Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-36719913-20180826224642/@comment-35911608-20180827130044

Lemony Snicket? Pseudonymous Bosch? The Stanley Parable? Am I getting close?

As Steven stated, it's not particularly scary. The biggest problem is the narration. Addressing the reader like this takes a lot of the horror out of the story, since we're going back and forth between us and Jacob over and over again, so we never really get the time to settle down into the story and get the suspense we need. It also feels rather comedic.

The horror itself is... meh. Boy finds box in haunted woods, opens it and finds notebook, goes home, next morning town is empty and boy is never seen again. And again, because of the narration, the way you describe the events isn't particularly terrifying - especially when you speak of Jacob being alone, because you're still including us as watching the situation and addressing us, so it doesn't feel like the town was empty.

Also, do NOT tell the audience that "now you can be scared." It removes any chance of shock value because now we're braced ourselves for what's to come. Does it intrigue the reader? Sure, maybe. But it kills any horror that follows. A lead up shouldn't reveal too much about the existence of the scare to come, but this is blatantly telling us "WARNING: SCARE INCOMING".

I'll give you credit that the story is certainly not bare bones, it's definitely got some meat on there and has a good length. I also didn't really pick up on too many grammatical errors, though there were some tense issues I picked up on here and there. But the story itself and the narration are the biggest problems I can pick out.