 Horror/Scary: July 06, 2016 Issue [#7731] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: Abused & Abandoned: Character & Setting Edited by: Cinn  
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Sometimes, the truth is strange and brilliant in a way that a fiction writer never would have dreamed. Authentic details can make a world of difference for a genre whose main purpose is to make the reader uneasy. A cliche isn't scary... isn't horror. It's the small details that really sell it... that prove your characters are human and your settings exist.
The parade for the slain police officer
goes past the bakery
and the smell of fresh bread
makes the mourners salivate against their will.
~Excerpt from "Note to Reality" by Tony Hoagland
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I have been doing some reading and research lately on topics that could be considered "sad". Devastating illnesses are not exactly cheerful. Neither are abandoned towns. I have always had some amount of fascination with the former, and the latter is the inspiration for poetry. The more I read, however, the more horror stories begin to gel in my mind. It's rich fodder for the genre.
Setting Authenticity & Inspiration
If your settings are the same stale forests, haunted/creepy houses, carnivals, or asylums, you might just want to change things up a bit. Honestly, there are pictures from all over the world of abandoned buildings and ghost towns. Some have their own weird/violent/unexpected stories as well, like the Salton Sea in the States. The decay can be creepy (say, Chernobyl) or hauntingly beautiful (i.e. Kolmanskop, Namibia), but they are always atmospheric.
To start with, you can just search for "ghost town" on google and then do image searches for specific towns that sound interesting. For the time being though, here is one gallery that I have used multiple times: Abandoned America: An Autopsy of the American Dream
Character Authenticity & Inspiration
Probably the most common ailment for any character in horror? Mental health issues. The psychopath, sociopath, and schizophrenic are alive and well in the horror genre. But how well do you know these illnesses? Anyone interested has probably seen a documentary or two and read the basics on wikipedia or an introductory book, but is that enough to really get into the head of your character? Well, no need to worry about that.
Just walk to the 616-618 section of your local library. That is where you can find the "Diseases or Medical Specialty" books. You will likely stumble across classic memoirs like Confessions of a Sociopath: Hiding in Plain Sight by M.E. Thomas and Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher alongside books about many types of compulsions, unusual illnesses, and abuse. Both memoirs and case studies from physicians and psychiatrists are available, and in addition to greater understanding in general, both types offer insights that could make your characters more real (both psycho killers and normal slightly-damaged human beings).
These are actually two of my...  "guilty pleasures", I guess you could call them. I have been reading the latter since I was a young teen, including clinical and diagnostic texts. I am something of a collector of weird stories (which is probably why I am a huge serial killer buff as well). The abandoned towns are just a more extreme form of something that has inspired me since I was a child... abandoned objects. Why is it there? Where did it come from? Who did it belong to? Was it accidentally left behind or deliberately abandoned? There is likely a story in any one of those questions.
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What type of true stories affect you the most as a reader?  Do you have any tips on creating authenticity (and therefore, genuine chills & thrills) in a horror story?
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