Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-31073921-20170127003331/@comment-24101790-20170127155854

I'm sorry but this needs A LOT of work. There's quite a lot of wording, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and story issues here. I'll try to give a general idea of the issues present, but I don't have time to cover everything as I have other plans for the day.

Wording: There's quite a lot of awkward wording here. "7:02 - 7:12 - Actors fight, then all die from wounds and other attackers.", "Subject runs and smashes rock onto camera while screaming.", "Everybody but the man and the two lead actors were verified (you want to use the word identified here as verified typically means "make sure or demonstrate that (something) is true, accurate, or justified)", “Yes. I don’t want to talk about it. It just shows my failure.”, etc. I would suggest carefully proof-reading your story as there are a lot of other instances of this.

Capitalization: You forget to capitalize proper nouns and randomly capitalize words that don't need it. "Gurgle - Return - Gurgle - Remember - Gurgle - Forget ---" (you either need to leave those words uncapitalized if they're meant to be separate sentences or properly punctuate them if they are. Additionally I would recommend italicizing the gurgling noise to differentiate it from the rest so it doesn't seem like he's saying gurgle and not just making the sound. "Video End", “Hey john.”, "Please, Please.", etc.

Punctuation: You randomly stop punctuating events. "0:26 - 0:31 - Their coughing intensifies and people rush to help", "0:35 - 0:58 - They run out of the shot, but screams are still heard from other voices and their own", "0:00 - 0:12 - He sits there on a bunk", etc. You also tend to put spaces between colons that aren't needed or forget to use colons outright. "The most accurate translations so far are :", "The most accurate translation so far :", "He says through screaming (also awkwardly worded)", etc.

Punctuation cont.: You also forget to punctuate a lot of dialogue and you alternate between using quotations and hyphens, you should be uniform in these instances and use quotations or dashes to indicate dialogue. "“Sigh”", “John”", "Yells at camera LET ME GO", "LET ME OUT", "I CAN I CAN", "LET ME FEEL IT", "OUT GO NOW", "Trey ▆▆▆▆▆▆ in ▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆, P.A. screamed Remember Me??", etc.

While there are other issues like spelling ("Epiloge", "Never was their (there) evidence or reason how the man just walked out of the locked room.", etc.), I feel like it's necessary to move on to the story as that's where the major issues lie.

Story issues: First and foremost, you need to do a little research into Red Light Cameras. As those are the type of traffic cameras in use in the 80's and there main method of recording was taking pictures when a vehicle ran a red light. It would be extremely unlikely for them to record the scene in the cafe as well as they need to be angled in such a way so that they can get the license plate of the person running the red light.

Story issues cont.: Instead of adding a factual air to the story, the recordings seem to limit detail. Lines like: "They start screaming.", "0:00 - 0:12 - He sits there on a bunk", "1:24 - 1:45 - Screaming", etc. A majority of these lines require detail if you're looking to paint a picture. As there are no videos/photos to add to heighten the realism, you need to focus on being detailed enough for the audience to create the scene. Right now it just feels like a step-by-step of a story you want to write but haven't started fleshing out yet. Scenes like this: "Finally a family in ▆▆▆▆▆▆▆, ▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆▆ all got sick and killed each other." really make the story feel rushed and sap anything interesting out of the plot.

Story issues cont.: Plot holes. "He points a gun to his head and fires, then points the gun to the camera and shoots." Maybe you meant it that way, but if that's the case, you should use more detail to describe what happened and how the bullet didn't kill him. "None of these are counted for because none have been proven, and we only use video evidence." They don't submit anything other than video evidence, then why are the written transcripts included? "Nicolas Rix in ▆▆▆▆▆▆, ▆▆▆ cut both of his hands off with a plastic knife." How exactly does someone cut off both hands with a plastic knife? Ignoring the fact that it would be incredibly hard to use plastic to do it, how would they amputate both hands?

Conclusion: There are more issues here, but I'd like to focus on one last thing that feels like a pretty large issue? Why is this being released now? Why not during the 1982 event or the 90's one to raise public awareness of the dangers? Why is this information being released only now? What is the purpose? The compiler of events says: "The virus must be tracked down, and stopped.", but why in 2016/2017 and not a few decades before when the cases were more prominent. I'm sorry, but this has quite a lot of issues and I really don't see it meeting our quality standards without massive revisions and re-writing.