 Horror/Scary: January 28, 2015 Issue [#6792] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: The Importance of Failure Edited by: LJPC - the tortoise  
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This newsletter is about letting your character fail before he succeeds.
Sage Quotes:
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
~ Truman Capote
“Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.”
~ C.S. Lewis
“It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
~ Bill Gates
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The Importance of Failure
The Drive to Succeed
From the time we’re children, we’re taught to keep doing something until we succeed. No one accomplishes something difficult on the first try, whether it’s potty-training, learning to read, excelling at sports, driving a car, mastering a computer game, or studying for a career.
The first tries are filled with errors and mistakes.
But we keep going—and we find ourselves delighted when we finally accomplishment it. 
We are programmed to root for success, and the harder the challenge, the bigger the thrill when we finally conquer it.
We feel the same way about the protagonists we read about. Every failure just makes us root for them more.
The Hero vs. The Villain
The engine driving any horror novel or short story is the conflict between the hero and the villain, even if the villain isn’t a person or creature. It could be a plague, a wilderness challenge, a natural or man-made disaster, or a meteor on a collision course with Earth.
Whatever challenge your hero must conquer, it’s important that he fail in his first attempts. With every failure, the reader will be frustrated and become more invested in seeing the hero succeed in the end.
Plotting, Planning, and Failure
There are basically two kinds of failure: being unable to physically accomplish the task and misjudging the strategy needed to win. Both of these can be used to make your hero fail.
When your hero understands the problem he faces and decides to do something about it -- that's when you start making his life difficult. 
He may charge off to battle the enemy, but you surprise him (and the reader) by making the opponent stronger or sneakier than expected.
He may decide that there's a certain technique or strategy that must be used to solve the problem, and you ruin his attempt by having it not work.
Guidelines to help you to plot the hero's failure:
Decision/Goal ~
The main character decides on a goal, plans how to accomplish it, and takes action.
Complication/Conflict ~
The main character is confronted by opponent(s) or an unforeseen complication, but still believes he can achieve his goal. The conflict begins -- it can be an argument, a fight, or a struggle to accomplish something.
Failure ~
The main character fails to achieve the goal. Plus, some surprising new element occurs that increases the problem (like the villain is stronger than expected or there's new information that negates the character's plans). At the end of the scene, the character is worse off than at the beginning and his goal seems farther away than ever. 
(This is a good place for a cliffhanger to end a chapter or a scene. The new chapter or scene begins with the following:)
Escape/Resolution ~
The main character narrowly escapes from the situation through luck, by their own ingenuity, or by being rescued by others.
Reaction ~
The main character's goal is still unrealized. His plan failed. He should react emotionally (with disbelief, disappointment, anger, frustration, or guilt, etc.).
Options/Dilemma ~
The main character realizes he must analyze why his plan failed. He recognizes he must change his strategy, and he considers different options. These options should be things that he finds difficult -- either harder to accomplish or something that will make him go outside his comfort zone.
Decision/New Plan ~
The character chooses an option, decides on a new plan to achieve his goal, and takes action.
(This last guideline is the same as the first one, so you can skip the first one if you continue on.)
Repeat these steps as often as necessary until the hero finally succeeds and the story ends. 
Until next time: Let the horror bleed onto the pages with every word!
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Here are some spooky stories for your reading pleasure!
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#1843990 by Not Available. |
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| |  | Seagulls (13+)
Here is a very short story generated from personal experience though heavily exagerated!
#1607429 by ghost writer |
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To my delight, some writers took the time to comment on my last newsletter: "Showing Fear" Thank you!
Comments listed in the order they were received.
Jeff  writes: Thanks for featuring the Sinister Stories contest in this week's newsletter!
You’re welcome, Jeff!
Osirantinsel  writes: Excellent newsletter!!! I enter Screams quite a bit (and help judge it sometimes) and instilling fear in 1000 words is an art form!! I'm not a natural horror/scary writer so your examples of the different ways of scaring the heck out of readers is a great tool for me. Thanks!
You’re welcome, and thank you very much for replying to the newsletter!
🌑 Darleen - QoD  writes: Thanks so much for featuring "Invalid Item" in your newsletter. I love reading your tips! ~Darleen
You’re welcome for the promo, and thank you very much for the kind words. 
Literary Demon writes:
Hi LJPC - the tortoise ! I have a question. How do I instill fear without making the setting scary? I mean, what if it's absolutely necessary that my story takes place in daylight in an incredibly non-scary setting like a children's park? I like my stories to be realistic and there's nothing stopping a murder from taking place in the sandpit, is there?
