Talk:No Voice/@comment-26054278-20150716170527

To start it off, I actually think the title of this story is pretty good. I like that it is pretty vague, and that would cause the story to be rather unpredictable if the story wasn’t so predictable.

I’ll come back to that in a moment, but right now, I would like to say that this story can be creepy. The description of the creature is fairly creative, and the design of the creature is what saves this story from being truly bad.

Anyway, the problem here is that this story is much too formulaic. The fact that this is actually a transcript makes the presentation a bit more interesting than normal, but otherwise, I have heard this type of story so many times, I predicted every single thing that would happen. Maybe if I was emotionally attached or truly cared about the characters, it would have impact despite not being shocking, but I don’t think the development of those characters was done well.

The main character doesn’t give me anything to like about him, and when he was a child, he was literally just a standard, normal child that I’ve seen in these sorts of plots so many times before. I don’t even know anything about the parents, so when they die, I don’t care about the supposed emotional struggle this character goes through because they didn’t give me anything to like. Sure, there was no real negative traits that they had, but that doesn’t justify the fact that they were not developed.

However, by the way the main character talks, it does give him a bit of personality by his use of some phrases I’ve never actually heard before and, while not exactly giving him development, at least makes the presentation a little bit more intriguing to read. It all really comes down to the quality of the story, and while it is written well with only one typo I noticed (which I will point out below, as it has to do with a minor story problem), the story just doesn’t have any legs to stand on due to how rather cliché I found it to be. While the story does technically work with no real plot holes, there is just one pretty odd moment:

''Well, no sooner had the electrician climbed up this than he stepped on what must have been a loose tile and tumbled back down the ladder, which eventually caught him... round the neck.''

Disregarding that “than” should be “that”, the problem is that after the electrician dies, he is never mentioned again. They don’t state what happens to the body, what the police say about the incident, or anything at all. It just fades from the story. While not a huge problem, there definitely should have been at least a line or two of closure.

Therefore, this story just doesn’t do anything new with a concept that I have seen so many times before. You certainly do show promise as a writer, as you do understand what can be creepy and clearly know English. The concept just needs to be more creative and all elements of the story need to be more focused, so that if the story fails in one element, it can at least succeed in the other elements. This one just didn’t do that. 45/100.

(Just so you know, the overall rating of this pasta for the contest will be the average of both my score and the score Banning gives).