Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-31315220-20170529041258/@comment-31315220-20170529051739

EmpyrealInvective wrote: There are a lot of issues here. There are capitalization, punctuation, wording, grammatical, spelling, and story issues here. Claiming these are realistic errors that a writer would make doesn't work as these issues are present in the framing device and really don't enhance the story or add realism to it in any way. In fact, the thought that these are people who are researching (i.e. well-educated) makes these mistakes even more glaring.

Capitalization: You forget to capitalize a number of sentences. ""Shadow people." they (They) didn't do much except stare at us,we tried to walk closer", "through.". worst (Worst) of all was the children screaming,begging for their lives.", etc.

Punctuation issues: You forget to space after using punctuation. "Today me and the team moved into our small cabin in the dark,long,misty (dark, long, misty) forests", "I'm being watched by something strange but maybe I'm being a bit paronoid,I brushed it off ,well I better get unpack long day of exploring this place.", "I'm not human,I'm one of them,everyday slowly and slowly I'm becoming more and more like them or is it me believing that my sanity is gone,anyway", etc.

Punctuation issues cont.: Punctuation missing from sentences/dialogue. "No body knows what happened after day 15 but that is left up to you(period missing)", "saying "You don't know what we've been through.".", etc.

Wording issues: "These were the short entry's (entires) of a group of people who were staying in a weird,creepy place to learn more about these Creatures." "mess around with there (their) mental health that people say lurk here", "God there (they're) coming for me,fast", "they seem more buff,aware and cruler (sic),", etc.

Improper English: "I better get unpack (unpacked after a) long day of exploring this place.", "No uses (use) by the time we got to where they were gone", "they are to (too) smart", etc. There are a number of instances where wording feels clunky or out of place (even early on in the story).

Story issues: The journal entries are really anemic (lacking content/rushed) and lacking description. Remember this is being written by a group hoping to catalogue their interactions, so their lack of focus really weakens the story. Lines like: "Well one attacked us and got one of us good (How?), bastards killed someone (Who?), we can't get out (Why?), we've tried escaping they blocked us o (how?)f" and "While trying to warn the group I got attacked by one of mistakes,I managed to get out alive (how?) but the new group were dead (How'd they die?)." Reading lines like this don't really make for an involving story due to the fact there's little driving the plot here and even less for an audience to latch on to that might keep them interested.

Story issues cont.: There are other issues here, but this has gone on for quite a while and I'd rather not write too much at once so I'll wrap it up with one more thing. The journal doesn't feel like it's being written by a person who is experiencing the events. Lines like: "What's done is done after all I'm sure there will be more disturbing things to haunt us.Tommorrow is another day." feel like pointless foreshadowing and the real lack of detail and focus really reduce the overall quality of the story. If you're planing on making a deletion appeal for this story, I would suggest drastically overhauling it as, in its current form, this has quite a lot of issues. So should I try to rewrite this with help from other people?