Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-25558572-20140428180235

I'm not a proffesional writer, but I've still written my fair share of short stories. In my experience from what I've both read and written, here's a few pointers that can help make your pasta better:

1. Description Alone is Not Scary.

If your pasta focuses on just descriptions of whatever horrible things happen to your character, it won't be scary. It will do nothing to unnerve the reader. What you need to do is establish a good, believable reason for why your character had his or her stomach cut open before you can get to what it looked like- and even then, don't spend more than one or two sentences describing gory details at one time.

2. Psycological Horror Is Very Effective.

Psycological horror focuses on what can't be seen or is unknown, but still carries a sense of danger. Because zombies and monsters don't exist in real life, it is pretty difficult to craft a genuinely frightening story that centers on them. A pasta is a lot scarier if your character is frightened of what they can't see or what they don't know will do to them. Using real-life mechanisms such as darkness, sudden surprises, animals, or anything else potentially scary can be much more effective than just something that wants to torture or kill your character for no reason other than sadism.

Try to establish what your character's fears are. Are they afraid of insects or the sight of blood- and if so, why? Did they have a bad experience in the past? Think about your own fears and why they unsettle you. I, for example, become nervous in extremely quiet enviornments from just watching too much ''Amnesia: The Dark Descent. ''Imagine walking down a quiet library and hearing a book suddenly drop on the floor. Imagine hearing a loud buzzing noise under your bed when you wake up one morning.

3. You Can Get Ideas in Many Places.

If you're strapped of ideas to write a creepypasta on, I know a few things you can do to get your imagination going.

-Watch videos or listen to songs, especially ones with darker content.

-Read other creepypastas, or just read any book at all. I find this really helps me to get some basic ideas or inspirations.

-Try pulling a random noun out of the dictionary. If you had to write a story for English class about that noun, what would it be like?

I hope you guys find this advice useful! 