Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-5269370-20140103013046/@comment-1196539-20140104161226

Noothgrush wrote: I definitely agree with you, it does include both of what we're talking about. But for someone who's aspiring to be a writer and wants some suggestions of great stories, I wouldn't suggest the old stories. You're right, they're excellent examples of cliche bullshit, but if I'm a new writer and I come and see that I'm more likely to emulate that, put less effort forth.

I feel like if someone is really going to go out of their way to write an original story that's not some piece of crap knock off they'll understand what is and is not cliche. And that's a great way to put it. The originals, the classics are great for an intro into what creepypasta was, largely memetic material that was of lower quality. It's great as an intro to the foundations of Creepypastas. The other I'd say is more useful as a "this is what the community members suggest, these are higher quality stories." I just want to encourage a higher level of writing.

And we hit the heart of it. You're assuming that the people we're talking about are people who want to WRITE creepypastas. All I've been talking about are people who are new to/have never heard of creepypastas. People who want to browse the site and read some articles, but aren't sure where to start--or maybe they saw some references made in an article's Comments section or something and want to know what all these "defaults" people are talking about are. Only a very small portion of these people actually become creepypasta authors--and it's incredibly unlikely that someone who has never even heard of creepypastas before is going to come in with the intention of writing one, despite having no idea what they are. That's like someone hearing the term "dynamic pentameter" for the first time and spontaneously deciding they want to write a poem with it before they've looked up the definition.

If someone is at the point where they want to know how to write a good creepypasta, odds are they've read at least a few. And there are umpteen resources on this site alone available for that purpose--articles, guides, etc. What we're talking about are brand new users totally fresh to the creepypasta scene, though--not aspiring creepypasta writers. The latter can have their own page, but this isn't it.