Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-29997932-20160918182616/@comment-24101790-20160918191011

Capitalization: "one-hundred mile radius. six (Six) out of the thirty-five police officers who were looking for him reported back saying the same thing:", "useful. 36 (Thirty-six) results were all she needed.", ""Oh dear," she said in a worried tone, "Are (are) you alright deary", ""Sorry I took so long deary," she said as she served Letha the cup, "The (the) marshmallows were in a cabinet", ""Mr. Pond," she asked unsure as to why the door was like this, "Is (is) there a reason why this room in particular is blocked off?"', etc.

You also tend to improperly capitalize words continuing a sentence after dialogue ""I know that alcohol distorts a persons perception and actions, but I know this isn't a beers doing..." She (she) thought...", "... M-my master isn't pleased with you..." He (he) muttered.", ""What do you mean, Mr. Rogers?" She (she) asked", ""Fifteen years, fifteen very interesting years." She (she) replied.", etc.

Punctuation: Apostrophes missing from possessive words. ""I know that alcohol distorts a person(')s perception and actions, but I know this isn't a beer(')s doing...", "She thought as she saw the man(')s mouth begin to foam.", "She stuck the gun to Mr. Rogers side", "Mr. Pond hastily walked out of the room, re-barred the door, and went back to Mr. Ponds office.", "A killers paradise", etc. ""Fifteen years, fifteen very interesting years." She replied."

You also tend to not punctuation abbreviated words (although you do use punctuation on Mr. and Mrs.) "A missing child report was filled out by the St Joseph Children's Home in Ogden Utah.", "According to the testimony from a St Joseph Children's Home staff member", "she got into her car and drove to her next destination to search for evidence, the St Joseph Children's Home.", etc.

Wording: "Listen to me Letha, the whole thing didhappen", ""...U-W-C-N-F. Stop the torture." Is (was) what was written and there were dots marking areas", "Letha, under the assumption he was drunk and couldn't think strait (straight)", "The house was surprisingly clean for being under the authority of a dunk (drunk)", etc.

Awkward wording: "each of them referenced seeing a man standing about 25 feet away; and the night they went to sleep and every night after they experienced the same nightmare", "The beige carpet was fairly clean other than a few leftover male extremities accompanied" (I don't think extremities is being used correctly here.), etc. I would strongly suggest re-reading this aloud to yourself as there were other instances.

Grammar: It's=it is, its=possession. "she had crushed it's head and one of it's fangs had poked through the soul of her heel.", "And on each of it's legs were 3 large", "the beast walked over to her slowly, opened it's mouth", etc. You're=you are, your=possession. "You do realize that the 'missing boy' case your (sic) describing was debunked almost seven or so years ago"

Format: ""We heard him having an argument with himself which went on for about three hours, occasionally raising his voice and slamming himself against the walls. We didn't think much of it as with him this was normal behavior, he had been acting like that since last October." And according to the young Joseph Pond-- The head master of the children home, "His roommates had been hiding out in the lobby when we heard the sound of glass shattering come from the second floor-" You really need to space dialogue/quoted lines to separate paragraphs. Additionally the original posting lumped everything together due to improper spacing so I suggest looking at the edits Dr. Frank N. Furter made.

Story issues: "Name: Vince Ziegler, Missing since June 1st, 1985. Went missing from: Ogden, UT. DOB: May 13Th, 1936." Starting with the basics, add up the years. How exactly it someone who went missing in 1985 that was born in 1936 be 11 years old? Why is a 49 year old man staying in an children's home? Was this a typo, additionally why after six years is Letha investigating this case based on solely her uncle's words? If it was due to her loyalty to him, why did it take that long? If there was a new development, why wasn't it mentioned?

Story issues: cont.: This bio at the beginning really feels more like an attempt to introduce your CPC and comes off as an information dump. Additionally lines like: "Sounds like nothing more than the aftereffects of bad heroin if you ask me." need a bit more research as heroin rarely causes hallucinations (detoxing does interestingly enough). There are a lot of events like the reporter carrying a gun, breaking and entering, and threatening a man for more information that really could use a bit more explanation to make them seem less forced into the story.

Story issues cont.: " The case was dismissed and anything regarding the case was immediately censored. The police who worked on the case stood by their claims but all was lost in conspiracy." Why exactly is the police actively covering up this case? It really feels tacked on to the story and doesn't make a lot of sense. Why exactly would they put so many people on it (who would witness the goatman hallucinations) if they were trying to sweep it under the rug?

Story issues cont.: " joking about how some child survived being burned and bleached when the mood changed drastically" The obvious Jeff reference feels really shoe-horned and out of place. Why exactly would a news report be joking about it? ("Up next on the news, wacky hi-jinx ensues after mall shooting.") Contextually it really doesn't make much sense either.

Story issues cont.: "She turned her attention to the man when she saw he was passed out cold, or so she assumed. His mouth was wide open and his eyes crossed, occasionally twitching." I'm sorry, but the thought that this reporter would come to a person's house, find a drunk man and then enter without permission really feels forced. Why is she breaking the law when she has no evidence that the person she is looking for is there. This becomes even more unbelievable that she'd spend the day looking through his house when the man starts bellowing, foaming at the mouth, and twitching.

There are a lot more plot issues here, but I think I'm going to cut this short as there is quite a lot of work needing to be done here and I rather not overload you with everything all at once. Since I started writing this, I noticed that the story was deleted. Due to the numerous capitalization, punctuation, awkward wording, grammatical, formatting, and rampant story issues, I can understand why it was deleted for not being up to quality standards. Remember that this list is only what I noticed at a glance and there are other issues wrong with it. Keep that in mind if you intend to make an appeal after re-writing this and getting more feedback.