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Hi everyone! You probably don't know me at all because I've been lurking on here for a long time (my bad, I can be very shy sometimes lol). Anyway, the very first storygame I've drafted had turned out to be quite the long and convoluted challenge, so I promptly put that one on hold for a while now. But, since I've had a lot of time on my hands lately--I'm sure you guys can guess why--I decided to start a much shorter, beginner-friendly story. It's called "Imprint" and it's pretty much finished, I was just looking for someone with some experience on here to look it over for any grammatical errors/misspellings/edits/notes. It's pretty darn short, maybe like a twenty, twenty-five minute read? Anyway, if anyone has some spare time on their hands and would like to help a very novice writer out, let me know! Or just say hi, that's always very fun too :) Thanks!

Here's a link, it might help in getting people to actually look at it.

I'm giving it a quick read through now and should be able to at least give some first impressions.

Okay, grammar and all that looks good. I mean I wasn't really going over it with a fine-toothed comb, but the writing is quality and you even have its and it's figured out. Only two punctuation goof jumped out at me:

"You've been jangling your keys and cursing for ten minutes." He says flatly.

"What the fuck?" He said, dazed and hungover.

'He' should be lowercased, and in the first one the period inside the quotations should be a comma. In the other instances you punctuated it just fine so I'm guessing these were just oversights. Congrats, usually nobody ever understands how dialogue works until it's pointed out.

Anyway, I liked it, and you fit a surprising amount of story into less than a 4k word count. I was put off a bit at the first page because the character didn't seem especially likeable, but as I went on I realized that was the point. The only thing I'd point out after finishing it is that the description itself doesn't mesh up too well with the character... 'warm, worry-free' don't come to mind, and it's hard to believe it's only been a month since graduation given how distant the memories of the school feel.

But for all that's good about it, the linearity I think may really hurt the score once it's published. I think writing just a few more pages to add an ending where nothing is learned, or one that plays up the horror elements would be a worthwhile effort.

Thank you so much! Yeah, I can be very bad at reading over and checking my own stuff, especially if it's not printed out--which is how I prefer to edit--so I probably wouldn't have caught those diaglogue issues (I have no idea how I would print out the whole thing, epecially since I made the very unwise decision to draft it in like, three different spots. A good note to self for next time to draft in a singular document). 

In reference to the description and the timing issues you pointed out, I started the story with a very murky grasp of what I wanted the characterization to be, so I think I'll go back to some of the first pages I drafted and kind of revise some of those details. 

Lastly, for the very linear timeline, right after I posted this I actually lurked in a couple other writing workshop threads, and I realized that linear is probably not the best way to go. I'm going to try to add some other endings too, I think that will make for a much better storyline especially for a choose your own adventure site (duh). 

Anyways, thanks again! I'm glad I had my learning curve with this short story instead of a much bigger project--though, I don't expect that this will be my last time encountering issues. Again, I am a newbie. Thank you!