Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-29458657-20160805183834/@comment-28266772-20160808133135

As time passes, I start feeling more lonely. The set of apartments I live in has never been a nice place to stay. Actually [Although], it is the perfect place for ghosts to haunt. The lights on the hallways are dim and when one goes out, [no comma] it takes months before anyone comes to repair it. [And] There are also [delete ‘also’] carvings in the walls [which make out <– delete and insert ‘of’] words. However, the worst part of this block are [is] some of the residents. At night, the best thing to do is to lock yourself in your flat and stay with a bat near your bed, [no comma] in case anyone decides to give you a visit. Of course, nobody would kill you, but they would still cause you harm. However, this changed. [that last sentence doesn’t make sense – I think you mean “it wasn’t always like this”.]

Some used to say it is [was – tense is important] actually fun to live here, but this [was] only before they left. [who are ‘they’?] I still remember when one drunk man jumped in my apartment with a knife, wanting to steal something or even worse but, thankfully, my father put him down. I still remember his malevolent smile and his mad eyes. I think I was eleven when that happened. The man wasn't taken by the police. He still lived in the block up until the bottles got the best of him and, [as he got <- delete, replace with ‘once when’] drunker than usual, he felt [fell] on the stairs and broke '[cracked – in English we tend to keep the word ‘break/broke’ for bones. We tend not to say you ‘break your head’ but we might say we ‘cracked your head’ or ‘smashed, bashed, damaged, hurt, hit etc.’]' his head, dying.

Yesterday, an old woman was found dead in the elevator. [this sentence has no real connection with the one above] It has been proven that she has been strangled to death, but no prints remained '[don’t be afraid to use simple sentences. In this case just saying “she had been strangled to death, but there no prints” is perfectly effective and much shorter]'. We swore to not [not to] use the elevator ever again, except for one guy who left not long after hearing about the murder [do we need to know about the one guy?]. As I said, I'm getting more and more lonely [‘lonelier’ – not ‘more lonely’] in here. Even that insignificant happy feeling this block used to give me when I was a kid is now and forever gone. [I don’t get the purpose of this sentence – needs to be either clearer, or just deleted]

At this moment, there are just seven apartments in this block where people live: mine, Gregory's, Joseph's, Gina's and Clara's (they live together), Michael's, Lissa's [Lisa’s] and of [<- delete ‘of’] an idiot who would rather leave, really [delete ‘, really’]. His name is Bruce and he tries to make life horrible for everyone, but no one suspects him for the murders because he is so weak and absent to the point that he just couldn't kill someone and hide it. [I’m not convinced by that argument]

Gregory lives next to my apartment, on the seventh floor. He is one of the most friendly [friendliest] people in the entire neighbourhood. Greg links the murder of this woman to the disappearance of the little girl a week ago (which caused her parents to leave) and to the death of Lerry [Larry?], who was found dead at the entrance with his eyes gouged out. To this day, Gregory remains my only good company in here [either say ‘the only good company’ or ‘my only good friend’]. I should leave and take him with me, but I just can't afford to rent a new flat in another part of the city and Gregory says that he gets a morbid feeling whenever he tries to leave. That always seemed strange to me. Let's get to the present now... [you should start a story at the beginning, nowhere else]

I sit with Gregory in his welcoming flat and we discuss about [delete ‘about’] the major problems we face. Of course, there is no bigger problem than the murderer who moves freely around our lifetime home. He always points out to [no ‘to’]  the vague similarities between the murders. The people are always strangled in some way, no matter if this is the cause of death or not and that always there are no prints of the killer found [try ‘there are never prints of the killer found’]. Greg has a notebook that he claims to be full of notes [don’t repeat words close together e.g. ‘notebook/notes’] regarding the murders, but he never lets me see it. I ask him about a local musician and he doesn't even finnish [finish] his sentence, as there is knocking on the entrance door. Gregory gets up and goes to the entrance to open the door [repetition]. I raise and go to the entrance and find Lissa [Do you mean to spell it like this?]. She says that Joseph invited [invitation is usually used for group gatherings – to be clearer say ‘asked for me’] me to go to his flat for us to talk. As this guy usually doesn't want to talk to me, I started going to his apartment in a hurry as this had to be interesting. '[Okay so this is an awkward sentence. You should say something more like “he hates me so I knew it had to be interesting]' I found him in the living room, dressed in his usual dusty suit and looking at a photo of his dead friend.

"Henry, what do you think is going on in here?" he asks.

"I don’t know, sir. Do you?"

"Look, Henry, the policeman who I called yesterday said he needs more evidence to find this damn murderer. Now look, [repetition of ‘look’] I know you dislike me in the same way as [delete ‘as’] I disliked you since you were just a kid randomly running around here with your big-mouthed parents. But if we want to survive and make [get] justice, we must be united. Now, first I would like us to visit the two girls that live at [on] the last floor. I just can't handle them by myself."

I knew what he meant. These girls were always agitated and unserious [doesn’t make sense – unserious isn’t a word]. I agree to go with him, we shake hands and go to see Gina and Clara. I observe that he slowly changes his behaviour as the situation worsens. We go up the stairs, over rivers of dirt and I ask myself again: how did my parents get in this hellhole? They say it was better in the past, but it just couldn't get so bad.

-

So I’ve offered you more direct advice and instruction on a lot of this because I appreciate that it is harder for non-native English speakers to detect errors. But after putting a lot of work into this I can’t help but notice that almost all of the errors were present in your original post—make justice/felt and broke his head—and that you didn’t seem to take Empy’s advice seriously. Because of this I’m going to stop giving advice. If you come back and post the first half of your story with all the changes made that I have suggested above I will provide feedback for the rest of the story.

But before I go forward let me make some things clear.

Your English is not up to the standard where you can confidently write stories. To improve this you need to read a substantial amount of English stories to gain the necessary understanding of English. Until then I will happily offer you in-depth feedback and help you as much as I can. But I need you to understand two specific things.

You must implement the advice I give. If you post another ‘reviewed’ copy of this story with the same errors as before I will simply stop giving you my time.

This will be very hard for both of us. It will require lots and lots of reviews because even if we address the problems I have noted above, there are many more I left out for the sake of simplicity. Don’t expect to rewrite this once, or twice, and be done.

<p class="MsoNormal">If you would like to go ahead and get help with your English language skills take the first half of the story above and implement the changes I have suggested. If you post it (back here in this same thread, do not create a new one) I will review the rest of your story. And we can then begin moving forward.

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