I feel like I'm gonna get a lot of hate for this oof. You're entitled to your own opinion but I've been asked to comment on this, so I am. These are my thoughts on the topic, it's fine to disagree with me.

I will not be talking about the handling of mental illness in creepypasta here, even though it is done overwhelmingly bad. There is a page on writing mental illness in this book so please check that out for my thoughts on this.

Oh boy, here we go. If you've read any of my critiques in this book then you've probably noticed I've reviewed a lot of creepypasta ocs, it's one of the most popular universes I review.

And it's by far the one I'm the most critical of. Just throwing it out there, I don't like the big bois in this game. I like Ben Drowned, SMILE dog and the Russian sleep experiment. That is it (out of the popular ones at least).

Creepypasta has the incredibly unique circumstances where there is no set canon or even a universe, they're internet horror stories. Which means they're meant to be scary.

A lot of ocs I see aren't scary. At all. I think I've seen one character so far that I've found creepy and I want to talk about that.
Here are some things that kill the fear factor of a character:
-Anything cute - if anything in a character is meant to be genuinely cute, it's gonna take away the creepiness. This isn't in every case as sometimes creepy-cute can work very well, but try to avoid it unless you know you can pull it off.
-Attractive characters - unless you go the psychopath route (which is very common) it's very hard to be scared of an attractive character. This is also possible as long as the actions of the character make them scary.
-Teenagers - for some reason, teenagers are most commonly used. Idk about you guys but I'm a teenager and I haven't tried to shank anybody. It's possible, once again, but a child or teenager killing someone isn't nearly as plausible as an adult trying to attack someone.
-Love interests - I'll develop on this further but don't ship anyone with freaking anyone in this fanbase, please. They are homicidal maniacs, not eboys.

If you haven't read any of my other stuff, let me make this clear, I am a massive supporter of oc x Canon and I genuinely enjoy some of the interactions an oc can have with an existing character. However, in this universe, it's very different. These guys don't do love, they're either some kind of entity or a murderer.

The more realistic a character, the scarier they are, which means that having these ruthless killers fall for someone is unlikely and destroys any previous image of them. An example of this is Clockwork and Ticci Toby. If you like them, cool, you're entitled to your own opinion, but I hate them together. I'm not a fan of Clockwork as it is, but shipping her and Toby together makes them less scary because it shows us that it's possible to show mercy and therefore, makes them less scary.

Now that's out the way, let's talk about avoiding some types of creepypastas.
- Bullied killers - these are very common and not even the more popular ones are done well. I blame Jeff the killer for this, so let me say it. Getting "bullied" (*cough* Jeff didn't get bullied, he got mugged once and then beaten up as revenge *cough*) doesn't turn you into a murderer.
-Haunted games - whilst this was interesting at first, it's been overdone as heck. And, even if it hadn't, no one is ever gonna top Ben Drowned since that had videos and everything.
-Lost episodes - Squidward's suicide was decent I guess, but it's hard to take a kids franchise or any franchise, and make the characters scary. Most of the time, they're ironically scary, if that makes sense?
- Fangirls - purely targeted at Nina the Killer, just don't please for the love of God. It isn't scary unless you use yandere tactics but use a fictional celebrity not an already existing creepypasta.
- Slendermen - we have enough please stop.

Talking about Slenderman, let's talk about good ol' slendy mansion. All the creepypastas coming together and living in a house and having fun completely kills any form of realism. Slendy *was* scary because he was this ominous figure that stole children, not take them in and look after them. If you do make a Creepypasta, don't have any involvement with Slenderman because it's completely overdone and I doubt he would take on more proxies. The only good example I can think of someone building up off the slenderverse is freaking marble hornets, which is an absolute masterpiece of horror in itself, so definitely check it out if you get the chance.

The same goes for other creepypasta characters, don't involve them with your character. Your character doesn't need to interact with another creepypasta for it to be one. The incredible thing about creepypasta is if you post the character on the Internet, it can be classed as one, kind of. The big boys are the ones that went viral.

Now I've gone on a massive rant, let's talk about some positive things you can do:
-Entities - absolutely yes, creating something that you know nothing about and can manipulate reality itself by its presence is terrifying. Slendy was actually scary when he was first around, for this reason, shame he got ruined.
-Killers - despite what I said earlier, a good killer story will always be scary. And by killer, I don't mean edgy teen that goes insane, I mean well-planned out, realistic killer.
-Stalkers - I don't think I've ever seen much of a stalker story because apparently creepypasta thinks everything has to end in death. A good, slow-burn stalker story that slowly drives the victim to pure paranoia would be incredible.

Some tips for writing creepypasta stories (don't normally do this, but creepypastas are nothing without their story) :
-Gore - incredibly detailed gore isn't scary, it's just off-putting and can put the reader off reading.
-Tension - in horror, tension is everything, builds up suspense and makes the reader feel on edge so they need to know what happens next.
-Language - creepypasta gained a bit of a reputation for either really bad writing or over-the-top language to try and make up for it. Using big words doesn't make your writing better and using incredibly eloquent language for a horror story, an Internet horror story, makes you sound almost stuck up (*cough* looking at you Sonic.exe *cough*). Of course, always check over your writing, grammar, paragraphing, etc when writing anything.

If it's your first time writing a creepypasta or horror in general, please don't panic about anything I've said, practise. Horror is hard because people are scared of different things but there are common things that people find scary, use the fear of the unknown to your advantage.

Creepypasta critics are cutthroat because there are a lot of them and a lot of bad ones. Don't worry about it though, just try out making one without publishing it, because trust me I am so happy I didn't ever post my first creepypasta oc on the Internet. However, if you're confident in your work, go for it, more power to you.

Sorry, this was so shady lol, I have a very love-hate relationship with this universe.

I'm not looking forward to publishing this.

*These tips are things I've thought of after spending nearly five years on this site and been reading nearly my whole life. If you disagree with anything I've said, that is completely fine and you obviously don't have to follow anything I've said*