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 Horror/Scary: January 04, 2017 Issue [#8060] |
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  Horror/Scary This week: The Face of Fear Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading   More Newsletters By This Editor   1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions 
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Make me know it as you do, that I too must be as scared or as horrified as you. Take those vivid details and give me the why - or the why not - and we've got the makings of a horror story or poem that will weave a link between your reality and mine for a time, a footprint in my personal space.
It was a dark, starless night, yet the wind made no sound as branches wept leaves and twigs, bending limbs in unison to encircle me. An arboreal wave hiding in autumn's moldering musk, or perhaps the scent of fermenting rot was the signal, the welcome mat, for Axe. [now - Axe can be a chainsaw wielding eviscerator of flesh-bearing mammals (humans included), an android, a vampire, a dragon, a ghost, a stalker, a serial killer, a feral cat, ... Whatever you imagine now, get past my learned skepticism to make me see it; make me know it as though I were there. Ask your character why the situation terrifies him/her. Then empathize with that character's fear while you write the scene that shows your readers. You don't need a litany of items, dates and places. Sometimes allusion is even more effecting, allowing your readers to form the image from their own experience or perception as you continue weaving the tale.
Suspending disbelief. I think, is paramount in writing horror. For a brief time, we give our readers an 'otherworld' whether today, in the past, future, alternate reality. Make your readers need to know what will happen, Make them know the story, but without relating a litany of 'facts,' but rather weaving them into the story or poem.
Make it believable, with enough detail to convince your readers it can be real. Give your readers direct reference with relevant physical details in the premise. For example, you wouldn't have oak trees bending sideways in a desert of 100-degree sand (but how about cacti shedding their outer spikes as the inner growth thrummed, its tempo increasing in sync with the trekker's own heartbeat). Or does your character touch it, call for help, and why - related to a childhood memory or driven by present-day philosophy.
You can also indirectly allude to the nature or cause of the aberrant action or image. Mama said Susie was special. Susie didn't want to be special. She didn't want to have to take classes with kids who couldn't compete just because she was guided by dragons. "But Susie, how come you were you the only biker who made it past that hairpin turn? We were watching the whole time, yet can't see how, short of taking wing over the other bikers, you alone didn't plunge over the cliff." 
