Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28467653-20160521132150/@comment-28266772-20160523181700

This is a huge improvement, and reads much better than the last one. It's written much better, but there are still quite a few understandable mistakes. For example,



"a faint noise from the middle of her room" -> faint is a verb that means to lose consciousness, while feint is an adjective that describes a quiet noise. I think you meant 'feint', but this is a really common mistake that loads of people make.

"Then it exploded. A loud explosion..." -> this is redundant i.e. it's repetitive. Maybe just write "then it exploded. A loud noise..."

You also use a lot of semicolons and colons, I wouldn't use these unless you're very confident they're necessary. Generally semicolons should separate two sentences that are grammatically correct on their own, but are still linked enough that they can work as one sentence as well. You can use them to strongly imply that two events are closely related. They're useful once in a while, but you use them a lot, and I don't think there's always a need for it. Similarly you use colons a lot, but they should only be used for a list, and most of the times you use them here I think you just meant to use a semicolon. Importantly, nearly all of your uses could just be two separate sentences, and it wouldn't hurt the flow to take most of them out.

Also you should start conversation on a new line (you do this sometimes, not always). You might want to do it a different way, that's fine, but what's important is that you're consistent in whatever style you do choose.

There are a few others problems like this, but I'll go through the little mistakes tomorrow, but for now I just wanted to focus on the story. It's much better this time, I love the name 'the hanged god', it's a great name for a Lovecraft style God. I liked the stunted talking of the monster children. I also liked a lot of the descriptive passages. I wouldn't recommend any major changes really, but I would recommend you make the child a recent adoptee. Foster children rarely spend long with any one family, and by the time they're old enough to be swearing they're (unfortunately) used to parents who don't really want to bond with them at all. The murders would be more meaningful (as would the betrayal) if they were adoptive parents who'd only recently adopted them. Similarly I'd clarify, just a little, how old the child is. This helps us know how smart, vulnerable, strong, (and so on) they are. It doesn't have to be an age, but even just a general idea helps us to know how severe the risk really is, and how to expect the child to react or behave.

So yeah, overall a big improvement. I'll make some more notes tomorrow, but for now I just wanted to get the main story issues out the way.