Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-32764586-20181013160849/@comment-32764586-20181013173359

DrBobSmith wrote: Hi,

Obvious proofreading type errors:

I tried asking a few of my school friends if they had experiences anything similar to what I had.

It looks like you meant "experienced." Read it out loud, experienced sounds better.

The night that followed, well... several nights in fact, the woods located behind my house would cause my dogs to go into a frenzy when near by.

Suspect the last word should be "nearby."

That nightmare was all I could think about, and my lack of sleep showed within school.

Suspect that within should be "at."

If I were the kid's parents, I'd be drug testing the kid and doing a breathalyzer. If he came up clean and sober, I'd seek professional help. "Nothing happened" wouldn't be an acceptable answer.

If my dogs were injured and my son was acting strangely, I am going to ask the dogs if my son did it. It sounds like they said no. If something injured my dogs and the dogs say they are afraid to go to a spot in the woods, I am going to be grilling that kid.

Those dogs are hard evidence. If they really are "battered and bruised, with cuts and scrapes all around them" in the morning then the protagonist should logically tell his parents that there was an intruder. If the dogs aren't injured the next day, then the protagonist should suspect that he is having a schitzophrenic episode. However, he doesn't sound schitzophrenic.

If I had a kid that sounds like they are going through mental issues that sound characteristic of depression, I would take their firearms away. That "can't sleep and falling asleep in class" sounds like it could be signs of depression or other serious mental difficulties. Any kid running on three hours sleep a night is also going to be acting really oddly in other ways. You bet I am going to really react.

You say "parents." That implies a set. Father will react differently than mother. I don't care what, they will have different opinions. One will be more proactive than the other. They will disagree on what to do when they do decide to take action.

Hey Bob, thanks for the review. That was a dream sequence, not something that actually happened. The "nothing happened" was to explain why he was out of breath entering the house. Nothing implied there was anything wrong to the parents