Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-30425461-20161107012851/@comment-24101790-20161107021238

Let me start this off with this, this is not a comprehensive list of all the errors present in your story as there are quite a lot here. I marked the story for the numerous punctuation, capitalization, wording, and story issues, and since those are still present, here's what I saw at a glance:

Punctuation issues: There are a lot of missing commas here. "Hi my name is Samantha but most of my friends call me Sam.", “Ok(comma missing) but don’t ask me to attend any afterwards.”, “Ok(comma missing) see ya when you get here.”, “Really Sam, you know what(comma missing) you can be a real asshole sometimes.” She replied angrily.etc. I suggest reading the story aloud to yourself and when you come to a break in sentence flow, generally a comma or some form of punctuation is needed there.

Punctuation issues cont.: You also tend to improperly use punctuation in dialogue. "“Hey Catherine.” I said tiredly.", "“Hey, you’re pretty cute, Samantha.” Derrick said lowly.", "“Yes, I really do.” Derrick said.", "“Yea but it’s most likely an animal or something.” Derrick replied.", etc. Remember, if you're continuing the sentence after dialogue and not starting a new one, you should not end it with a period. Only use a period when the sentence is complete.

Punctuation issues cont.: You also forget to use punctuation before and inside dialogue. "She asked(,/:) “Hey Samantha, I know you’re busy and all but I was wondering if you wanted to come to this party down at Michelle’s house?”", "“Well, Sam I was wondering if you wanted to hang out, I know a cool place we could go to(punctuation missing”", "He came up to me and whispered(,/:) “Don’t mind him, he still is kind of a dick.”"

Capitalization issues: You tend to improperly capitalize a lot of words. "“Can you please come to this party?,(comma use incorrect) it (It) just doesn’t feel right without you here.” She (she) asked.", "“Really Sam, you know what you can be a real asshole sometimes.” She (she) replied angrily.", "“OK, see ya when you get here.” She said with an attitude.", etc. As there are a lot of basic errors, I suggest looking over some story with dialogue and use that as an example of what you need to correct.

Wording issues: "It all began about a year ago when I was just graduating from River Lane High School and I was about 18 years old which meant I wasn’t doing so well academically but at least I graduated." Feels like you're missing a connection here. How does being 18 mean the protagonist has low grades? Tie it in to the story, what were they doing at 18 that was detrimental to their academics.

Wording issues cont.: You misspell yeah a lot of times. "“Yea (Yeah) but it’s most likely an animal or something.”" "Yea" is an antiquated term for voting. "Yeah" is the word you're looking for unless you're implying all those times, a vote was taking place. There is also quite a lot of redundancy here. "“Derrick!!!” I screamed as I ran to save Derrick." You already established the character there. To put this in context, in one paragraph, you use the name Derrick over twenty times. It gets very repetitive and unnecessary when you re-establish names with every new sentence.

Story issues: You need to properly space dialogue. Two speakers should never be on the same paragraph as it tends to muddle who's saying what and with what inflection. "I answered with “Ok but don’t ask me to attend any afterwards.” “Ok see ya when you get here.”", "“I am very busy and I have a lot of catching up to do but if there is another one, I promise to attend.” “Can you please come to this party?, it just doesn’t feel right without you here.”", etc. This is done to help story flow and reduce confusion.

Story issues cont.: The story feels like a checklist without a lot of emotion/sentiment in the story. For example: "She let go of Derrick and then punched me. I fell over and she dragged Derrick even further out into the water." and "I swam back to shore and sat and cried. I fell asleep eventually in my car and woke up in the morning." are both times where the story should be pulling the reader in (the first example in the character's desperation to save Derrick and the second to display how much his death has affected them). Without these descriptive scenes or emotions (that is the whole reason why the protagonist is writing this after all), the story feels flat and uninteresting.

There are other issues here, but I feel like this is enough for now. I think this story is going to need a massive re-write/overhaul if you intend to try and make a deletion appeal. Even if you correct the numerous mechanical issues here, the plot/writing still has quite a lot of issues that drag down a story that could be very intriguing if more time were devoted to it.