The genre of horror

Do any of us know how we came to the decision that we like one style or one genre over another?  Is there a defining point in your life that you can discuss that indicates why you became a big fan of *blank*?  Not for me.  I’m a strange horror fan.

When I grew up, I read a lot of horror.  One of the many things that make me proud to have the parents I have is the fact that my mother stated that I can learn whatever I learn, as long as it came from a book.  When I was younger, I didn’t watch horror movies.  I was strangely scared of them or not allowed to watch them in fear of what they would do to me.  To this day, I’m not much in them, at least not the typical blood and gore movies, but I read horror.  From simple scary stories I would get from the bookmobile geared towards children, to things way to adult for a preteen to be reading, I read my share of horror as a kid.  Oddly, I wasn’t affected too much.  Never woke from nightmares or had to sleep with the light on.  When I did watch horror, I wasn’t fond of it.  It just seemed like an excuse to splatter blood and show me the no longer inner workings of a body.  That wasn’t really horror to me.  The more eerie, the more mysterious does it for me.

I suppose I like the suspense, the shock, and the willies up my spine when I read horror.  The safety of the fear in my book, a place I can crawl into but quickly run back out and know I’m in no danger.  It was a delight to me, and possibly made me feel a little more grown up for reading what I shouldn’t be reading as a kid.  As an adult (or a grown up kid as I truly am), I’ve stepped away from the horror to read other genres, write other genres, but horror on paper still has a place in my heart.

As a writer, I’ve rarely tried to write horror.  Like they say about comedy, it’s hard to make someone laugh; it’s also hard to make someone scared.  We are cynical people, and when you know it’s a horror story, you are anticipating the surprise which makes it harder to enjoy the surprise.  Horror is part irony/twist and I’m a lover of irony, but nowadays you have to twist the twist because people are expecting a twist.  I intentionally made that sentence seem confusing. =)  Horror is hard to write if you’re trying to step away from just being gory and really want to shock people.  Yes, the more guts and blood, possibly the more you’ll receive shock, but will you always get fear from your reader?

I am of the opinion that horror should only be for short stories.  This might seem surprising to many people, but I think the short form helps to keep the suspense high and the nerves on end.  When you stretch it out in a novel, you either have to many lows, relaxed moments that the reader loses the anxiety or you over saturate the story with horror that they can be desensitized and no longer fear what they should fear.  This is my personal opinion, of course.  When I read horror as a child, it was short stories.  It actually took awhile for me to get into novels, and I’m still kind of partial to short stories over novels in all genres, but that’s for another post. 

Everyone knows the usual famous horror writers.  No need to mention them so I will mention some of my favorite semi-unknowns to unknowns.  Because I haven’t been reading horror lately, I’m afraid I’ll have to direct you to some podcasts authors.

If you don’t know, podcasts are simple audio programs that anyone can create.  They range from discussion groups, audio dramas, information pieces, to people just reading their stories.  The following links are to sites with horror writers that I enjoy.

Russell Burt is like the rest of us.  He has a love of writing and specifically for horror.  For a couple years he was recording and posting his short stories on his blog.  He also included his horror novel and later opened the doors to other writers to submit their stories (Yes, one of mine is on there.  He asked for it, and I was honored, and he did a fantastic job reading it.).  Sadly, he ended his blog back in 2008, but it’s still up to enjoy his past accomplishments.  His final post has comprehensive links to the different areas of his stories, novel, and listener contributions.  I miss Russell’s writing, but am glad I got to talk with him, and enjoy what he had to offer.  I think I’ll go email him a “Hey how ya doing note.”

 http://rlburt.blogspot.com/2008/01/end.html

Pseudopod is part of a large podcasting organization that brings the stories of writers to the online audio world.  There is Pseudopod for horror, Podcastle for fantasy, and Escapepod for science fiction.  Stephen Eley started the whole thing but Podcastle and Pseudopod have their own teams.  You will get a wide variety of horror stories here.  I’m afraid I’m way, way, way behind in listening.

http://pseudopod.org/

Though I’m behind in my listening, I would like to point out my favorite so far of their stories. This one just blew my mind and burned images into my head that pop up every now and again.

http://pseudopod.org/2009/02/13/pseudopod-129-bottle-babies/

Last but not least is Phil Rossi who is probably considered one of the big wigs in the podcast world of writing.  I’m behind on everything but this writer/musician has cranked out some nice horror material.  Most of his recent books are free on audio if you want to take a listen.  

http://www.thephilrossiexperience.com/philrossinet/?page_id=13

That’s all I have for now.  Nanowrimo is around the corner, and though I’m not writing horror, there should be some horrific aspects to my 2011 WIP so I will keep these writers, and my memories of horror in mind as I click away.

