Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24776950-20170525231000/@comment-32283485-20170613233622

The plot in this seems a little... jarring, to be honest. There's some effort put into building threat and some attempt to establish the thief as supernatural or more than human - 'My doors were all made of metal so this guy must have been super strong. "No avenge [average] person could break any of my doors" I thought' - but no clue as to who or what they are. When the grand reveal is 'he was an Asian man', that's more anticlimactic than anything else. Who is this thief? Are they unnaturally strong - if so, why? What are they doing housebreaking - what is their motivation? And most importantly, where did they go at the end? The ending seems really quite rushed and there appears to be no attempt to explain what happened to the thief or the protagonist.

Lots of little unexplained details and inconsistencies are thrown in here as well. The protagonist notices the make and model of the gun at a distance ("Upon further inspection, I noticed it was a handgun, a 50 caliber to be exact."). How? Do they work with firearms in their profession, or are they just an enthusiast? The police are notably late for no apparent reason than to boost suspense and so their failure to appear seems unbelievable - the protagonist suggests "I knew it; they didn't take me seriously after all" but as all they told the police was that they were being robbed, then there is no reason the police wouldn't take them absolutely seriously. The thief at a critical moment starts to use an iPhone, which raises questions as well as breaking the tension - "The thing he was grasping in his hand and was putting up to his ear wasn't a gun at all, it was an iPhone 5s". Why, when they are in the middle of a robbery? Who are they calling that is so immediately important, or who is calling them that they can't ignore? These are just some examples of the plot issues, and while you shouldn't get bogged down explaining every piece of backstory or exposition in painful detail, it pays to think about these things.

A bit of plotting can make this memorable, but without it this just seems like another cliched home invasion with little or no explanation, and so the response is confusion rather than fear. I suggest you go back to the drawing board and nail down exactly who this character is and what they are doing in this situation. Even if you leave it veiled in mystery or deliberately vague, that's different to the effect of this piece, which just feels... not fleshed out.

Best of luck!