 Horror/Scary: January 29, 2013 Issue [#5488] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: Contained Horror & Thrillers Edited by: Jeff  
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"Last night you were, unhinged.
You were like some desperate, howling demon.
You frightened me. ... Do it again."
-- Morticia Addams
Random Writing Trivia of the Week: Joe Hill, heralded as one of the fresh new voices in horror, has achieved some recognition with his two novels, Heart-Shaped Box (2007) and Horns (2010), as well as a short story collection called 20th Century Ghosts (2005), and the award-winning comic series Locke & Key. Despite his best efforts to create a career based solely on the quality of his work, Joe is perhaps most famously known as Joe Hillstrom King, the second child of Tabitha and Stephen King.
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CONTAINED HORROR & THRILLERS
There's something inherently creepy about being stuck in one location. Whether it's being trapped in a haunted house or confined to an office building during a zombie apocalypse, there's something terrifyingly claustrophobic about being trapped somewhere and unable to escape... especially if there's also something or something trying to get in. Over the years, in both movies and books, the staples of the confined horror and thriller genre have been haunted houses, offices, schools, hospitals and institutions, hotels, castles, caves, ghost towns, sewers, and space stations.
The key to creating a compelling contained location is to find one that allows for enough movement to keep things varied and interesting, but is also confined enough to give your audience that claustrophobic feeling of being unable to escape. A city, for example, is too large to feel like you're confined, but a single-room basement might be too small to tell a feature- or novel-length story without being redundant. You want to find that ideal location size that will let your characters run, hide, get cornered, find a way out, etc. without giving them an easy way to ditch the whole place. Some stories will make the setting contained through natural means (a cave-in traps people underground, they're stuck in a mental asylum which is locked down, a space station offers nowhere to go even if you could get outside, etc.), and others will use artificial or man-made methods of trapping people inside (a crazy billionaire who locks down his house, the hatchet-wielding psychopath chains all the exterior doors to the school shut, etc.) ... but regardless of what causes it, the fact that the characters are trapped somewhere they're free to roam around but ultimately prevented from leaving is what makes it such a compelling location for drama (and terror).
If you're in the mood for a contained horror or thriller story, consider finding a fun and unique location to trap your characters. Maybe they're a scientific installation in Antarctica... or at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe they're trapped aboard a pirate spacecraft or a haunted submarine. Really push yourself to think outside the box. Haunted houses and psychopaths wandering the halls of a locked-down hotel are great, but there's a real opportunity to terrorize your audience in new and unexpected ways if you can come up with an original contained location.
Just remember... all you need is a place big enough to roam around, but small enough to prevent escape. Throw in someone or something pursuing them (or even a battle among themselves) and you've got all the ingredients for a contained horror or thriller. The real question is... where will your characters be contained? 
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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This week, I would encourage you to check out the following horror items:
I suppose it is only fitting that the happiest day of my life should also be my last. It is so easy to ignore the signs when you are happy. So, as I watched the rose colored moon between the poles of my wedding lodge I felt nothing but joy in my heart. Of course, I knew the Yaqui people called a crimson shaded sphere like this a Blood Moon. And I knew according to legend when the moon bled red that Death would come to call. But not this night, of all nights. The night I would finally become a woman. This night it was easy to laugh off the ancient warnings as silly superstitions.
There was a mysterious essence to this house. The furniture were covered with plastic sheets, as if no one had lived here for years. He looked around to notice more strange things, there were unusual objects hanging from the ceiling. Objects with symbols on them. He felt a bit uneasy. The woman told him that the phone was on the table, and went into the kitchen. He picked up the phone, but it was not working. He tried to check the wiring. Nothing. He put the receiver down and glanced at a picture on the table, it was a man standing next to Sarah Posh. "Coffee ?" She came back with a cup of coffee and handed it to him. There was something about the picture that bothered him. He stared at the picture. Sarah told him it was her husband, who had died 2 years ago. The look on her face, made it seem as if it did not bother her. "I'm sorry" the man said. He became certain it didn't bother her after her reply to his apology. "But, I'm not" the woman said. There was something wrong here.
Deep in a forest a stream from the snow of the blue mountains cascaded into a lake. The fall was short. The notes of the rushing water, loud at first, softened to a murmur as the luxuriant growth within the forest absorbed its melody. Aya silently stood on the shore of black pebbles and added her tears to the lake.