Jennifer

Camp Write On! and Camp Nanowrimo

Our blog has had a serious lack of focus the last month.  I forgot to give the proper reminders and blame myself as…err…I guess kind of the leader.  But it’s a new month and we’re going to start fresh.

Our usual group meeting did not take place on a Friday evening.  Instead, we had a BBQ at another member’s home and it was fabulous.  This was a family and friends event, opening the party to those close to us, including dogs.  My dogs had a great time as did my hubby.  We tend to be terrible about actual writing when we get together as a writing group.  We know that’s the point of this group, to write, but there is something that clicks and works with us and we like it!  So we do other fun stuff and make up reasons it relates to writing so we feel less guilty about having fun. Ha!

Moving on...  Nanowrimo, the thing that brought this group together, is presenting, for the first time ever, Camp Nanowrimo.  Popped up just when Write On was going to do their own writing month so we’re scrapping our own idea for the summer and working on the big company’s plan instead.  The same rules apply: 50K in 30/31 days.  You can do July or August or aggressively write in both.  We had members iffy on this camp project but already a few are up over 2K in words with one over 10K.  Where am I?  Umm…my character has a name!

What am I doing for Camp Nanowrimo?  I thought I was going to be a rebel-light.  Rebels don’t follow all the rules obviously and due short stories or continue on some project instead of starting new.  I thought that was going to be me.  I’m going to work on my fairy tales which of course is a collection of short stories, but because they are related in theme and I would like to present them as one book, it fit the rules. I have one started, and I was going to continue on in it, but decided to not break that rule either and start on a new fairy tale.  All this means I may not be a rebel after all.  I have a hard time breaking rules.  I blame my parents!

My problem with this right now is the same that I always have…my lack of focus.  Here it is the start of the third day of Camp Nanowrimo, and I wrote nothing for day one or two.  I still need to plot out the details of my current fairytale cause I work better with a good plan of action.  It’s not a good start but I’m trying not to be discouraged.  Now that I know more members of our group are doing this, I feel a little competition going ,and I have some serious catching up to do.  And with that, I shall go write!

Good luck writing this month!!!

Jennifer

Do it for the Memes.

A previous post mentioned the lack of writing motivation. I read the post and found myself nodding in agreement. The last couple months have been kind of crazy for me. Moving out of the old ass apartment and into a permanent home, our new house. My husband and I were busy for weeks with packing, painting, re-flooring, etc. I found it hard (and truthfully, agonizing) to sit down and write. I did 30k in March and after that it was like another end-of-NaNo crash. I did not really want to write.

Now that about two months have gone by I've been getting these nagging thoughts of "you really should sit down and write". "I know, I know!" I'd cry back, but then do absolutely nothing about it. Writing is hard, I'd tell myself, I just don't feel it tonight. Well, I finally started easing back into it. I started browsing the NaNo forums, this always helped me during my first NaNo. There was something about seeing other people being excited about their own plot and characters that gave me a spark. Then I searched for some writing exercises. I found a brilliant Live Journal page full of writing memes! (Which I immediately posted to the group's discussion page.) I did a meme. Then another, and another. After that I sat there smiling because I didn't feel so stupid for sitting down and doing something creative with my characters. Then, while lying in bed, my mind was going on about my story and my characters. I couldn't wait to get up and do more memes! After I finish this I plan to actually do some writing tonight. It's been far too long. And my characters are pretty pissed at me right now...

I think my biggest hurdle was that I fell back into the mindset of "your writing sucks Tabby" after taking such a long break. This was my biggest foe for years until I found NaNo back in '09. I just want to say, to those who fall into the same pit now and then, just ease back into it. You won't be excited right away, after a long absence, to start writing again. The exercises I did slowly helped to push away my inner-writing-demon. 

That's all.

Tabby

<3

Atmosphere...

Today I've been thinking about atmosphere and how that impacts the way we think, work, and create.  Where is it that you write?  Do you prefer the quaint corner of a bistro while you sip on a latte and people watch between paragraphs?  Maybe a home office with a desk and straight back chair?  Or do you write better outside, sitting on the porch, or in bed at night in a journal?  For me, it really depends.  I can curl up with my laptop for a bit but I am usually more disciplined at my desk with my focus on the work and no distractions.  If I have a paper and pen I love to go journaling outside, taking in the trees, air, and birds while I discover where my characters are headed next.  Then again there is something fun about taking my laptop to Starbucks and getting distracted by cute guys, people chatting, and the social feeling I get being away from my house.

