Tag: horror

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Fight-Scene Mechanics

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[found on fantasy-faction.com]

“THE BUILD UP

Learn to master suspense, and you’ll have your readers literally squirming to turn the page.  This is particularly true with fight scenes.  The build up is the perfect place to lay down what is truly at stake for your characters, to make clear the price of failure.

Don’t underestimate the value of this phase.  A good build up will often last longer than the fight itself, and rightly so.  Take Gandalf’s confrontation with the Balrog in the mines of Moria, for example.  The actual fight didn’t last long.  It was the build up to that moment which made it great – the lore, the menace and the darkness, the chase through the mines, all of it culminating with the breaking of the bridge.

Sometimes there’s not even any action in this phase, because you don’t need it; everything is implied.  That nasty, serrated hatchet the goblin is shaking at your character speaks for itself.  You can just imagine the damage its rusty edge would do to unprotected flesh, and oh no, your heroine isn’t wearing any armor either.  Small details can help differentiate the impending conflict from a run-of-the-mill battle by increasing tension and upping the stakes.  It can also be a great opportunity for horror.”

To read all fight-scene tips from Fantasy-Faction.com, click the image, or click HERE.

 

Screen Shot 2014-06-30 at 5.42.27 PM

[found on http://fantasy-faction.com/2011/writing-fight-scenes]

 

Thriller, Horror, Terror — Oh My!

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[found on writersdigest.com]
“The three types of terror:
  • The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm.
  • The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one:
  • Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there …”
— Stephen King

“The horror genre is something that I’ve always been fascinated with. Luckily, I don’t think I’m the only one. People like to be frightened. If they didn’t, Stephen King wouldn’t have a thousand novels and you wouldn’t find every horror film ever made running on AMC at this time, every year. Seriously. Click over to AMC, I can almost guarantee Halloween, or one of its sequels, is on right now.

And horror has adapted. Yes, you can still find the slasher movies and those “gross-out” moments that King references. But it’s mental now. “Found footage” movies can be terrifying because it seems so normal, so everyday. The more real, the better. And the scarier. It’s the dark basement where the only thing you can hear is the beating of your own heart. That’s real horror. The kind of stuff that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, as if someone was standing inches behind you.

But writing horror isn’t so easy. With any type of fiction, it’s difficult to think of something that hasn’t already been done. With horror fiction, it’s especially true. Creepy basements, loud noises from the attic, hidden rooms, Indian burial grounds, old hotels, multiple personality disorder, etc.—it’s all been done before, and it’s all out there. These clichés shouldn’t restrain you, however. They’ve simply defined the space you’re working in. You know what’s there, now create your own story.”

For more tips from Writer’s Digest on writing thrillers, click here.

[found on http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/the-horror-genre-on-writing-horror-and-avoiding-cliches]

Perfect Horror Short Story? Yes, please.

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[found on fecklessgoblin.blogspot.com]
    1. “Pick something that could happen to your reader.
    2. Pick a location that’s familiar to your reader.
    3. Eat, drink, sleep the horror that you have created before you actually begin to write. Lie back in a darkened room and really visualise it. Scare the pants off yourself.
    4. Go to your location or one that looks like it and sit there quietly for a while. If your story takes place on a quiet street in the early hours, find one, get up in the early hours and drink it up. Take a pad and write down some notes about what you see and how you feel.
    5. Try to see the story from three or four different views even if they won’t be in the final version. Choose someone timid, someone thick skinned, someone religious. The choice is yours.
    6. Take your time, build up the pressure, slowly but surely. This may be a short horror story but you’ve got more time than you think to lay out your stall.
    7. Stay focussed. Don’t get bogged down in back story. In fact, try giving back story a miss altogether.
    8. Anticipation is nine tenths of the horror story battle – let your reader know something bad is going to happen, lead them there by the hand.
    9. Dig deep into that horror. Choose one that scares you. If it doesn’t scare you, how do you expect it to scare the hell out of your dear reader?
    10. Throw a few red herrings in there, twist them on their heads. The old cat jumping out of the fridge is a bit of cliché but you get my drift.
    11. If you’re scared of heights, go and stand on the edge of a tall building and lean over, if you’ve got a spider phobia, go and put one on the palm of your hand. Remind yourself how real fear feels.
    12. Don’t overload your reader with gore. It becomes boring and they quickly attain sensitisation. A splash of blood here and there will do fine.
    13. Don’t over describe. You’re not Dickens. Give your reader some credit that they can imagine your ultimate horror. Don’t be afraid that they won’t get the point.
    14. Keep the monster/horror hidden for as long as possible.
    15. Read the best and the worst of horror. Reread the passages that got your heart racing and try to see how the author did it. Look at the way you reacted and imagine that’s what you want your reader to feel.
    16. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different styles. Write a couple of different versions of your story to see how it comes out.
    17. Leave your first draft for a decent amount of time so that you come back to it fresh. For some people that’s a couple of days. For others it’s a couple of months.
    18. Always, always read your draft through once without touching it before you sit down to edit.
    19. Check you have the right vocabulary to scare. Choose the words to describe your fear with care. Make sure they fit and sound right. Try not to use unusual words that your reader won’t readily know the meaning to. It will break the flow. You’re trying to build fear not a larger vocab.
    20. Don’t forget that your story isn’t written in stone. It can change. It can evolve. It can be totally different from the original. Don’t be afraid to delete stuff that doesn’t belong.“