Talk:Sever/@comment-25941663-20180807130340

The main problem with this story is that it starts off too slow. Things don't kick off until about the halfway point. With horror especially, you have to hook people in relatively soon or keep them on their toes, or you risk losing them. The first part of the story, while it is very nicely written and enjoyable, reads more like an opening to romance/drama.

And here's the thing, to be honest: It just worked. I am not sure how, but it just worked. The characters were fantastically written and the relationship between the two characters was so vivid. And this all seemed like a setup to make Sever's downfall all the more heartbreaking. This wasn't a simple monster story, this was the sad fall of a love interest into darkness. And for these tales to work, we have to care deeply about the characters, which you made sure was the case in the first half. If you hadn't written the first part of the story (yes, the part which was threatening to sabotage this story) the way you did, this would have been just an average.

Props to you to sticking to your vision of the story, it paid off massively!

Now for the scoring:

Use of Silence: This was not what I was expecting, but I find the use of silence here genius. In the first half (the "slow-start" half), silence is comforting. It's in the atmosphere, it caresses lovingly the main characters. Then, in the second half it turns on them, as it tries to drag them into the darkness. And in the end it still presses on, as it tries to catch the main character. Overall, fantastic use of the theme. 100/100

Originality: We rarely see romantic stories in creepypasta portrayed well, and this is a nice change to this phenomenon. The wendigo-like plot, while not unique, is not often executed this way. This is a pretty unique story, both in execution and in idea. 85/100

Fear Factor: Pretty solid in this department as well. The first half had nothing to show for it, but in the second half the story picked up a lot. Still, it's not so much fear that you illicit as much as it is sadness, but when the plight of Sever was revealed, it was pretty powerful. What really made this work as a creepy story is the vague descriptions of what happened to Sever up in the mountains, and the effect it had on him. 70/100

This is an excellent story, and one of my favorites. Kudos!

(255/300)