Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-4893169-20150504195553/@comment-26007602-20150513225232

Alright, here are the grammar mistakes I caught.

"A cat knocking some books from a nearby shelf, startling her back to present time." Should be, "A cat knocked..." so the sentence isn't a fragment.

"The majority of the visitors were students, chattering and gesticulating wildly; and there was also a sprinkling of elves and Gerdin like herself." There doesn't need to be a semicolon and a conjunction; you can pick whichever you think makes the sentence flow better (I personally think you should delete "and").

"A herd of vigilant cats closely pursue a pesky grankle bird." Pursue should be past tense.

“Ugh... uggg," she spat as she buried her nose into her sleeve. "That perfume’s so rank. I think I’m gonna die... or else, barf all over the place!" Why does she feel the need to say this bit out loud?  It seems strange that she says this out loud, but then reiterates the same the thoughts in the next paragraph.  If she truly is scared by the figure (as mentioned prior), then I don't think she'd really say something like this out loud unless she deemed it a non-threat.  To me, these lines seem out of place for our character.  Everything up until this point makes me think she's a highly educated intellectual, but these lines seem much more... common.  If that's the intention (and she isn't supposed to be an intellectual), then I suppose there's nothing wrong with it.  Otherwise, I think it's strange that our intelligent tourist protagonist would say something like, "That perfume's so rank."

"At first, faint, unintelligible whispering then gradually rising into a roaring babble--voices in various languages, pleading for help, screams of agony, profane threats and shouts of damnation." You're missing a verb in the first part of the sentence. I'd change it to: "At first, faint, unintelligible whispering was heard, gradually rising into a roaring babble--voices in various languages, pleading for help, screams of agony, profane threats and shouts of damnation."

Let me start off by saying that these kinds of stories aren't really my cup of tea. That said, I must say this is very well written. It is very atmospheric and concise. I don't really know all the different peoples running around nor the mythology behind all of this, but I could still understand the story.

The beginning (And a good chunk of the middle) is very slow, as it establishes the setting, but doesn't really do anything with it horror-wise. From a literary aspect, it's very well done, but from a creepypasta aspect, some readers may click away once they realize nothing creepy is happening yet. From the looks of it, you have a cult following of sorts, so maybe that's not entirely important.

My main criticism with the story is that the horror aspect is fairly lacking. Yes, there's this mysterious poncho man and the radio is a bit strange, but neither seem like particular threats. This story seems like setup to something grander. And that's fine, as it will strengthen the series as a whole, but this individual story suffers from a lack of horror. Sure, the fact that our narrator has been following Fiona throughout her journey (Right?) may be a bit creepy, but he doesn't seem like much of a threat. I think that's the main problem; Fiona never seems to be in any danger or threatened by any force.

The whole storm scene seems to come out of nowhere, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I feel like building up to it a bit more may help ease a bit tension into the tensionless beginning. Perhaps make note of the ominous air, a strange feeling of dread/uneasiness, or that she feels as if she is being followed (By our narrator).

Also, who is our narrator? How is he able to hear Fiona's thoughts? Is he intentionally a sort of creature that can do that? If that's the case, then you can ignore this. Otherwise, I'd remove all of her thoughts and replace them with spoken dialogue. Is there a reason he's been following this woman around too? How does he know where she's been? I feel Fiona's reaction to him is a bit underwhelming. She just sees the one thing she thought she was going to see and doesn't seem that concerned. I'd at least fall out of my chair or something.

There's not much more I can say that hasn't already been said. I hope it's been of some use!