Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5726907-20150210013923/@comment-26007602-20150213051826

Don't actually indent your paragraphs; it screws up the formatting. You only need one space I between each paragraph though.

While you claim it to not be "another cliched gaming pasta", this is in fact another clichéd gaming pasta. The whole "game affects real life" has been done quite a lot, this one seems to put our protagonist in the game with little explanation, attributing it all to some creature. You should explain this a bit better; I know you want to be vague, but there needs to be some reason/implication of what is happening.

The game character as the antagonist has been done quite a lot too. The main cliche however, is the pointless blood and gore. It's not scary; it's a lame attempt at shock value. The whole "peel off his fingernails" bit is the most unnecessary part of all. We get it, the games horrible. You don't need to describe every single bit of it, especially when you put so little description into everything else.

I take it back, the main cliche is the whole "it was a dream" segment. Now, it isn't technically a dream, but the fact that he's in the game follows the same concept. You'll need a better transition into this bit. The whole "press start to play" ending is lacking as well. It feels rather abrupt and brings no closure to the story.

The characters bothered me a bit too. Jessica and Chris just seem so stereotypical; you've got the preppy girl for the sake of gender diversity and the fat gamer nerd. I'm not saying you can't use them, it's just that they seem to lack originality.

Now, I'm all for the use of swear words in writing. They can sometimes confer meaning much more than other words. But you overuse "fuck" so many times. The word loses meaning and many readers will be put off by the excessive use of it. Tone it down a bit, especially in non dialogue areas.

There's no build up or suspense here, nothing to keep the reader in edge. He shows up to this warehouse to play a game, plays the game, and then gore appears in the game. It all sort of goes downhill from there. The part where James leads Chris away was a good start, but it is immediately revealed that he's in the game and must be murdered for some reason. I feel the creature needs to be expanded on heavily if you plan on using him for the majority of the story; currently, I don't think he's scary or creepy enough to carry the second half.

The length of your story is actually detrimental to the pastas success. Long pastas must be exceptionally well written. I'm sorry to say that this is not. There are a few grammatical errors throughout (I'm on my phone and will not hunt for them right now), and you lack the detail to draw the reader in. I didn't find this story particularly interesting either, although that may just be me. I think you'd need a heavy rewrite to keep it at this length.

I think the pasta should have actually ended when Alex (or Samuel or whoever he is) wakes up, and then imply that the creature subtly stalks him instead of directly confronting him.

This review is long enough. I don't mean to be rude; I just give you all my thoughts. Hope you found this useful!