Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25100607-20140624175418/@comment-24077689-20140624182450

First thing’s first: fix the formatting on this. Paragraph indents, add spaces between paragraphs, and honestly your paragraphs are fucking huge. Break these up.

You’ve got a variety of punctuation, phrasing and spelling errors throughout. In the first paragraph you go from talking about his videos, then all the sudden he’s been missing, then all the sudden you’re inexplicably on his computer. And, I get it, it’s a pasta about a youtuber’s video about a videogame. It’s still technically a game pasta, which is not blacklisted but it is put under increased scrutiny.

Wait… an investigation? What the fuck is going on? You don’t introduce any of this information until halfway through the first paragraph. We need to be told this up front “this is who Markiplier is, this is what’s going on, this is what I’m doing”. As it is, shit is just suddenly popping up and happening. What’s the protagonist’s motivation? How does he have access to this dude’s apartment? How does he have access to his computer?

Rule of thumb: don’t use caps in your story. It’s annoying, it’s not necessary, in most cases the effect you’re going for can be achieved through italics.

Your dialogue set up is terrible. Once again, things are just happening, separate your dialogue from the rest of your story, make it more clear what is happening, where things start and where things end.

Wait, the asterisks, are those supposed to be the game talking to him? Why is he so terrified? This doesn’t seem that terrifying. What’s he doing? What’s he feeling?

Stop misusing the ellipsis. It’s not necessary for your story, nor is it grammatically correct.

Another rule of thumb: your readers don’t care about the fashion statements, it’s just as easy to say it looked like Mark.

What the ever-loving fuck is a butt-stabber?

What’s with the asterisks, seriously? This dialogue would be clear if you set it up properly. But even if you did that, the transitions, the statements, they’re all just so banal. The same old conversation every generic creepypasta character has. Same shit, different story.

Who are Bob and Wade? Assume your readers are ignorant of the subjects.

Overall, this is a tired story. It makes me tired to read it. Not a whole lot happens, it’s a pretty typical video game pasta, but it’s just a little bit worse. Actually, it’s a lot worse. The set up, you obviously didn’t proofread this, the progression, the dialogue. We have standards on this wiki. You came on chat saying how ImGonnaBeThatGuy was abusing his powers as an admin. He wasn’t. He was doing his job. This story wouldn’t have lasted even if anyone else were on. If I saw this on the main site I’d tag it for deletion immediately. Frankly, even if you did improve on the strange plot and the weird progression and the bad dialogue and the bad formatting, it still wouldn’t make it very far. The subject isn’t very well thought out. The execution just adds insult to injury.