the street that follows you

the street that follows you

fellflyer 06 Jan 2020 13:40

Ok so I should get straight to the point right? This SCP creates paranoia to a person who stays out at night on this road. the person will always feel a looming presence watching them mostly at night and eventually the paranoia will drive the person crazy. this looming presence will follow the person anywhere they go. the foundation finds this road by contact from one of their undercover agent inside the small town. the foundation then finds the agent has killed himself and left a journal detailing the affects of the SCP. the street is absolutely normal in the day time but begins to strain on the mind of the individual later in the night if they are not inside a house. i'm not sure how the foundation would contain it maybe they take pieces of the road and put it back together back a site or maybe they find something underneath the road? some feed back would be greatly appreciated

EDIT 1: the road appears to be the SCP but there was a childs body that belonged to a 10 year old named timothy Wallace that went "missing" (murdered) and was thrown into the road that was being made in 1984 thus the body was effecting the area around the town from the years 1984 to the present day of people going crazy then three agent are sent to the abandoned town to get information on it by an O5 even though none of the O5's sent that order.

+ EDIT 1.5

[the agent's notebook is recovered along with the body berried in the road proximity 10ft down. the note book describes that the agent got a mysterious order(the O5 council never gave this order out) from one of the O5 council to investigate a abandoned town and is told to stay there until they find out information about the town. they arrive to a run down town and assume that they are alone until they see a two other agents arrive as well agent J and H. all three of the agents set up in an old community library where the agent details that all of the books are different they never heard of any of them but continues to the records of the town where they find several missing cases and they express their frustration that everything about the town is off putting. the agent details that an entire town cant just vanish over night and wonders why an O5 sent only three agents from different sites instead of sending an MTF epsilon-6 (village idiots) to deal with this. the night passes and the agent details that agent J started spewing nonsense about something that was watching him take a smoke last night and wanted to get out of the town immediately.
they figure it might be what made the town go missing and sends a report to the closest site about a potential anomaly ( no report by any of the three agents were sent to the closest site). the next night the agent describes how they stayed inside the library with candles that they found in storage lighting up the room. the agent describes that the agent J kept looking outside saying that "he feels that its out there the anomaly is just toying with us like a child playing with its food". three days passed and the agent says that agent H thinks that there isin't any anomaly and that one of the O5's must have sent all three of them here for there own personal gain and says that the O5 council are always doing something like this. the agent begins to look into the history of the town where they find out that the first missing person that lived in the town was a 10 year old boy named timothy Wallace and he was last seen playing by the road that was under construction in the town. the agent tell agent J and H this and agent H goes out to find the road in the picture but doesn't come back in the morning. four days pass and the agent details that agent J took the car and left and that he should get demoted to D-class( agent J was found in a ditched and died from a heart attack and was 3 miles away from the wreck of the van they used) and that they cant find agent H anywhere in the town. the journal has ripped pages from it but picks up 10 days since the last entry where the agent details that J was right and its watching me its everywhere and that it got agent H and fed on her all i can do is wait…. it then has all the pages filled with " it watches me" over and over again until the last page where the agent describes he cant take it any more and that even if he leaves the town it will follow him and kill him so he is going to attempt to stop it or die trying ( the agent was never found ) the foundation made it after find agent J's remains and then later would dig up the road where they found all the missing people with timothy Wallace in perfect condition when he went missing in 1984
;; ]

edit: sorry if the the edit was long thank you for the feedback!

Last edited on 09 Jan 2020 15:41 by fellflyer Show more

Re: the street that follows you

Doctor Fullham 07 Jan 2020 00:35

[crit below]

It's a nowhere road...

So, let me break this down: the SCP is a section of road that makes you paranoid and drives you crazy, but only if you're around it at night, outside of a house. The Foundation finds it when a Foundation agent embedded in a small town is affected and commits suicide.

So, a few questions I'd need answered:

1. When did this start happening?
2. Why did the Foundation agent not notify anyone? These are people with experience in anomalies and their effects. Why did he not realize what was happening?
3. Why is being in a house important? Could it be any building?

As far as containment, it's not entirely out of character fo the Foundation to evacuate entire cities under cover stories of biological agents in the water, nuclear waste underground, etc.

i'm not sure how the foundation would contain it maybe they take pieces of the road and put it back together back a site or maybe they find something underneath the road?

This is really something you, as the writer, need to figure out. Is there a root cause, like, a murder, or some sort of presence that inhabits that stretch of road?

The biggest issue I have here is that it just….sounds like a horror movie plot. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily, but it doesn't have much substance. What are you going to focus on? The agent's journal entry and his building paranoia? The story behind the anomaly's origin? An incident during initial containment? So far there's a mild air of 'unsettling' but it doesn't really quite get to 'horror', but there's nothing here that really grabs my attention. It also falls into the "Crazy to death" pitfall. Something that makes you go crazy and/or kills you (directly or by proxy) has been done, re-done, and overdone on the wiki and is, at its core, not that interesting to begin with.

