Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27007772-20150202214631/@comment-27007772-20150204185143

Unersame wrote: I'm trying to find the reason for the suspense being not as good. I think it's like this:

Imagine trying to roll a box through a carpet, really hard. I think that the box would constantly stop and go at various times. It would stall and stop and you would stop trying to do it.

However, a ball would roll totally fine, it's smooth, it fits.

Your suspense is a box in this story. Each face of the square is a flaw making your suspense stutter. The more flaws you have the more it's hard to get really into the story.

I feel like the suspense would rocket between high and low suspense, stall and rise. It's weird, doesn't flow very well. I think the reason for that was the dialogue and the characters themselves. The dialogue wasn't the best, also, they lacked better thinking skills? Not to say they're dumb. You also need better adjectives describing their emotions. I suppose it could be partly that. More descriptive and stuff. I dont know, back to the suspense problem, i think the actions the characters do are not very logical. They go in an unknown trap door, not even bothering to look inside. They could react more horror-wary. They need to have some sense of awareness. They must've read some horror stories right? You could maybe have the guy in the mask push them in. Hmm.

One line, the story is happening, im wondering to see what happens next, and the next line, the dialogue is eh, and the characters act kind of eh. Then the next line provides more suspense, but it goes by the same format.

Also, the dialogue need to be separate paragraphs, in one line. That also made the story seem more distant, or not as creepypasta-e.

I think if you fix the characters with the dialogue it could be better for sure.

Just some stuff i decided to say, respond if what i said made sense.

I took all of this to heart, and thank you for it. I'm re-writing the already existing parts whilst putting in believably. (Right when they see the sun set, they turn around and start to leave the woods, the man forces them in the trap door, Natalie is no longer a whinny bitch, and Jackson is less of a hard ass when trouble comes. They also make FAR more of an attempt to open the trap door from inside.)