- Literary Demon 
Hi Literary Demon,
You can make any setting scary, even if it's in broad daylight. You have to use descriptions (like similes and metaphors) to twist the "normal" things into creepy things, and you can insert details that are ominous or eerie.
Here are some examples: READ MORE ▼ Robert McCammon describes a guy with a headache, driving down the road in the novel Going South.
He was driving east through Shreveport on 70th Street, into the glare of the morning sun. It glanced off the hood of his gray pickup truck and stabbed his eyes, inflaming the slow ache in his skull. (...)
He drove on along the arrow-straight line of 70th Street, past strip malls and car lots and fast-food joints. He drove on into the merciless sun and the smell of murdered innocents.
Lining the commercial carnival of 70th Street was a score of barbecue restaurants, and it was from their kitchen chimneys that this odor of burned flesh rose into the scalded sky.
By using harsh words like stabbed, inflaming, merciless, murdered innocents, burned, and scalded, McCammon makes the city street seem raw and dangerous.
Here, McCammon uses the character's fear about the area park to make it seem creepy:
Dan let his son go and got out of the car. His eyes were wet. He wiped them with his forearm as he walked to the station wagon, where Susan waited. He'd almost reached her when he heard a dog barking, a high-pitched yap yap yap.
Dan stopped in his tracks. The sound drifted across the park, its direction hard to pinpoint. It was close enough, though, to instantly set Dan's nerves on edge. Where had it come from? Was
somebody walking a dog in the park at this hour, 9? Wherever it was, the dog had stopped barking. Dan glanced around, saw nothing but the dark shapes of pine trees that stood in clusters surrounding the parking lot.
If McCammon wanted to add a bit more to make it scarier, he could have described the barking as "alarmed" and put mist in the pine trees: "Wisps of mist clung to the ground, obscuring the lowest pine branches as if they were sinking into a ghostly swamp." Or clouds: "Clouds rolled overhead, their grey bellies distended with the threat of rain." (I first wrote "promise of rain" but changed "promise" to "threat." That makes it sound more creepy.)
Here's an example from my book Soul Cutter:
Dusk dyed the sky purple, not a lilac or a lavender hue, but a deep, almost sickly mauve. The color of a fading bruise. To Élan, it looked like the skin of a man either livid with rage or being strangled, blood trapped in his face and turning darker by the minute. The wind, too, was strangled. Not a whisper of air stirred the tendrils of hair drying around her face.
The whole landscape seemed to be holding its breath as if waiting for something to happen.
Yes, it's during dusk, not broad daylight, but the principle of how to turn a "beautiful sunset" into something creepy is the same.
Off the top of my head, here are ways you can describe a playground in creepy detail.
The playground lay deserted. John approached the sandbox until the screech of rusty hinges made him stiffen. The swings were moving by themselves. It took him a moment to realize the breeze cutting across the open grass was pushing them. As the wind picked up, a mini dust devil formed in the sandbox. It spiraled away, spitting out granules of sand, until it tore itself apart.
If the playground is supposed to be clean, normal, and has happy kids in it, then describe things about the people, like: The shrieks of playing children. A mother frowning off into space and gnawing her cuticle until it was bloody. The screams and tears of a little boy who'd skinned his knee. A little girl pulling the head off a doll.
Other examples can be found in my past newsletters: " Strange Details" " Setting: Part 1" " Setting Pt 2: Atmosphere" " A Horror of Adjectives"
Good luck, and keep on writing!
~ Laura
Quick-Quill  writes: Another great nl. I've been trying to write intensity and suspense in my new book. I see by your examples I need to look at other writers for good examples.
I’ve found reading in my genre helps a lot with my writing because I can better understand the standards of the industry and what the audience expects. Good luck with your own reading!
Vampyr14  writes: Great examples of how to up the tension. I don't have monsters or murder in most of my books, but there still needs to be tension to keep the readers turning pages.
Yes, tension and conflict are pre-requisites in all genres. Thanks for writing to the NL—I always appreciate your comments!
BIG BAD WOLF is Merry  submits "What's Behind Me?" and writes: Plenty of scary things out there.
Yes, there really are! 
billwilcox writes: What an informative newsletter....excellent. I believe most writers run out of good words describing FEAR, like: dread, despair, dismay, doubt, anxiety, apprehension, stress, panic, fret, and agonize, to name just a few. To just say, 'he was scared' doesn't work anymore. Be descriptive!
Love ya,
-Bill
Thanks so much for the support. I love reading your comments!
Taniuska writes: Such a great post... and love your examples:)
Thanks so much, Tania! I really appreciate it when you comment on my newsletters!
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