There is something to be said for having the right atmosphere when you write.  Do you need distractions to get ideas or are you like me and the first shiny thing that comes around causes you to lose your place in your story?  This week I am working on rearranging my home office, so I've been thinking a lot about how our surroundings affect how we work.  My behemoth corner desk came with my house and while I appreciate all the nooks and crannies of its shelves I also realized it caused me to hoard random shit that I just don't need to have around.  I have a big Herman Miller desk top that goes on top of two file cabinets which I am eager to get in my office to replace the monster desk, but I wonder if it will be a positive or negative change for my writing.  Sometimes a new change is a jump start to something good happening.  Other times it causes us to fall back into bad habits.  I want to have a healthy atmosphere that encourages creativity but I also want a desk that is functional and spacious.

Along with that is the concept of surroundings.  Paintings, calendars, Dwight Schrute bobblehead, plants- what do you need nearby to keep your creativity going?  I just went into my living room and stared at my Thomas Kinkade picture, realizing that I love it because its like the chalk drawings on Mary Poppins that they jump into.  I want paintings that give me something to yearn for.  I want artwork that makes me say "I wonder what the artist was thinking when they made this."  I need quotations and pictures that inspire me and catch a place in my heart.  My writing is best when I am surrounded by those influences, so my hope is that redecorating will get me out of my slump and cause me to jump at the chance to start some personal projects.  I'd love to write some stories about things I know, analyzing situations I've been a part of and even journalling to pour out everything in my heart.

So, is there anything in your surroundings that can change to make you a more productive writer?   A talisman like more plot bunnies, a certain playlist of music, or a new painting?  Think about when you are most in the zone and figure out ways to enable yourself to get to that place more often.  You never know- just changing the orientation of your desk or getting a new plant could cause you to finish your undone novel!!

-Liz

Climb Ev'ry Mountain...?

Personally, I'm in a bit of a writing slump right now.  There's a lot going on in my life—between my transition back to the United States after four months in the UK and all of the emotions that entails, my lack of a summer job, and the impending doom of my senior year of college—and the writer in me who has always turned emotions and experiences into stories and characters has been replaced by a creature that is lucky if she's able to keep a journal.  It's like my own brain has gone into lock-down, overwhelmed by the excess creative stimuli, and is blocking out the inspiration.

Now, I've been told, and I've believed in the past that "inspiration" is helpful to writing but not necessary.  I mean, that's basically the driving force between NaNoWriMo: none of us would have gotten to the 50K mark if we had waited for inspiration to strike.

However, I've never hit a block as solid as this one.  I've had times when I was procrastinating, but once I knuckled down and started writing, things eventually came more smoothly.  I've had times when I didn't know what was going to happen next in a piece, but I would move on or start over in order to get any further.

But this is something different.  I can feel it.  I don't feel like I have anything to write.  I have a lot of things I could write, but it's almost painful to try.  The other night, I just sat down and forced myself to write a page of non-academic writing, and though I was able to do it, I'm not sure how, or whether it was worth it.  It didn't give me any more confidence, it didn't make my inner writer feel any less trapped…in fact, it made me feel like I'm doomed never to write again.

I look at my notebooks, and they actually fill me with a sort of fear.  Not just a procrastinator's dread, but a fear as if there's something bad waiting for me inside them.  I still cary them around, and periodically, I write down quotes I want to remember, ideas for characters, dialogue, settings, etc. in them, but that feels more like flexing a vestigial muscle, now.  There's no connective tissue piecing things together.  

I guess I just wanted to share that with you folks.  I wondered if any of you had ever experienced something like that, and whether you pulled out of it eventually or not.  I'm hoping that it will all pass after I've been home for a little bit, or once I start up my summer rec. reading.  But right now, it feels seriously impassible, and every word I type in fiction gives me a toothache.

Mary

Character Details

It seems like a lot of the focus lately has been on character building, which is great!  Fortunately for me but perhaps not for the blog theme, that is not something I've ever had trouble with.  Characters are by far the EASIEST part of writing for me.  Usually the characters happen and wander around for a while before they find something to do. 

            But of course there is still balance, in that there are still writing things I can't do without feeling like I'm pulling my own teeth.  Right now the things I'm getting yelled at about by my proofreaders is details in processes.  I know my characters so well by the time I get to writing them that I tend to forget that other people don't know them that well, and it's up to me to describe what they are doing.  Like, I can tell you that my main character is a chef, and tell that he's over cooking in the kitchen, but would a chef not talk about WHAT he was making?  How many experts in their field wouldn't talk about it?  But, well, I'm not a chef.  I wish, but I'm far from it.  So I try to do some research, but I don't want to put in what I feel is too much.  And that apparently falls far short of what other people expect.  Who knew.  That's what proof readers are for.

