Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5858924-20150629091618/@comment-25980905-20150629102746

Awesome, this took a much different turn than I thought it would.

What You Did Right

The story was nice, despite the cliches. I was expecting a Jeff The Killer clone in the beginning, the way you were building the character. However, I was quite impressed to find that this was not the case. Whilst I see little point in adding the protagonist's childhood as a backstory to build characterisation, it still works (although it does unnecessarily prolong the story). Your characters were well rounded (the bullies not so much) and you left very little unexplained, which was enjoyable. Overall, the story was nice but could be better.

What You Could Improve On

The story is riddled with spelling mistakes and your grammar is not the best in the world. I would recommend [this]. '... the female of them...' (In reference to the bullies) was difficult to read, as it did not make sense on its own; there are more sentences like this that must be corrected to meet quality standards. The childhood of your protagonist is also reminiscent of Jeff The Killer (the character toughens up and is pretty much shaped from bullies and childhood trauma), which almost deterred me from reading (though I'm quite glad I kept going). There was also the idea that these bullies are monsters not just because they could have killed the protagonist but also because they couldn't notice a faint heartbeat and almost unnoticeable breathing. These are undetectable in the dark and also very difficult to detect with medical training/technology. I'm also going to add here that your character no longer feels fear and believes they are invincible and yet feels dread in the house? The ideas kind of contradict each other.

Now onto the fun part: the cliches. Pentagrams, satanic symbols, impossibly large smiles and hoods; OK. I will admit, your use of cliches is interesting in regards to the way you use the stigma attached to each cliche to help the story flow. The characters with the hoods were obviously cultists. The pentagram implies that something in the house is not quite right. However, be careful not to overuse cliches.

On a final note of critism: '... must have been used in some kind of ritual...'. Ok. OK. I get that you character is level headed, but when you see that you tend to think 'S***! What happened?'. Realism can make and break a Creepypasta. Lenient readers can ignore this, however, it would be more wise to explain why the protagonist knows about this.

Overview

Overall, the story was nice and has a decent amount of potential. I would advise modifying that section about the protagonist's childhood; as it can either be much better or non-existent.