Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26840706-20170821085318/@comment-24101790-20170823200609

Punctuation issues: Punctuation should be inside dialogue. "“Not far from here, there is an old abandoned theme park; Eclipse can sometimes appear in the hall of mirrors. However, I wouldn’t recommend going there until you truly understand what you’re dealing with, because if you survived it means you’ll harbor some desire for vengeance”.", “Before you even think of confronting it, spend the next few days with me and I’m sure I can explain why it isn’t the monster you think it is; its intentions are far less sinister than you assume, if you’re to follow me, you may find that you both have a second chance”.", “You were never meant to survive the encounter, you should count yourself lucky that you did”." Additionally there's no intervening action in dialogue that goes across multiple lines, you really shouldn't include a closing quotation until the end. You can look at The Chaplain for reference as it can be a bit complicated.

Punctuation issues cont.: A lot of your dialogue is missing proper punctuation. "“You killed Kincaid didn’t you; shame, I liked him(comma missing)”", "He said to me(comma/colon missing) “Brian(comma missing) you came this far for revenge, but if you quit now and forget you saw me; all of this will end quietly. You said it yourself, there is no need for this pointless violence”.", "“Looking for this” he taunted", "He can’t afford let anyone reveal his existance (existence(period missing))", etc.

Story issues: This story uses quite a few tropes and it tends to result in a fairly predictable plot. Lines like: "To whomever is reading this, I ask that you don’t follow in my footsteps because I know that what happened to me will happen to you too. (The ending: "I had a second chance and I failed, now I’m passing it on to all of you." begs the question of what changed since the start of writing this.)" and "I need you all to know that this isn’t over for the rest of you, but for me; well, let’s just say the faint whisper of my name outside my office room door tells me that my story is over." feel a bit too commonplace. This ending works in Lovecraft's stories as the protagonist doesn't have anything else they can do. Here it feels out-of-place that an entity would sit outside their door this entire time while they type it and give them the time to finish writing the message (especially when their original goal was burying the truth) or that the protagonist wouldn't try to flee or affect some other means of escape.

Story issues cont.: You also need to insert complete spaces between dialogue so two speakers are never on the same paragraph. ("As I walked over to the café, a rather young brown-haired man waved me over, “Brian, is that you?” he asked, “How did you know it was me?” I responded") This is done to prevent misattribution as well as to improve story flow.

Story issues cont.: ""my commanding officer turned his own gun on our squad and I am the only one left, reports say he was shooting at a creature from his dreams; that couldn’t have been the case, could it?"" This entity's introduction feels pretty shoe-horned in. Given that he's apparently the only survivor (other than the protagonist who likely wasn't present at the time), who exactly is reporting this and the idea that the C.O. just open up with all info feels like an attempt to quickly advance the plot at the sacrifice of a steadier plot progression.

Story issues: There seem to be a lot of plot contrivances here with the source happening to be only a few miles away and the method to contact Eclipse also being nearby ("“Not far from here, there is an old abandoned theme park; Eclipse can sometimes appear in the hall of mirrors."). Taking into account that this creature is being sighted in WWI and Iraq (Europe and Iraq respectively), it does feel a bit too easy that an easy method of contacting it is right down the block. Even if it's the entity's intent to lure them into a trap, it still feels like it should raise some flags that the means to learning about and resolving their conflict would only be a couple of blocks away. Is the entity just constantly trolling through the internet looking for messages about it and then tracking down those people? Is that's what's happening, why let Brian send this in the first place?