Player Comments on Don't Sleep!

It was ok, not terrific or anything, but there weren't any major issues with grammar, the story was way to short and convoluted, and at best probably deserved a 5,but (spoilers ahead) the epilogue ending to the story was terrible, and came out of nowhere. there was nothing foreshadowing it at all. The fact that there was an alternate universe came out of the blue, and made no sense, and it was never explained how they escaped it. this ending alone brought my score down to a 3 out of three, just because it was decent writing. It wasn´t super interesting either, with only the one incident at the end providing any action to the plot, and the choices were very obvious which ones to choose. I am sorry for being very nit-pickey but I hope that you can learn from this and use it in the future to write better stories.

Well, jeez, Alen. You surely could have done better. Normally, I review stories by the CHARACTERS, PLOT, SETTING, and BACKGROUND DETAILS. However, in this case, it might be better if I revert to just the BASICS.

> The BASICS
Before anything else, Alen, you should proofread your stories before publishing them! There were many typos and mistakes in word choice.

Furthermore, I feel like the plot was very lacking, and ran off course drastically during the story. It was complete unrealistc, and overall dissapointing. Also, you don't even get to see your grandma—the whole reason you were on the train to begin with! Also, don't you think the train would switch routes after people mysteriously dissapeared while sleeping or leaving their compartments?

Regarding the characters, I am truly dissapointed. They were flat, unrelatable, unbelievable, and did you really marry an underage character in an ending I won't say? You could have done better.

There was a distinct lack of background details—which is to say, almost none. That's a serious letdown.


I truly believe you can do better, Alen, which is why I nitpick every detail. However, this story is not good. You need more practice, and you need to proofread your drafts before publishing them!

The grammar in this story is terrible. I’m not going to cut you loose on that, and I saw multiple sentences that were un capitalized spelled incorrectly or just worded very, very weird. If you want any story to have success on this site, please work on your grammar. If your reader doesn’t understand your message, then there is no point in writing at all.
Next, please take this out of the horror section, just because there is a big saliva monster at the end of the story, that you can kill with a knife doesn’t mean it’s a horror story. For it to be a horror story, it has to be woah big surprise here scary, suspenseful. There isn’t any suspense in being told to not go to sleep, falling asleep, meeting a random girl, then getting killed by a saliva monster. Your story is more action or something else, but it isn’t horror.
At least you have a plotline. You have an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and the resolution is surprisingly good. Sadly, your explanation, rising action, climax, falling action, were all trash I'm sorry, but it's true.
Your exposition grandma sends me a letter. I love grandma, get on the train, don’t sleep, don’t leave. You can delve in and expand these so much more than this. You can spread out the exposition throughout the story instead of putting it in only one section. Rising action just wasn’t scary reader was not allowed to make choices for self insteeeaaaad you told us what to do. Camelon wasn’t able to use the items I was, and it wasn’t suspenseful. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to write a horror story, the rising action is suppppppeeeer essential, and I can’t stress that enough. Your climax I skipped through because the story got boring, and I started skimming, falling action was meh, and your resolution was decent.
Camelon, already gone through a lot of stuff you’ve done wrong, but overall, your story last structure excitement suspense and the qualities of a horror story. You need to work on that if you want to post on this site again.

Though the genre is horror, the way it is written is mundane. There are some grammar issues, but the big problem here is telling instead of showing.

Everything is just explained or described, even internal thoughts. It is hard to care about the main character because of this - it's all just really robotic.

For example, from the first page:
"I really love my grandma because she replaced my parents who died in the card accident when I was a teenager."

There are so many ways this information could have been conveyed or sprinkled in throughout the story. Perhaps he could open a care package from grandma on the train, or carry an old photo of his parents. Maybe his dialogue with the other train passenger brings up the topic of parents. Perhaps the day is rainy and dreary, so staring out the window brings him thoughts of the day they died. Etc. Simply saying something happened is generally the least effective way to make a reader care that it did.

Other issues:

- the tense changes in a couple places from first person to second person, sometimes using both within the same sentence.

- It's not hard to figure out the ideal path since the main character announces 'I feel like I should/shouldn't do this...' At one point, when a specific inventory item is picked up, the character announces (psychically, apparently) that he now is able to do something.

- The game is far from complete. It even ends mid-scene where one would expect to have to use one of the inventory items to get past.

- While there are a couple inventory items to pick up, they are never used in the game.