Talk:From Hell I Write/@comment-26054278-20150718174555

This is truly a great story. Honestly, it could have been on my list of favorites if sections of it were more polished.

The thing that really stood out to me about this pasta is that this story is genuinely creepy. I’m not scared easily by much, but parts of this story were scary to imagine, mainly because of some excellent details include. It was an actual scary moment when Eileen actually began killing after she was possessed (which was slightly brushed off, but I think it still worked).

One of my other favorite aspects of this story is that it has actual characters with established qualities and traits.

The highlights here are David and Eileen. David is a character that seems to be a bit shy and very intimidated by his family, and although he doesn’t show up for much time, the personality established in that time was impressive. The friendship between David and the main character should have been shown more than simply briefly talking about David inviting him over though.

Eileen doesn’t seem to be particularly mean at first, but she slowly takes action and feels justified to right the wrong committed by the main character and his family. She has an actual motivation to go after the main character, and I really like that.

The rest of the cast is either okay or not very good. The brothers and the sister are pretty one-note, simple characters, I don’t even remember anything about the parents, and the main character as a boy is pretty standard for these sorts of stories. I will give credit to the author that him as a boy is made more interesting when he actually talks about he saw and spread the rumor because it shows that this character truly does have actual flaws.

The main character in the present who is telling the story actually feels like a real person by the way he continually reminiscences and tells the story in a way that I feel he really say aloud.

The story is, in addition, creatively done. It seemed familiar, but new at the same time. The reveal on what happens to the people Eileen takes was smart, and the way it all played out felt original. The only thing that felt rather old and unoriginal was when the main character was having a ritual performed on him by Eileen, but because I cared about the character, it wasn’t a giant problem.

The cracks in the story are mainly because of two things: Typos and the last sentence.

Firstly, there are quite a few typos and errors in English throughout the pasta. There are several points where there are 5 dot ellipses used, and that completely confused me. I researched it to see if it was just something I hadn’t learned yet to find nothing, so whenever they were used, it was distracting. In addition, most of the places where 4 dot ellipses were used should have been replaced with 3 dot ellipses in order to be correct.

There are also just some odd sentences, such as the one below:

We sat down at his counter, eating yogurt; with David continued to dodge my questions about his home-life, or just his life in general.

The tense randomly changes and makes the sentence not make much sense in the word “continued”. To make sense, you either get rid of the semicolon and put “as” in the place of with or make “continued” into “continuing”. This happens a couple times in the story.

Another proofread probably would have helped iron out some of the other typos and sections like that.

Anyway, to the second issue. The pasta, while not having much of a twist after the twist of how he actually got to Hell, has a great second last line that rhymes, as shown below:

''It was Eileen who stole me from Heaven's true light. And that is why, from Hell I write.''

I really think that is a great line, and if the story ended on that, that would have been a satisfying ending. However, it goes on for one more line that made this line a lot less great:

Sorry for that, it's just I used to like to rhyme when I was young.....

Besides once again using the 5 dot ellipses, this line really shouldn’t have been the last line. If there was supposed to some twist about how he has been there for a long time, that doesn’t work because we knew he had been gone for a long time due to the constant reminiscing throughout the story. If this really was meant to be the final line, it is just very pointless and steals a lot of the thunder that the last line had. Personally, I would have scrapped this line and just gone with the brilliant line before it.

On another note, the picture at the very end of his “new home” (which doesn’t make sense why he would call it “new” if he had been there for a long time) doesn’t match up with the previous lines in the story about him living in complete darkness. The rest of the pictures were perfectly fine, though.

Other than that, I really liked reading this. Another look over and some revision at the ending (and maybe on some of the characters) would elevate it to become truly amazing. 83/100.