Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5227285-20150117004909/@comment-26007602-20150117072925

My condolences for your dog.

Not entirely sure I understand the story here (she's a ghost with amnesia or something, right?), but there are a few things I can assess regardless.

I'd start by breaking the whole story up into separate paragraphs; more so than just three. As it currently stands, it's fairly difficult to read as a wall of text. There are also a fair amount of grammatical errors present, but that shouldn't be much of a problem if you just copy and paste this into Word or something.

Tense issues. The first paragraph of the story is told in past tense, but the second switches to present tense. I don't think this intentional, but if it is, I suppose it would work if you made the transition a bit clearer.

The major issue with this story, however, is the clichéd premise itself. Assuming that I'm understanding this story correctly, the whole "she was a ghost the whole time" (coincidentally, this is your story title. Don't do that as is it completely spoils the ending) has been done to death so many times that it has found it's way on to the clichés list. It's also not very creepy or frightening for the reader; I have no sense of unease as I know exactly what's going to happen in the end and the twist is rendered wholly ineffective.

That's the other thing: the ending doesn't really tie the story up very well. The whole plot is a quick, seemingly random sort of events: ghost lady sees little girl in her house and decides to go in despite earlier stating that she would not go in. Then she sees an old man and a bunch of random items that remind her of her life while at the same time denying they exist. Then she meets her husband (I think?) and goes to heaven. The story lacks cohesion and could be made a bit clearer.

Again, if I've misunderstood something, let me know! I'm not sure if this story can be salvaged with it's highly cliched premise. I read the last line "he pushed me to get here..." And that sort of gives me an idea to avoid the main cliché. Maybe you could hint that this man pushed her to suicide and because of that, she's come back as a restless spirit to haunt the area? That completely changes the perceived ending, but might be less cliched. Just an idea. Looking forward to seeing it improve!