Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

Horror Stories

Hi, everyone! It's been a while. Thank you all so much for being so patient and kind. I'd tell you where I've been, but I'm 95% sure you don't care and 5% exhausted, so let's just rant.

To jump back into things like there was never a seven month gap, let's talk about a genre I get requests to cover but have yet to even mention: Horror Stories

Here are Addy's four horrifyingly terrible tips for writing horror stories (see what I did there?). Also, please make note that I teach the Gothic Genre enough that I err more on the side of Gothic than slasher. So make of that what you will:

1. Terror versus horror

This, to me, is a big one for people to understand. Sometimes I think we confuse and blur the lines of what is traditional, old-school horror and what is more suspense, since you usually need some kind of suspense in horror. Did that make sense? No.

Terror is a feeling. Like, when you see a giant ass tarantula in your bathroom and you're terrified. Or when you're being terrorized by the meth making hobos that move in to the only freakin' vacant land next to you...that might have happened.

Horror follows this line pretty closely, but it's usually characterized by one key difference: the grotesque. Horror takes that terrifying feeling and adds a layer of nasty to it. Think of it as finding a severed head on your doorstep. It's that kind of terrifying.

Anyway, the point of this is to say, typically we think of horror taking the next step from just plain scary, into the realm of disgusting. That's important to get out of the way, because sometimes I think we lose that in horror and while you don't have to have severe grotesque, it is a hallmark of the genre. So be conscious of that.

2. Focus on the tone and atmosphere

Ask any of my students and they'll tell you my favorite genre is Southern Gothic literature, which is all about that creepy, dark, twisted, grotesque atmosphere. It's all about that dark, twisted imagery. And while it doesn't have to have that southern feeling of backwoods law, moss in the trees, and enough humidity to suffocate you, I wouldn't say no to it.

It's kind of like the vibe you get when you watch the Addams family or those old Dracula movies where everything is dark (mostly because the black and white aspect, but hang with me) and old and dusty and decrepit. That's one side of the horror genre: the idea that time has forgotten a place or nature has tried to claim industrialization, but the two worlds don't mesh well.

A huge staple in horror is the unknown. That's why darkness, fog, close doors, frosted windows, broken mirrors, that kind of stuff is popular imagery. It creates a dimension of unknown. Your sense of sight is severely impaired and, as humans, we're naturally afraid when we lose one of our senses.

It's like the jello scene in the old Jurassic Park movie (you know, when the jello starts shaking and the kids look at each other like, "oh shit"). They know something big and bad is coming, but they don't know exactly where it is and that's scary as hell.

Focus as much as you can on creating an atmosphere that is suffocating with dread and focus on impairing as many of your character's senses as you can.

3. Give villains believable motives

This is something I always advocate for, but sometimes it gets to be a strange, blurry line. Sometimes we give horror villains the overall persona of "I'm bad just because I wanna be bad" and while I would argue there's a time and place for that, that time is not always and that place is not everywhere.

To me, there's something horrifying about knowing what a villain wants, but also knowing that your character can't give them. Like trying to reanimate people so there's hope that they can bring back a lost loved one. You can't let someone do that. Your heart goes out to them, because it sucks to lose someone, but damn. You can't grave dig and piece people together and perform horrible experiments to see what happens.

That's just my suggestion. Give you villain something very real, very transparent that they're working for, but that something needs to be impossible (or at least morally wrong, especially if you wanna play with the supernatural) to attain. It will add a whole new level to your development.

4. Use elements of tragedy

This kind of stems from the last one. A way to really let horror sink in for your readers is to use real elements of tragedy and take them a step further. Like, in the last one, if you have a villain trying to reanimate a loved one, perhaps they could use the body of a loved on the main character was extremely close to. Or, spend you novel building up a supporting character only to kill them off and leave their severed head on the doorstep of the main character. Something along those lines. Not only is it an extreme gut punch to give your readers an emotion they can related to, but then it's a huge slap in the face to add in that element of grotesque.

And that's all the tips I have for you. Sorry they sucked, but I'm sure you've come to expect that from this rant book. Anyway, I can't tell you when I'll be back. Depends on how far my kids take it into Regionals and State. Then, we jump head first into track season, so we'll just have to play it by ear. Hopefully it won't be another seven months, but who can say.

I have a kind of really cool (in my opinion) short story I'm working on about what happened with my best friend. For those of you that didn't know, he was missing in action for a few months but was finally found and I got to see him for Christmas and it was badass and hopefully I'll have that little piece up soon if anyone is interested.

So, the questions for this rant are:

1. What are your favorite elements of horror?

2. What tips do you have for writing in the horror genre?

See you sometime in the future and we'll discuss more then.Until then, keep being awesome!