I recommend reading a significant amount of the top-rated SCPs from the last several months, and focus on reading more recent SCPs rather than older series. Many early series SCPs would not last a day under current SCP standards, and a few are only still around because of their history with the wiki itself. (This does not apply to all early series SCPs, but many of these were written before the wiki's style had really been cemented.)

The anomalous object, while important, is not actually the main focus of the SCP. A good story, a compelling narrative, something that makes the reader feel something - that is the goal of an SCP article. What feeling do you want to evoke from the reader? Horror? Empathy? Sadness? You need to create a narrative around this object and its effects.

I am not saying this to discourage you, I just want you to understand the amount of effort that goes into creating a successful SCP.

If you can revise this idea with a story that you want to tell, we will be able to give you much more meaningful and constructive critique.

Last edited on 07 Jan 2020 02:52 by Doctor Fullham Show more

Re: the street that follows you

fellflyer 07 Jan 2020 14:35

Thank you for the feedback Doctor fullham I really need it and I began to piece a narrative together so first To answer your questions
1. started back when the road was made in 1984
2.The reason he didn't notify anyone was because he/she was drawn to the road it was calling them like everyone else in the small town around the road
3. the any light can protect you from the "presence" that is why it doesn't really effect the person in the day time ( the street lights would also work if it wasn't connected to the road

containment: I was going for a presence inside of the road maybe a person was killed then was thrown into the ground that would soon turn into the road and the more people die next to the road the stronger the presence is so the the way to contain the road would be that they would starve it enough and eventually the presence would become less and less until it could barely effect anyone else but it still tries to lure people in at night.

the narrative focus: i wanted it to be from the perspective of the agent and his eventual path to his madness like hallucinations in the daytime (maybe even thinking the town is a cult worshiping the road) and he would then investigate what happen in the town like the murder that happened with the body being sealed in the road and then the agent would realize that he was drawn in by the road and that the entire town is effected this would cause him to contact the foundation in hasty message about what happened then he would think that the town is out to kill him so he goes around killing a few towns folk before he kills himself

my goal: I wanted the reader to feel the fear of the unknown that there is something watching them as they read the article something that they feel rather than see

I will start reading the top rated articles to see what they did right and what I can learn from them thank you for the feedback!

Re: the street that follows you

Doctor Fullham 07 Jan 2020 18:56

So it seems you have put a considerable amount of thought into this, and it's certainly coming along. However, reading towards the end, this stuck out to me:

then he would think that the town is out to kill him so he goes around killing a few towns folk before he kills himself

I wanted to impart some wisdom from Dr. Mackenzie's Common SCP Pitfalls:

Danger/Death/Gore is a Cheap Thrill
Danger in the context of an SCP is a very broad concept; some SCPs are contained simply because they threaten the Foundation's mission of secrecy and mission to keep the world in the dark as to the fragile nature of reality. Simply making something gruesome is easy to do but ultimately not very effective on its own: body horror may get a quick reaction out of your reader, but if that is your only hook then they aren't liable to stay interested for long.

Put another way, horror movies that consist entirely of jump-scares and scary monsters tend not to be as interesting or successful as suspense-thrillers that play on the audience's deep fears and phobias.

Maybe think of some other ways you can impart just what this phobia does to people, rather than falling even further into "crazy to death". Maybe even think of ways tath severe paranoia could kill other than suicide - heart attacks, stroke, brain aneurysm, etc.

Re: the street that follows you

fellflyer 08 Jan 2020 13:13

ok heres my fix for it I began to do some research into phobias and paranoia and I found something that can help change the ending from "crazy to death" to maybe a heart attack. the main thing i want to push is the fear of the unknown so why not look up the phobia of it? xenophobia is the fear of the unknown/fear of strangers and the symptoms include Rapid heart rate or palpitations. Dry mouth, shallow breathing.
Full blown panic at the thought of the unknown or strange.
Feeling anxious, trying to run away or avoid the situation that requires a change or facing strangers or the unknown.
Crying, shaking, trembling, throwing up, fainting etc are some more symptoms of a xenophobic individual.

i got this info at this web site: https://www.fearof.net/fear-of-the-unknown-phobia-xenophobia/

this could solve the problem of "crazy to death" impart you were talking about doctor fullham I hope this fixes it.

also I've been thinking about the title and it could need some work I've seen people call some SCP titles like "sing us a song your a piano, man" and it is an actual self playing piano so since this SCP idea deals with the fear of the unknown maybe I should call it "why does it feel like a presence is watching me" or maybe I should call it what its already called what do you think?

Last edited on 08 Jan 2020 14:54 by fellflyer Show more