Deep within the lake lounged a dragon. Its power, linked to the fabric of space, was dissipating with the expansion of the universe. The world of its youth had long vanished within the distending bubble of time.
The dragon sensed an intrusion, a chemical alteration in the familiar mixture of the lake. Curious, it rose. Its horns and then its eyes broke the surface. Seeing the young woman standing in the shallows of the lake, it realized her grief was disturbing the serenity of the forest.
Sabrina passed it every day on her way to work; A two-story building of jagged gray rock with a single screen door and no windows.
Everyone in the town of Pritcher called it the rock store, bragging that it had been there for over a hundred years.
At the time she couldn't have cared less. She'd just recently moved to this forgotten place alone, and was loading the trunk of her car with groceries one afternoon at the local grocery store. A lady parked beside her was loading her trunk as well, but Sabrina noticed the woman's eyes never left the old store on the hill across the way, and that she was literally slinging her bags into her trunk. Slamming the lid she left her cart, then jumped in her vehicle and sped off.
Despite its outside appearance, the old store had a steady stream of traffic. Sabrina decided it would be a good day to stop by and see what all the fuss was about.
Paula removed her large sunglasses as she stepped in the antique shop. Light filtered through narrow windows on every wall, but it couldn’t seem to penetrate the gloom that filled the old, musty building. Coming here was a last resort but despite her discomfort, she felt oddly at home.
“Can I help you?”
Paula brushed her light brown hair behind her ear and smiled at tall, blonde man that appeared from the back room. His faded jeans and flannel shirt looked very fitting for their small, mountain town. “Yes, I was referred to you by some colleagues.” She batted her eyelashes at him, trying to show off her new makeup that was supposed to accent her blue eyes. “Actually, I heard them talking about this place in the break room. I heard you have unique items that can help people,” she paused, “solve their problems.”
Some time during the era when Leonardo da Vinci was alive, there existed an unknown private sect of men who cracked the DNA code. These men just like the Romans and Greeks tampered with it and took samples from various flora and fauna. They then took their criminals that were going to be executed and done the tampering and experimentations on them.
During modern times there's a girl named Bullicia. Over the years she could not only see and hear ghosts, spirits and entities but also angels as well as demons. She had an extremely rough childhood due to this unusual ability and this caused her to not only become lonely and rejected by others as being a freak it also made the dark forces torture her after they discovered she had the ability to see and know of them.
{citem1907018:}
At the age of seventeen, Lily Benjamin was striking in black.
She lived with two older sisters in the town of Graymoss, where Charles Mender worked as a physician. He was a bachelor in his thirties that practiced medicine from an office in his home, where Lily had taken a job after school that August. Before long, rumors were swirling among gossips that the two were involved in a romantic love affair. When Lily's sisters found out, they insisted she quit the job immediately.
“Case Study A1: Pseudomyiasis-- August 28th, 1998. Subject: Morris Partridge, age 93 years old.”
I pushed the pause button on the recorder, moving the portable stand with the microphone closer to the old man lying in the hospital bed.
“Okay, Mr. Partridge just tell us your story in your own words. I will try to save any questions until the end. All right?”
The old man nodded and took a drink of water from the plastic cup on his bedside stand and watched me start the recorder again.
“Whenever you’re ready,” I said, sitting back in a chair with a notepad and pen in hand.
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In response to my last horror newsletter:
I'm afraid of shadows in darkened hallways. Just last week, I walked down the hallway to the kids' bedrooms and noticed a small, dark, shadowy thing on the light-beige rug. Without thinking, I stooped and picked it up -- then dropped it when it wiggled. Turned out, it was a small, live scorpion. Yeah, I'll be honest. I'm now afraid of the entire hallway! -- NickiD89 
I'd be afraid of that hallway too! Scorpions scare the heck out of me!
It's noticing the little things to finish off the big fright in the wonder of innocence. It's to know ghost don't cast shadows--they're the shadows--to be re-cast in ink. This is to say, allow the story to scare the crap out of you, the writer. The emotional quality is the power of thrusting your head behind the door.
--"Here's Johnny!"
The sources of horror are ins and outs of ourselves to portray in the outback of Unlimited Zones, like "Riding the Bullet" in the upsy and downsy of a frantic ride. -- Specter 
Thanks for writing in!
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