  Horror/Scary
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Words have no power to impress the mind
without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Edgar Allan Poe
Is horror a learned reaction, or is it hard-wired into our psyches as sentient beings?
Welcome to this week's WDC Horror/Scary Newsletter, where we journey into the 'dark' side of writing prosaic and poetic; creating a reality that portends the horror to come.
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| ASIN: B083RZ2C5F |
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Amazon's Price: Price N/A
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Greetings, fellow commuters in the daily generation of commerce; that being the earning of funds in whatever legal means in order to spend same for food, shelter, entertainment.
I take public transportation to the daily job; it's cost-effective and I can paint my face or write my words along the way. But others choose to do some things that are much less benign. I caught the bus the other day and everyone was jammed in the front, close to the driver, windows open. We bounced along and I realized why nobody was venturing near the back of the bus. The aroma from the lounging vagrant back of the bus was pungent enough, unwashed body and castoff odds and ends of clothing, but his chosen repast of the morning was not merely raw and pungent in the summer's heat, it was moving. With each bite, maggots oozed from the foot he was masticating, dripping to the floorboards and running down his chin. The driver made all the stops by rote, no comments to passengers, gritting his teeth as the tourniquet across his knee bounced with each bump, loosening and releasing blood and gristle where once a leg had been affixed.
Drat, another zombie driver and its mate. They don't just eat brains, I guess.
Now, I made it to work that day, so apparently the Zombie was satisfied with one putrid foot. But I had you going for a little bit, perhaps. As a writer of horror, you want to instill horror in your readers, to give them a good visceral scare while keeping them reading to uncover the source of the horror and perhaps come out ahead of it.
 Engage all your readers' senses, make them empathize, or at least sympathize, with at least one of the characters, whether the main character or an unwitting victim of circumstance. You want to smell, see, touch, imagine what your character is encountering.
Make them recall a seemingly normal occurrence or object becoming more (or less) than what the person expects.
Give your character (and reader) a reason to be horrified by the common image, be it the apparently normal surroundings ominous. This could be done while relating your character's recall of a relevant incident (good place for a bit of backstory, just don't dwell on it - allude to it so that your reader can image some of the blanks from his/her life experience).
Remove the socialized shell from your reader's eye (and mind) with vivid tactile images that engage all (or most) of the senses - sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, imagination.
Once your reader is engaged, then you take liberty with the object of your reader's attention and immerse your reader in an otherworld of horror. Consider taking the ordinary mundane world and finding within it the darkness of mortals, exposing it, and offering a means of visceral engagement.
Now we could go on and try to jump off the bus or force open the door in traffic, but what if the other passengers are also zombies? What if they're not, but they don't want to be late for work. The possibilities are as varied as the writer's imagination and vision makes them. But keep it real as observed by your character (and reader).
Don't reveal it was a dream - that's cheating your reader (and the colorful characters you've drawn);
Don't add fantastical elements to resolve the horror - a magic taser to zap the zombie from across the bus would elicit groans of disbelief from your readers.
Let your character be afraid, react to his/her fear, and deal with the terror unfolding. And show the horror of the surroundings, the world in which your character must cope and interact. The once 'normal' environment that becomes alien, a place or state of terror or madness - the scent, the touch the sound. What does your character see, hear, smell, think? You don't have to reveal it all at once (infodump), but reveal the character's perceptions to others as well as surroundings. (For example, did the bouncing bus and bilious aroma cause bile to rise in your throat?) And remember, give your character the means to either escape or to honestly succumb to the horror.
I'll leave you today with something I heard from a writer of horror books, when writing horror, 'have fun with it.' If you don't enjoy the process of the writing, if it's merely cathartic and linear, your reader will likewise leave your story feeling unsatisfied.
Keep Writing!
Embrace the dark side, and have fun with it!
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Some ordinary ~ and not so ordinary ~ horror envisioned by some of our members ~ share the experience, leave but a comment or review ^_^
| |  | The Trailer (E)
A salesman breaks down in the middle of nowhere and finds himself in a nightmare.
#1603785 by scarywriter  |
| |  | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#1603181 by Not Available. |
| | | Forty Lashes (13+)
An optometry university professor shows special attention to a student with beautiful eyes
#1602591 by Alex |
| | | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#1600339 by Not Available. |
Consider adding your vision to the following realm of potential
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#1603759 by Not Available. |
And, what about the following challenges ~ a 'recipe' to incite horror in the muse creative or a 'twist' as we approach Halloween
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This item number is not valid.
#1115993 by Not Available. |
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Until we next meet, I challenge you to take something you do everyday, something boring and ordinary, and wield from it a story or verse of horror. And remember, have fun with it!
Keep Writing!
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Horror/Scary: September 30, 2009 Issue [#3304]
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