Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-31477126-20170823183346/@comment-24101790-20170828185240

I'm sorry, but a lot of your complaints seem like a matter of perspective (one that seems to be a bit tinted by my deletion reasoning for the story you're re-telling).

"I am unsure why you think that looking something up on the internet is at odds with a child getting a computer later. Many kids go to libraries when they have/want to look something up as they do not have a home computer. This was especially true in the 90's when home computers were less common than they are now."

The issue lies in explanation and need for elaboration. For example: "I came home to find Spot was acting strange and was sleeping more than usual." Most will infer that Spot is their pet, but not giving extra information doesn't help the audience build up the image in their mind. Is Spot a dog, a cat, a pet snake. Extra details help create a mental image. The strengths of this style of story is to engage the audience in a way that puts them in the protagonist's shoes and makes the horror hit closer to home (as sleep paralysis could happen to anyone). Not elaborating tends to create a disconnect. (Hint: this was also a problem in your re-telling of the Albatross story as the reasoning is fairly weak for the twist you're attempting.)

"Seems like you are comparing having 12/10,000 stories on this subject to having 12 posted a week. I would hardly call this over-saturation or something that this site would even currently have to worry about. Sure if the saturation gets too high then the content might get deleted as there are better ones that meet the standards better, but this should not play into the story being deleted as of now."

Given that I'm familiar with the trajectory/popularity of sleep paralysis stories and the beats they tend to follow (which this one also follows), I'd say that it should factor in if it is a re-hashing of stories that are told more effectively. (Note: This also holds true for your story given that it's a less effective telling of "The Albatross" horror story (which is already posted on the site).) Additionally, there were a lot more sleep paralysis stories that the admins have narrowed down (which experienced a boom a few months back after a couple of Youtubers posted "True Sleep Paralysis Stories") so the comparison still holds true that re-hashing a similar plot doesn't typically result in a high quality story. Allowing stories on that don't meet the standards set just because we worked on removing redundant stories early on doesn't seem like valid reasoning.

"It would if that's the only feature available. For instance an invisible entity with only milky white eyes. It seems like you just want more imagery instead of accepting what imagery there is. Understandably more is better, but sometimes the monsters don't need to be described."

I really just want more elaboration, if they only see the eyes and the creature is just translucent, that detail should be added to enhance the story. Here's the line in question on the off chance you're just trying to discredit my review so you can feel like you don't have to improve your own story. "I found myself looking into a pair of huge milky eyes." There are no details beyond that physical mention. Just describing one thing after building it up doesn't really create a sense of terror. I could keep going, but it seems fairly obvious that your goal here seems to be not wanting to work on your own re-telling and making the flawed premise work so I'll cut it off here.