            So now I'm researching recipes for a book I 'finished' a year and a half ago.  I found one for my favorite scene, but the rest are still vague references to food and cooking process, sandwiched in between other happenings.

            And the cooking isn't the only place.  How does the process of shooting this gun actually work?   Is there anything I could add about filling out this paperwork that would help people understand better what is going on?  What do Missionaries actually do in third world countries?  I mean, on a day to day and hour to hour basis?  I know they help poor and sick people, and teach, and grow things.  But 24/7?  Surely there's DETAILS in there, that I either need to find out through research, or I need to make up from somewhere.

            Maybe part of my worry is a fear of adding in details and being caught in an error. If I'm vague, no one can say I was wrong very well.  But when you add in specifics, there's more that could go wrong.  Maybe I need to relax and not assume that every reader is going to go look these things up just to prove me wrong, or that every reader will be an expert in every field and hate me forever for getting my crème and my cream missed up in the cooking scene.   But I don't want to limit my characters to only doing things I am already an expert at.  So back to more research.  Ah well.  No day is wasted if you learn something in it. 

Melanie

Character Refresher

Had a meeting last night and it was totally a blast.  There was the usual food and chatter, but the giggles were brought on by the beginnings of a writing exercise that everyone seemed to walk away excited to elaborate on their forced creation.

What am I talking about?  This.  Are you having issues coming up with a new character?  Do you feel like your characters start merging into one?  Maybe you need to step outside of your own head for a bit and see what kind of character you can create with aspects that are forced on you.  

You've seen the character sheets, right?  Something to help shape your basic character into something more 3D by dwelling on what makes them who they are?  We had our own character sheet to fill out and it included the following catagories: Name, Sex, Hair/Eye Color, Height/Weight, Physical Distinctions, Fashion Style, Allergies, Bad Habits, Family Background, Education, Home Location, Hobbies, Pets, Talents, Strengths, Attitude, Rumors/Reputations, Fears, Secrets/Desires, Past Traumatic Events.  I wrote up a series of options for nearly every one of these categories.  Some answers were very normal, some were very weird, some were funny.  The options for each category were painstakingly cut out and put in little baggies  for all the present members to blindly choose from.  Once they filled out the categories, we read aloud our character sheets.  It was fantastic.  Everyone was crying from laughter.  

When picking the options, because they were so random, the options seemed to clash so terribly with other options and we felt there was no way we could make a character out of them, but the more you looked at your sheet and the more we discussed our characters out loud, the easier it was to come up with ways the different options could fit together to create a true character.  Granted the character might be crazy, but life is crazy and there are all kinds of people so why not go to the extremes.  It's more fun that way.  It was also interesting hearing the different directions that each person would go with their character because of their specific interests and creativity.  We are incorporating our characters with the May challenge and I feel like this will be so awesome.

Here is the character I drew from the ziplock bags....

Suzanne Tiffany Laurel is an 84 year old female with olive hair and plaid eyes.  She's only 4'3" and 195lbs.  Suzanne suffers from Phantom Limb Syndrome of her left arm which was taken from a bear she now owns as a pet.  Her bear, D, is also her home location.  She rides the back of D wherever she goes.  Suzanne only wears dresses.  She's allergic to peanuts and she loves spending time naming storms and woodworking.  She's good at the woodworking because she uses her laser eyes to cut them which is helpful since she only has one arm.  My character was raised and home schooled by frogs.  She's a magician by trade but has a reputation of being a thief.  She fears tipped salt and is fueled by blind fury.  Suzanne has a bad habit of over touching people.  She also has a desire to being the opposite sex and had a traumatic past event of sleeping bad.

As I was writing down the options I picked out, I was concerned with what the hell I was going to do with this mismatch of information, but as I read it over, read it out loud, and discussed with the other members, it seemed like a perfect combo.  I love the character who is developing in my head.  

So if you want something fresh, try something like we did.  Make a character sheet of your own or steal one online and pick some components that help develop your character.  At a time that you're not trying to make a character, come up with random options for each category.  Lots and lots of options and make some strange ones along with norm.  Make your range wide.  Don't dwell on what you would do with these options while you're creating them.  Just pick your brain, pick your friends brain, pick the internet.  On another day when the options aren't as fresh in your mind, dig into your categories, choosing randomly, blindly, from your options and create your character.  See what crazy things you get to combine and find out what wonderful characters your mind will make.

Imagination...creativity...it's such a great thing.

Jennifer