Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26562141-20160723213816/@comment-28266772-20160723222007

So stories are usually deleted because they're either too cliched, suffering from mechanical issues like misspelt words etc., or for making no sense. Looking at your story I don't think it's the last two. It's clearly written, and lacks mistakes; so I guess I have two main suggestions.

The first is that it might be very cliched. I'm not suuuuuper familiar with creepypastas aside from the usual ones, so I can't really say if this is too cliched or not. But you can find a list of typically maligned cliches here, that might cover in detail whether this story is or isn't too cliched.

The second thing is that micropastas are very hard to write. And while you convey a clear sequence of events it lacks any real atmosphere, or mood. In a short story like this it's going to suffer badly because of that. And while you've done a good job for something that's so damned short, I feel like you could triple this in length and it'd still qualify as a medium sized micropasta. So really I don't think you need to be so frugal. I think you should take just a few more words and build some tension and mood, and not just state whats happening so plainly.

So for example I can say something like "I wake up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom", which is similar to how you say "As you walk towards your refrigerator, you don't turn on any lights whatsoever".

But instead I can say,

"I wake up tired, but desperate for the toilet. It's dark, and I struggle to sit upright on the edge of the bed, before rising and struggling through the darkness towards the glowing light of the bathroom door." -> this is just an example of how going into some detail, even in few words, can do a lot for creating atmosphere.

So basically I think this is lacking detail. It's hard to write a micropasta for just this reason. The fewer words don't actually mean you totally get away with stripping it of detail, you just have to be very clever in how you efficiently convey information.