Tag Archives: Horror Writing

The Satisfaction In Completing A Short Story

10 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Writing, Writing Short Stories

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I’ve been away for a few days quietly working.
No I don’t mean my usual paid copy writing work, but work on an actual short story, start to finish.

For too long I have been dabbling at being a writer: typing out a few more pages of my novel; discussing the plot between characters in my head; writing about the process here on this blog….

But none of that was actually doing anything – just trying to make me feel more like a writer, rather than a pretender to the writer’s throne.

Now, I am one of those people who detects charlatans a mile off. And I was beginning to detect myself as one!

It is no lie that I have some 50k words completed on my novel, but the whole process of writing something so long was beginning to drag me down (not to mention that many of those 50k words will probably be shredder material once the novel is actually finished and edited). So I decided to do something to prove to myself I could still write and get published.

So over the last five days I have written, edited, re-written and finally sent off a new short story.

The strange thing is, although I had many part-finished short stories stored away on my PC, this one was new from start to finish. I found a publisher asking for stories for a themed horror anthology and went for it.

The theme – creatures of the night (emphasis on actual creatures) – is not something I had considered before. My horror story writing is usually of the creepy ghost kind. The audience, Young Adult, was not something I had seriously considered before either. But letting the idea scurry around in my head produced a story, so I went for it.

The main drawback here was a seven day deadline from the date I found the call for submissions. This means that only I, my long-suffering husband and my friend up the road have read the story. So, even though I have been vicious in editing, strict on getting POV’s correct and have ensured that my use of adverbs is almost non-existent, I know deep down that asking for input from a beta reader would have helped make my story more suitable for publication. But I didn’t have the time.

So I will not be disappointed when I receive a rejection slip (ok, I’m lying. I will be disappointed, but I know it is likely to happen).

But the process of writing that short story, start to finish, was so satisfying I can hardly believe it.

After the experience of completing my short story, I now know I can write a story, sticking to publisher guidelines and following rules on ‘show don’t tell’, POV, etc, which had been getting me down. I also feel confident that the story will eventually sell, perhaps not in the form I submitted to the publisher, but close enough.

In other words, I have my confidence back.

Of course, this still doesn’t prove that I can produce a novel. As I said in my post Can a Writer Of Short Stories Write A Novel, those thoughts still concern me a little, but now at least I know that when time necessitates I can be disciplined in my approach to writing.

So all I need now is for a publisher to tell me that he or she wants my novel completed in six months time. That should do it. 🙂

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My Creepy House Dream

26 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Dreams, Writing

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I was browsing a forum where people were talking about ‘scary dreams’. I have had plenty over the years, but one stays with me long after the others are just a vague memory. It is my own particular version of a ‘House Dream’.

The dream was too long to write about on a forum post, so I’m writing about it here instead. And I have to say, that for anyone who studies the meanings of dreams, or for any students of psychology, you are probably going to have a great time dissecting this. 🙂

My House dream is a recurring dream, by the way. It occurs during times when I am overtired or stressed-out. The House in the dream is never quite the same, but the characters are.
Anyway, here is my dream as I remember it:

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My House Dream

I am looking for a new place to live. I want somewhere large, with lots of rooms for different pursuits and a very large room where I can hold parties.

An estate agent takes me along to look at a house. It already looks creepy on the outside. It’s leaning a bit and some of the bricks are crumbling, but she assures me it’s okay, so, despite my misgivings, I go inside.

She takes me from room to room. There are so many of them, all with strange and different interior designs. It is like a group of mad artists, architects and interior designers have been let loose. I’m already creeped out and I am still only on the ground floor!

I ask the estate agent where is the largest room, as some of the rooms we have seen are very tiny.

She smiles and points to a room leading off of the room we are in, so in I go.
(she doesn’t follow me…).

It’s another strange-looking room, but this one has a door at the end – a low door which you have to bend down to go through. So I crawl inside.

The door opens out onto a huge ballroom. It is so large it is difficult to make out the furniture and pictures at the opposite end. Hundreds of chandeliers hang from the ceiling. They sparkle as if someone has dusted them recently. The ballroom floor glistens with newly-applied polish and the high, wide windows sparkly in the sunlight. I have never seen such a huge room in my life. It is like the house is a Tardis. There is no way this room would fit into the house you can see from the outside.

But the huge room doesn’t feel right… It is clean and sparkling, unlike any other room in the house, but it feels unreal in a way I can’t quite grasp. It is completely silent, apart from my echoing footsteps as I cross the floor. And as I walk, I get the sense that someone is watching me…

I want to run from the ballroom, but I can’t find the door I came in by. The only other way out is through another door on the far side, almost hidden behind a pillar.

I know this will take me even deeper into the house, but I feel I have no choice but to enter.

As I go through the door, I am faced with a long corridor with many doors leading off. I truly do not want to go through any of them!

Then a door half way along the corridor creeps open… and a girl slowly appears.

She is sepia-coloured, like an old photograph. She beckons me to come and meet her, but I know that something terrible will happen if I do.

My heart is beating so fast it seems it will jump out of my chest. I want to move, but I’m stuck to the spot.

