Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-34296765-20160318043512/@comment-24859608-20160318141914

I didn't realize about the username, but regardless I hate these kind of stories. This story in particular probably needs so much fixing for it's size, it may be more effective just to restart. I will ignore the grammar, because I assume you haven't proofread.

For one, this story is incredibly short. Also, when writing in second person, telling me what I am going to do or how I feel is unrealistic and not scary.

Frankly, if I was standing in a dark hallway and I heard unidentified footsteps. I would be going to my safe grabbing the first gun I could find and charging downstairs. I am not just going to say obvious footsteps are my heartbeat, that's just stupid. If you want to do an expirement/ritual pata where you are instructing those, then instruct. 'If' statements are perfect for this, that way you are not treading that line of telling the reader how they are going to react to certain things. Even "may" will work for this.

Secondly, their isn't really any substance or atmosphere to this story. You could have spent the time to be way more descriptive in the surroundings, to paint a better picture in the reader's head. Also, to have a bunch of crazy things go down just by standing in a hallway, seems lazy to me.

You could have had a much better, detailed, expirement/ritual pasta just by adding substance. For instance, rather than saying:

"But an unknown malaise spreads over you"

Say, for example:

"If you have this feeling malaise all of the sudden, and you don't know why, do this, this, and this very carefully, or something something something will happen." <-- Very easy and effective way to add to your story, and to be honest, ritual pastas are the ones that scare the crap out of me.

Furthermore, many rituals/expirements have some very specific things to do, for a very specific cause. The Midnight Game had to do with paganism and accessing spiritual realms. What does standing in a hallway at midnight have to do with anything.

Okay, maybe I'm being too harsh, but the story is really bad. Just rework the entire story if you could. I would even consider changing the idea completely.

Good luck,

Nathan.

 Get Ready!  ( Here I come ) 14:19, March 18, 2016 (UTC)