Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-34532494-20180218104539/@comment-24101790-20180218120644

I'm sorry but there are quite a lot of issues here. Beyond the mechanical errors, I'm noticing quite a lot of issues with the plot itself.

Capitalization: You tend to randomly (incorrectly) capitalize a lot of words: "For a long time, Nobody (nobody) knew what happened.", "People just assumed That (that) he died.", "In October of 1988, in Domburton, California; The (the) Mayor went Missing (missing).", etc. There are over a dozen other instances of this throughout the story.

Story issues: "Like anyone going missing, everyone forgot him. A new mayor was hired, and people moved on." Besides being awkwardly worded, it really doesn't make much sense that such a high profile case would be forgotten so quickly. If you're looking to use that line, you're going to need to add a lot more to it to show the passage of time and explain what investigators were doing at that time which led to the case going cold.

Story issues cont.: The biggest issue here is that the journal entries are extremely rushed and don't really convey any tension or build up the story. Let's take a look at one entry: "There is a man that keeps giving me food to last 1 day. He calls Himself "The Lunatic" and he keeps making threats." This needs description if you're looking to create an image. What type of food is he giving? What threats are he making? What does the man look like? Also, there's almost a two week lapse between entries. What was he doing in that time? The earlier entry made it seem like he's has nothing in that room other than the journal and pencil.

Story issues cont.: The ending to the journal also feels pretty generic. "He found me, and he's trying to break in. I found a Gun in some Hay. I'm Gonna Use it. Goodbye." A question the readers tend to ask in Journal Entry based stories is 'why are they writing this?' and if an event is happening while they're writing 'why are they still writing?" It seems odd that the mayor would find a gun and not think to defend himself against the lunatic. Also, why spend this time writing when the lunatic is bashing down the door as he speaks. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to continue looking for a way to escape?

I'm sorry but as it currently stands, I don't think this story is up to quality standards and needs quite a lot of revision and fleshing out.