Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28855100-20160628170548/@comment-24101790-20160628173051

Besides still having the same basic errors:

“The rules were pretty simple, enough for 12 yearolds (sic) to understand.”

“considering most people grabbed as many as they could, them being light weight and all.” light-weight, since it's a compound word should be hyphenated as light and weight separate mean two different things.

“Anyway, after this I ran into an alley way, knowing that not to (too) far past this alley way, there was an abandoned house.” Additionally avoid restating words as tends to be redundant/repetitive.

“After stepping in, I entered the house through the side door, and was instantly hit by the disgusting musty moldy air.” Remember to use commas when listing items.

“I stepped into the main room, the red brick walls (some of which had certain bricks sticking out, revealing jagged endings.) were covered in Ivy and vines, but, actually, it gave them a nice look.”

“I heard a rustle and instinctively called out(comma missing) "Who's there?”, “After no one had answered me, I took a few steps and called out again, this time saying(comma missing) "I promise I won't hurt you!”", “I suddenly heard a chuckle behind me, and a masculine voice said(comma missing) "No, but I'll hurt you!" (To this day, I can't get over how cheesy that instance was.)”, “His last words that I heard were "You wait! No matter how fast you run, I'll come and I'll get you!”", etc. Remember the basics of dialogue. Dialogue needs to be introduced with either a comma, dash, colon, etc.

“He fell to the ground screaming, (well, screaming some nasty names)(punctuation missing)”

There are additionally a lot of story issues here as well.

There's a real lack of explanation to a number of these occurrences. For example: “I spun around, so he would be in my vision, and I was 'greeted' by a tall man, looking around the age of forty, ironically, he was dressed rather nicely.” How is his attire ironic in this situation? Given the lack of clues to follow, it could be a number of things. As the man is the antagonist in the story, he really should have more description than just what he's wearing and his height. The protagonist encounters multiple times in the story and even mentions that other people have given reports about him ("the drawing of the suspect is a pretty good match up.") so why is he so nondescript? Remember, a good story is built on the right amount of details.

“Not that that phased me, I very quickly dug around in my pocket until I found my pocket knife.” Why exactly is the protagonist wandering around with a pocketknife? Really if they have a means of self-defense, it should be mentioned earlier in the story rather than later to avoid appearing sudden/a plot contrivance. Mentioning it earlier also establishes it and makes it seem less like the author is writing themselves out of a corner by adding in this item to help the protagonist escape. It'd be like a story about a person being locked in a haunted house and then unlocking the door without any reference to picking up a key earlier.

“He laughed, and launched towards me (Beetles, toads, bats.) I had already opened the knife, and so it at his face.” Things that are put in a parenthetical generally tie into the sentence and are an aside. How is "Beetles, toads, bats." relevant to the story at all?

“I don't know why I didn't finish him off, or why I still haven't reported this incident to the police, or, even tell my damn parents or a friend.” I'm sorry, but their decision to not let someone know is a massive plot/character issue. This becomes even more apparent when it's revealed other children are being taken (“There have been some missing children around here recently, and, the drawing of the suspect is a pretty good match up.”) and evidence is important in tracking/bringing the man to justice. Finally, this tips into the side of ridiculousness when they encounter him later (“I saw him at the market, or, at least I think I did. He simply smiled and waved. I believe, that one day, he WILL find me, and he WILL kill me, or, die trying.”). Why isn't he telling his parents or the police now? They're in danger and the protagonist is referencing how hopeless it seems. Why are they still keeping this information from their parents, yet telling the internet? It doesn't make much sense.

I'm sorry, but there are a lot of issues here and a majority of them involve the plot itself. As this was already deleted and posted to the writer's workshop, I would suggest using the workshop as a means of proof-reading before trying to post to the main site since you've overlooked a lot of mechanical issues and the story needs quite a lot of tweaking/re-writing.