Oh! The Horror!

It's that time of year when pumpkin spice latte is all the rage and people who hate Christmas are getting overly excited about Halloween. I should know. I'm one of those people. 

It's also the time when horror and ghost story competitions are all the rage. What makes a good horror? I have no idea. I know what I like in a horror story. I want a monster that hides until the final reveal. I want creeping dread at every turn. I want a twist that genuinely takes your breath away. 

But I want hope! 

Too many current horrors create terrible situations that there is no hope of the protagonists escaping from. This leads to ultimately dissatisfying endings where the badguy has won and to no purpose. Did the protagonists have character growth? Yeah, but so what? They won't get to do anything with their newfound knowledge of how the world works, because they died.

One of my favourite horror films of recent years was Paranorman. Not only was it a great story with an amazing BBEG, it showed how the world can grow as a result of a shared horror. That's what I want my stories to be.

So, I'm writing a horror. I'm trying to create a feeling of dread, where there is potential for innocence to be lost, for a real hero to rise, but for a community to grow as a result of the shared horror, even if someone has to make a sacrifice to "win" in the end.

I finished the first draft today and some of that is missing. I have some spare words that I can use to build some more into it. I want the threat (Triangle Man) to be unsettling and dangerous. I want the hero (Alex, age 10) to be weak but determined. What I'm lacking at the moment is a reason for him to be considering dying to save others. That's what's not there at the moment. I just need time to fix it, and I will fix it.

I Submit

Another story went in at the weekend. It felt good to be back on the wagon after a messy summer.

I did submit stories over the holidays. I just didn't seem to have the time to talk about it. My job gets busy in the summertime and I do have to put a lot of fun things on the back burner. 

Things are finally starting to quiet down, including the stressy buzz in my head. 

Unfortunately, the competitions I have been entering have strict "no publishing" rules, so I have nothing creative to share this month. I can tell you that the last competition I entered wanted me to write a drama with a character craving something and featuring a dumb waiter.

I got a story written and submitted. I think it's ok? But the chargers are not likeable. We'll see how the judges receive it. 

A Little Story

An embarrassingly quick exit from my last competition. A shame really, because I quite liked the story. It seems that the ones I really like don’t do as well as the stories I have reservations about. 

For your reading pleasure:

Cold Comfort

Erin locked the basement, muting the wailing and smashing crockery.

“Síona?”

The door rattled on it’s hinges. Erin climbed downstairs.

“Síona, please.”

Tomorrow, Mam would do something ‘nice’, papering over the cracks in their family. Why didn’t she leave? Instead, she was up there, placating him.

“He’s looking at me the way he looked at Dearbhla before he...”

Erin almost said ‘touched’; too forgiving a euphemism. The word sickened her. She wanted comfort. None came.

“I’m leaving tonight. Dearbhla will take me in.”

Deep cold embraced her, exuding pride and sadness.

“I’ll miss you too.” Erin wept in the darkness.

Tracing a Story

Have you ever started a story and realised that you were rewriting something else? I'm sure you've heard that euphemism that there are only 7 stories. If that's the case, how are there so many books?

I'm here to say that there's nothing wrong with writing a story that has already been written. Most of the story is window dressing. There are so many Hero's Journeys out there bedecked with wands and dragons and light sabers, but they are essentially the same story.

If I have an idea for a story that is, at its core, a rewrite of Hamlet, am I stealing Shakespeare's story or am I writing a story that has a similar outline?

And that's what I mean by 'tracing'. The basic outline of two stories can be the same while producing two very different and equally valid stories.

For a tongue-in-cheek example, click here!

I'll be posting my latest "story that didn't make it" tomorrow. I came 11th in my group but only the top 10 go through to the next round.

Outgoing - Litany - NYC Midnight 250 Word Microfiction Challenge 2022

Sad to say, I'm out of the 250 Word Microfiction Challenge. I was disappointed, because I was very proud of Litany (see below). I honestly thought it could do the business. It was not to be.

Having said that, one of the main reasons I enter this competition is because everything submitted gets feedback and mine told me one important thing: the standard of thes stories in my group must have been exceptional, because the most damning criticism was that some of the facts in my story were vague to outsiders. By clarifying these facts, my story would have done much better. 

I consider that to be exceptionally positive feedback. I can't wait to find and read the other stories from the group.

Anyway, I'm still waiting to hear back on the Short Story comp and I have another one lined up for this month. I just need to turn this idea into words. It's not often I get to put the words armillary sphere into a story.

Tis Done

I couldn't really hold off anymore, so the story is submitted. I hope it does ok, but I won't hold my breath. In truth, I'm not happy with the title I chose, but it will work out or it won't.

If I even got to the final I'd be amazed. But, hey, let the judges judge me, because I've never been very good at measuring my good and bad writing. 

Title Indeed

A bad pun of a title, but it leads directly into what I want to talk about.

Normally when I start writing a story I get a title and an outline idea straight away. This isn't a boast: these can sometimes become a straight jacket for the story and I can find it hard to break away from my original, bright, shining idea that spurned me into writing in the first place. The advantage, though, is that I have something to work with and can build on that.

Queue my February writing challenge. I decided (as I've mentioned before) to enter one competition a month this year. January is behind me and February is running out of time on me. But, there's the thing: I have the story written. It has changed significantly from the unusual ghost story it started with to the story of a young boy's breakdown in the face of his family's grief at the loss of an infant. Not a pleasant story, but I found my brain wandering to the theme of grief and it's effects on people and that's where my story went.

But I never got a title.

This is very strange for me. Titles are usually not a problem for me at all. I now find myself with three days to go and I have a story with no title. I don't even have a working title. I don't know what to do with this situation.

Any advice will be gratefully received in the comments.