The girl is slowly walking towards me….

Then I wake up! 🙂

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I know that the ‘House Dream’ is one of the all-time dream classics. Some dream interpreters say that the house represents the body, others that it represents the mind, others would say that it represents changes in our lives and decisions were are being forced to make.

As this dream occurs with me at times when I am faced with turmoil and indecision, or simply tiredness from burning out at work, I tend to go for the latter theory. I would also say that the size of the house represents my aspirations, which have always been larger than life and which themselves can put me under stress. 🙂

But that doesn’t explain the sepia-coloured girl.
Or does it…..?

Humour Within Horror

23 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Humour, Writing

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Although others may disagree, I personally find that humour is important in many writing genres and particularly comes into its own during a horror scene.

I remember when first reading Stephen King, how I was impressed that his main characters tended towards an ironic sense of humour even in times of utter chaos and dire threats to their lives. To me, it seemed such a natural way to think. It is like the survival instinct which kicks in needs something alongside it to make us feel human when a part of us knows that we are acting like animals.

Perhaps it is because I am British by birth and we are known for our sense of irony. We are also known for our often dark way of looking at the World as participants in our fate (the “it was bound to happen to me, so I’ll just make a joke about it” type of thing). But I think that the need to laugh when things are going badly wrong is actually part of all human nature. And I’m not thinking here of hysterical laughter and a complete loss of the ability to reason in the face of horror (although this does, of course, exist), but of actually making a joke to oneself, while focusing very hard on how to prevent what is going to happen next.

I come from a large family where our continued history of accidents and traumas would make a good plot for a soap opera. But we all laugh about these things. It is not that we accept them without feeling sorrow and anger, but it is that we accept them with a sense of inevitability (“It was bound to happen to us…”). I am no psychologist, but it seems to me that humour is the defense mechanism that keeps us sane and allows us to get on with our lives despite these events.

So, when I encounter a main character in a horror story who, on being backed into a corner by a monstrous, axe-wielding maniac, has a humourous ‘thought flash’ as he springs into action to save his life, I can totally empathise with his feelings.

He is, after all, trying to remain human and sane in an inhuman and insane situation. 🙂

My Novel Is Turning Into From Dusk Till Dawn!

22 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Writing

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I had fully intended to write a thriller. A woman in danger type thriller, with my character using all means at her disposal to escape and hide from those who want her silenced. And this worked in the planning stage.

I have a strong female main character who is intelligent and street-wise, a range of villains with different reasons to hunt her down and various means to eliminate her. I have well-researched, Europe-wide backgrounds where the chase is situated and a love interest to keep my heroine from going insane with the tension of it all.

But the climax scene – where my lead character is confronted by one of the main villains – has turned into something from a horror tale!

It could be that I have been reading too much horror fiction. It could be that I am working on a horror short story alongside this novel. Or it could simply be that I have no other way of getting my female lead out of the confrontational situation (and carrying the plot to its final, dark conclusion), than to bring in the supernatural.

So, what I am faced with right now is a thriller which suddenly turns into a horror story – just like From Dusk Till Dawn (although not as gory).

IF this sounds far-fetched (and definitely unwise), I must explain that some of the secondary characters where my heroine comes to rest, thinking she is safe, are creepy to say the least. And, as these characters are based upon some real people I have observed, therein lies my dilemma.

I love these secondary characters (although love is probably not the best word…) and know that they are believable, and to take away their creepiness also takes away what fascinated me about them in the first place.

Perhaps I should move my female lead somewhere else with new supporting characters. Or better still, use these creepy characters in a follow-up novel. I certainly do not want to abandon them.

Or perhaps I should simply have my female lead doing a snake dance. That seems to solve a lot of issues in From Dusk Till Dawn 🙂

Writing Horror And Feeling Scared

22 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Writing

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I love reading horror fiction.
I love the feeling of something lurking in the darkness and knowing it is going to creep out at any moment.
I love the chill as my fears are fulfilled and I even love that a good horror story will have me leaving the light on when I go to bed!

But reading a horror story, frightening as it can be, is nothing compared to actually writing it!

At the moment, I have a plot for a horror story in my head. It is sitting there niggling away at my sense of calm. I know it would creep anyone out who reads it.

But when I sit down at my keyboard, the fear takes over.

The horror creeping up the stairs is a little too close for comfort when you are describing it in your head. And when you feel the intense need to keep turning behind you, it certainly does slow your productivity!

I wonder how established horror writers cope?

I remember reading (I think it was) Stephen King, saying that letting all those dark thoughts come out onto paper is good. But I find that the process of doing this is like opening up a live, slimy, wriggling can of worms and spilling them onto your keyboard!

And, unlike the horror novel you can read and then discard (preferably in a dark place if it frightens you that much), the horror novel you are writing is there, in your head. After all, you have created it.

Perhaps some others who try to write horror fiction give up at this point. Perhaps I also will do this eventually.

But at the moment I’ll just keep glancing behind me as I clatter away at the keyboard. And hope that the thing creeping up the stairs will disappear once I finish this chapter!