Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26018849-20150118105654/@comment-26007602-20150119190807

I'll be the first to say it: Shadowblade is not the name of a murderer; Shadowblade is the name I'd give my Skyrim character if I were twelve.

I'm not sure what's with the paragraph spacing; there should only be one space in between each paragraph; the way you have it done gives it a fragmented feel. I don't think your grammar is too off, but your sentences are put together choppily and the story has a rather poor flow to it. Dialogues, however, need to be there own separate paragraph whenever the speaker changes.

For example: "In the 1900s there was a small town called Haven. There was a guy named Shawn, he was twenty years old he had a good job, lived with his mother, father, and little sister life for him was well the best it can be." Besides including waaaay too much extraneous information, these sentences don't flow well. You could restructure this as "Twenty year old Shawn lived in a small town, Haven, with his family happily."

Let's talk plot. It's weak. Priest tortures guy (For no good reason; this is the 1900s, nobody was that extreme in trying to exorcise demons.), guy tortures priest. This whole story relies on shock value and gore to scare the reader, but this just isn't an effective tactic. The ending is laughable as well; he burns the whole town alive. Okay...? What? Nobody did anything? Nobody escaped? How...? It's just unrealistic and doesn't amount to anything. Gore amplifies horror; torture alone does nothing to unnerve the reader.

The final problem: this story follows the tried and true "Jeff Formula". Guy is mistreated, guy is mutilated, guy comes back and murders everyone. This cliché has been done to death. Everybody follows this formula whether it's intentional or not; the story would surely be deleted for this reason alone. Unless you can think of something new to offer the premise (I can't), I'd recommend scrapping this and finding a more original idea.