Talk:The Hag Watches You/@comment-5733573-20180822182107

This story is okay. It's unfortunately not very original or scary, and some parts of it feel really forced. In particular, the father's explanation of the hag story feels shoehorned in in the least organic way possible. Ideally, this legend should be introduced organically somewhere near the beginning of the story. Maybe the party takes place in the old building where the nursing home used to be and some wise-ass kid tries to scare the pants off of everyone by recounting the story. Something like that would really help here.

A bigger problem, however, is that there's really no threat. The hag watches people. Okay. So what? Being watched is creepy, sure, but it's not really very threatening. The stakes need to be higher. The danger needs to be more pressing.

Finally, I wanted to mention a couple of things to work on going forward. First, I strongly recommend that you avoid parenthetical statements in your stories. They seriously disrupt the flow and never contain any pertinent information. Secondly, all of your sentences are kind of the same length right now. Experiment with using shorter, but still complete sentences to create suspense. When a really suspenseful, scary thing happens, use shorter sentences to create a sense of urgency. These things will really help your horror writing going forward.

As I said before, I hope you continue to read, write, experiment, and play. Don't hesitate to drop me a line when your next work comes out.