Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5430990-20141219162138/@comment-24859608-20141219165636

I'd suggest posting the story here before uploding it to the main site. As for the story, I would be happy to give a review. I will let you know that I'm not a grammar nazi, so I will hardly mention some of the mistakes you may have made. I understand this is your first pasta so just know that my critism is trying to be constructive, not out of hate.

I personally think you had a good idea going here. It's not very often where we find parasites in someones body, it's one of the few original ideas left(There are not many). There are a few things that we're cliche however. Repeating that this is a true story and that your not crazy is really overdone. You can add a "Based on a True Story" category if it is.

Another mistake is that you mentioned creepypasta. If your story isn't about Creepypasta 100%, don't mention it in your story(Actually, mentioning it is a general NO in the community, regardless).

There is one thing that drove me crazy when reading it. Your story never seemed realistic. In a pasta, you should make your person talk normal. Unless your trying to be highly graphic and make the person feel disgust when talking, using big vocabulary when it's not needed makes you seem, well fake.

Here's an example in your story. "A few weeks in, I started feeling sick. Sick is the wrong word though, it was a different feeling than I'd ever felt. It was in my stomach, an aching, clenching fullness like I'd never felt before." Ask yourself. Have you ever heard someone say " I had felt sick..."'No that's not right"...It was an aching, clenching fullness that I've never felt before" or "The inescapable torment(well, pain - torment; same thing)". A simple "I felt odd, my stomach started to ache" would have been a lot more relatable. You also mentioned how the doctor said it was just stress, they would have found a parasite on something like an ultrasound. Unless it wasn't a parasite.

Another thing you should work on is making your character relatable. I could care less if a stranger somewhere I've never heard of had a parasite in her body and resulted to stabbing herself with siccors. If your in the midwest or somewhere were Ebola has a snowballs chance in hell spreading to, do you still  have trouble sleeping at night thinking the ebola is gonna get me..

With a short pasta, you need to have build up quickly. So it would be easier if you perhaps added a few paragraphs to maybe slow down the speed of the build up. The suspense is a good thing to have, however, there are some stories that gave me the hibijibes that went right into the shock horror. Completely forgetting the suspense. This is much more difficult to do as you need to know just the right words to say to do shock horror that quickly into the story.

This is just a suggestion if you still want to sound intellectual, try to take up poetry(lol).

Here's a few stories I reccomend. These stories are good examples of pastas that make you feel for the protagonist, or describe things in a simple more visual way...And some, well some of these stories I reccomend just give me the creeps.

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sandman - Tam Lin, always makes me sleep with the lights on.

http://www.creepypasta.com/harbinger-experiment/ - This story is creepy, but also makes me feel for the character.