Posts Tagged ‘romance fiction’

Is This Story Scary Enough? Thoughts About What Makes a Strong Horror Story.

Posted: May 29, 2024 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
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The other day, I posted about my frustrations with the progress I was making in my career and how ParaPsyCon helped me realize what successes I was having and what progress I was actually making (you can check it out here). Now, I want to post about a revelation I had regarding one of my writer anxieties.

Every writer wonders about their work and worries the same thing: am I good enough? For fantasy writers, they’re wondering, is my work fantastical and exciting enough? For the romance writers, it’s something like, is my work enough to make your chest flutter and make you root for my characters? For the literary types, they wonder, is my work saying something profound about the human condition? (At least, I think that’s what they think. I could be wrong.)

And for horror writers, the majority of us wonder if our work is scary enough. And sometimes, that thought can be crippling enough to make us wonder if what we’re working on is even worth continuing with.

I almost had a moment like that last night. I’d just finished making excellent progress on the 3D Printer from Hell story* and was thinking of the scenes that were to come later. And then I had a thought: is this really that scary?

That thought made me pause. And yeah, I wondered if maybe it wasn’t scary enough. That maybe as I had it planned, it would be really weak sauce. That’s what I thought at that moment: could this story be weak sauce? Will it really leave a reader afraid like my early brushes with horror left me?

That thought scared me. But then I remembered something: horror isn’t just about scaring the pants off your reader. Sometimes, it’s about what you include in the story that makes it horror.

For example, there’s this one story I read in an anthology about a year or two ago. I can’t remember the title, but let’s call it “The Worst Vacation.” The story follows a family who go to this island for vacation, and just about every horrible thing imaginable happens while they’re there: they get ticketed for something rather minor, they watch a waiter get arrested because some blowhard didn’t like how he was being served and then have to watch the waiter’s kid, the daughter loses her eyeball when she tries to feed the local animals at the beach, etc. It’s just an escalation of bad events, and not once was I as a reader ever scared. I’m not sure many readers would be, though they might be appalled and grossed out at certain points.

However, it was still horror. The family was experiencing all these terrible things, and their reaction was definitely one of horror. A strong sauce horror story that was quite memorable to me. And this one tale isn’t the only example. Hell, there are entire subgenres like this! Quiet horror and grief horror, for example, don’t always aim to scare people, but to explore really dark issues of human life. And cozy horror, while it is a subject of debate, is still horror, even if it is keeping the horror at a safe distance from the reader.

So maybe my 3D Printer from Hell story won’t leave people shaking in their shoes. Maybe it will. However it turns out, it can still be strong sauce if the tropes are used right and the horror is conveyed in the right way. And while I’m writing it, I’ll be aiming to make it both entertaining and maybe even very scary. So long as people enjoy it and think at the end of the day, “Damn, that was a good horror story,” I’ll be satisfied.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you’re having a wonderful day, and I’ll be seeing you all again very soon. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!

*Which, BTW, I’m now calling The Shape of Evil on the suggestion of another writer. Given the subject matter, it fits. And it’s going to look awesome on a book cover someday!

Writing as Therapy During the COVID-19 Crisis

Posted: April 3, 2020 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
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For the past week, I’ve been working hard on a new story, the majority of which takes place during our current crisis. You know the one I’m talking about. And you know what? It’s been cathartic to write about.

I’ve said before that writing can be very good for your mental health. Recently, I posted my thoughts about the COVID-19 pandemic and it made me feel a hundred times better about the whole situation. In fact, lately I’ve felt like a million bucks. Still, I do feel the occasional twinge of worry or other negative emotions when I consider all we’re going through.

So these past two nights, when I’ve written my protagonist’s reactions to the pandemic and how it’s affecting him mentally and emotionally, as well as recounting how he and others treat the crisis, it was kind of freeing. Like I was channeling not just my own feelings, but the feelings of other people in this situation.

I’ve heard a lot of people, both in and outside of the horror genre, as well as people who don’t write, saying that there’s going to be a lot of new fiction based on this crisis. If I’m any indication, we’ll be seeing that fiction coming out sooner rather than later. Maybe within the next few months. And I think we’re going to see that, for the majority of these authors, setting a story during the COVID-19 crisis is their way of processing their feelings and what they or others were going through.

What sort of stories we’ll get from this crisis, I’m not sure. I feel like a lot of them will just use the crisis as a backdrop, similar to how The Deep by Alma Katsu uses the Titanic and its sister ship the Britannic as backdrops for a ghost story (see my review here of that book here). In my case, I’m writing a Lovecraftian horror story, which makes sense because I see the virus as almost a Lovecraftian antagonist a la Nyarlathotep, and the pandemic acts as a sort of base for the terror and paranoia that my characters will feel later in the story.

I have a few other predictions. In terms of romance stories, we’ll see stories about people falling in love from afar due to social distancing, or falling in love due to being stuck in the same area together. We may also get a lot of new Gothic horror stories. Why do I say that? Because since people started sequestering themselves in their home, my article on Gothic horror has been seeing huge spikes in views. Makes sense, I suppose: as much as people love their homes, even being cooped up 24/7 in the best homes can be taxing. And since Gothic horror stories tend to focus mainly on houses as the source of the horror, people are either reminding themselves that their home isn’t so bad as being stuck in The Overlook, or they’re planning on channeling their frustration into stories about homes as a source of horror.

Perhaps writing about this virus can help relieve stress over it as well.

Whatever stories result, I highly encourage authors to write their stories about the coronavirus. Especially if the story helps you process what you’re going through right now. Even if you’re not an author, writing your feelings down can be therapeutic, so go ahead and write whatever you feel. Doesn’t have to be deep or poetic, just as long as it gets your feelings out in a healthy way.

Doing so may not alleviate the crisis or all the problems the crisis is causing to pop up, but at least you’ll feel better for the activity.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you’re staying safe and healthy and are doing well. And if you need a pick-me-up, here’s the link to a cute video of foxes laughing and getting cuddles to make you smile.

Until next time, Shabbat Shalom and pleasant nightmares!