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 Horror/Scary: February 28, 2018 Issue [#8780] |
  Horror/Scary This week: We Make It Real 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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Take away the familiar accoutrements of mundane society, remove your readers' comfort zone of how the world should function. Remove the rules of reality and twist the familiar into somethng unfamiliar. Showcase the differences. As writers, we have tools at hand, drawn from our own perception and imagination, to create a world outside the mundane; to shake up their preconceived reality and draw our readers into an otherworld of horror. 
Show the unknown. Consider engaging this first, most primal fear, that seeds all the others to follow. Anything can happen; anything can emerge from the darkness just outside our range of vision. Natural laws can be suspended engaging the imagination. The unknown today, as in our kind's distant past, has limitless potential for growth as well as threat. Until we learn it, evrything is unknown, so it has incipient power to hold your readers' attention. 
Give them the unexpected. Humans have a physical reaction to that which defies the expected outcome of their action. A key turns a lock opening a door; if the door, instead, turns hot, searing flesh off the hand turning the unyielding knob, that defies the preconceived, learned reaction. It's not rational and we instinctively see it as 'wrong.' How to make it right, find a rational solution, your characters and readers need to know.
Give them the unbelievable. We disregard that which does not fit into our pre-existing definition of reality. It may be a dangerous habit, one that brings sanity into question. Make your readers want to suspend disbelief and see recognize alternate realities. 
Show them the unseen. Grab your readers' attention with something they normally do not see. Show them the guts of an eviscerated marauder. But make it necessary to the encounter, as repeated exposure to blood and gore makes it less effective; your readers will stop seeing it as an unknown. Consider as well revealing that which was hidden, introducing something new and strange; for example, ancient artifacts, creatures thought extinct or manufactured to cause havoc. Engage your readers' curiosity into finding and viewing that which was hidden.
Expose the unconscious, inner worlds we cannot control or escape. Expose the acts of characters who give in to their unnamed and undared (perhaps vile) desires and compulsions and engage the inner world of your readers which they are too civilized to set free. ,
It's unstoppable! Show them an entity or action that is powerful enough to not end, to go on, and on, in pursuit of his/her/its ultiamate goal. Consider 'The Blob' consuming and subsuming all it encounters, unaware or uncaring of the desires or even sentient reality, of anything outside itself. Something unstoppable instills terror in readers, and as it continues along its path, horror at its unbridled success in being completely self-absorbed. 
