Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-10319977-20151014202612/@comment-26007602-20151015171515

There's nothing really scary here, and that's where this story fails as a horror story. There's no dread, no build up, no real creepy atmosphere; the fact that the reader is implied to be living in someone's dream (more on that later) isn't the least bit creepy because there's no real sense of danger or threat in this dream. Even if I was living in this guys dream, it doesn't really matter because it's indistinguishable from the real world and is apparently perfect. So where's the horror in that? If I was trapped in a paradise or a world no different than my own, why should I care?

You need some build up or something in the middle to keep readers interested. I'm on a horror website. If I get halfway through a story and there's no suspense, subtle hints that something is amiss, or anything creepy, then chances are I'm going to turn away from the story. Maybe talk about how some if the inhabitants of the dream world are hunted by monsters or brutally sacrificed or something. You need to invest the reader with more than a dream (if the dream was a nightmare, then it might work alone, but hearing this guys perfect dream dilemma is hardly thrilling).

Finally, there just isn't much horror in the final "twist". I'm not sure why you think that it's breaking the fourth wall, but even if it did, it wouldn't be creepy. Most readers aren't going to find it creepy because of how easily it can be debunked. I know that I am more than an apparition in someone's dreamworld. It's like the basis of Solipsism: if there's one thing I know for certain, it's that I exist. Some random guy on the internet telling me I might be in someone else's dream will not change that. There is no strength or validity to the narrators claims, and since it's the only source of horror in the whole story, the story as a whole falls flat.

You need to do more here. There needs to be more than the implication at the end, as it lacks any compelling evidence or reason to unnerve the reader. It's fine to suggest that I'm living in someone else's dream, but you need to do more with it and give it a sense of threat, as it doesn't stand on it's own.