", "Dear god It (it) was like I traveled through time itself", etc.

Punctuation issues: Apostrophes and commas missing where needed. "Taking the coward(')s way out with my grandfather’s pistol", "Harriet(comma missing) if you are reading this then I am gone.", "Harriet(comma missing) I love you.", "Harriet(comma missing) don’t follow my steps and let yourself be gone too!", etc.

Spacing issues: Failure to space properly after punctuation. " In the darkest of alleys,in the most ancient of tombs", "sanity.I remember what I learned about the Council in that broadcast before", " remember what they do to to human trespassers that threaten their secrecy .They", "unlike our own.After going through that door", etc. There are quite a lot of instances where you don't put a space after punctuation.

Awkward wording/wording errors: "Taking the cowards way out with my grandfather’s pistol in the same home were (sic) we made love for the first time.", " remember what they do to to (sic) human trespassers that threaten their secrecy .They". Additionally, I would suggest reading the story aloud to catch instances that come off as clunky, redundant ("You may go back to your habitat for the time being. We shall see you out of The City of the Dead for the time being.”) or purple prose-y (I assume this is modern times given the setting and references to gothic structures. Giving a set year/time would help explain some of this, but I would still suggest re-wording some of the more difficult to follow phrases when reading them aloud.)

Formatting: You fixed the indentation issue so I won't bring that up, but I will mention that some of the paragraphs could use breaking up. A typical paragraph is 5-10 sentences long. Any more and the text appears blocky and any less and it can come off as anemic. While it can be done a few times for stylistic purposes (single sentence paragraphs for line emphasis), but too often impacts the flow of the story.

Plot issues: I mentioned the prose above so I won't address that again. "I remember what they do to to human trespassers that threaten their secrecy .They wipe them out of existence itself, Harriet!" While this is a frightening concept, it does create a bit of a plot hole when you realize the letter the protagonist wrote has been left behind. If they're so keen on staying hidden in the shadows and capable of obliterating entities from existence, why are they overlooking such a key piece of evidence? A line in the framing device about how the letter was hidden might help.

Plot issues cont.: While the ending is pure Lovecraftian (ala The Hound and Dagon), the trope of an author writing up to their final moments has become a bit overused. It tends to result in the audience asking, 'why are they writing this and not trying to escape, hide, or fight back?'

I like to cite those two sources above as they do a good job building up the hopelessness of their situation and explain why the protagonist is writing their final moments. In The Hound, the protagonist is hunted relentlessly and they have no other options but to tell their story and wait for the end as they can't escape it. I think this story could be improved by demonstrating how the Council is omnipotent/ever-present and that the protagonist has no other options but to explain how they got to this point.

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