Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-4893169-20150217025844/@comment-26007602-20150222182430

Alright, I'll leave my follow up thoughts.

I understand that the lurker is frightening to the characters. But I just don't think he's nearly as frightening to the reader. He's hust kind of there. Now, if some freaky tentacled thing appeared above me, I'd flip the hell out. But he's not; he's in the story. I think you should make him more of a threat, or imply that he is. While the reader understands it's evil, there's nothing to really unnerve them because he just hasn't done anything at all. Introducig him or the idea of him earlier would definitely help this.

I don't know of it's a cultural thing, but I had no idea what a Korrigan was until seeing the wiki entry. Unless I'm the only one with that problem, you're going to need to distinguish it somehow from things like Tullagaq, as I thought they were both last names. That's actually a problem with these other assortments of characters: I can't tell if they have a strange last name or if they represent some supernatural entity. I imagine other readers would share my confusion.

Personal preference: I usually tend to lean towards making a character relatable over realistic. I'm not saying what you did was wrong; I just found Russell hard to emphasize with. Even most displace and evil characters have a certain charm or trait that let's the audience sumphasize with them.