Tag Archives: writing advice

February 19, 2016 · 8:14 pm

A Commentary On Word Counts

I’ve been lucky the last few years. Not only have I gotten to follow my dream and write, but I’ve been exposed to a number of amazing peers in the process. I’ve gotten to speak to people whose work I adore, and I’ve made a lot of friends along the way. More than once, I’ve sat and thought about how awesome it is to have met so many other people who are as passionate about my field as I am. My “writing time” is spent in equal parts alone and with those people. Word counts come up a lot. I see it with experienced writers, intermediates such as myself, and more than anywhere, among the newest writers. There is a temptation to place the value of all of your work into how much work you’re getting done, and I think this is a mistake. Mind you, I don’t think word counts themselves are bad, I think placing the value of your work on how much work you’re producing is, and this is a trend I’m seeing a lot in self-publishing.

Writing isn’t a clock punching job. I don’t think any art is. When you make your living off of art you certainly have to put the time and effort into it, and only a fool would say otherwise. You will have timetables as editors, publishers, and agents begin to work with you. There will be expectations of punctuality once you become a professional, but I don’t think that should be confused with word count. (Especially as a newer writer) There is a temptation to get as much work done as you can and to sell it. After all, many of us have dreamed about this our whole lives. We envision a future in which we can support ourselves through the efforts we put into our writing, and so we want to put as much effort in as we can. But effort can’t be measured solely by word count, in the same way that success can’t be measured only by income. I think it’s a trap that a lot of people just getting into the industry fall into, and I think that work often suffers for it.

My editor, a much more experienced author and member of this community, has had a similar talk with me over the last few months. She noticed my eagerness to always have the next book out. All of our correspondences had time tables and assumptions about when I could get X book out if only I put Y amount of work in. I don’t think this approach is inherently flawed, I just think it’s missing the forest for the trees. Writing is more than just spewing words just like painting is more than throwing colored pudding on paper. (Or canvas. Don’t be a paint snob) After she pointed out the pattern, I couldn’t unseen it. I took a step back and tried to get a larger view of what I was doing and what I wanted from it. I came to realize that I was using word counts as a way to force myself to work, and even worse, as a way to compare myself to other writers. Instead of enjoying the process and trying to develop my work, I was constantly concerned with when I would be able to publish the next novel. I was more concerned with the ending than the journey. To be frank, I had stopped writing for myself.

Yes, word counts are one of the few daily metrics we have. And while it is a great thing to use, I am now of the mind that it’s not a good way to measure yourself as a writer, it’s just a good way to visualize the amount of time you’re putting in a day. You can write 10,000 words an hour and still be terrible at it, and you can jot 500 down in whatever little free time you have and make an amazing story. You could spend a week editing a chapter and have no word count to show for it after all, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t make progress. Word counts can’t measure the input that an editor or a trusted reader has. Your writing’s sum total value, and your ability as a writer, is not in the word count, and there is no need to torture yourself under the illusion that it is.

The worth of art is not measured in money. Yes, we need it to survive. Yes, we deserve it for our work, no matter what a bunch of verbal vomit maggots at some publications will say. (Looking at you Huffington Post. Also, fuck you) The worth of our writing is not measured in word counts either. To be honest, I don’t know how it is measured, or if it is at all. I thought I had a much better grasp on all of this when I was more inexperienced, but honestly, I’ve stopped worrying about it. Set a time frame you can live with, and work in that. Don’t tell yourself that your work is only worthwhile if you’re putting out two-thousand words per day, or if you’re putting out X amount of books a year, and certainly don’t confuse the worth you perceive in your writing with your self-worth. Remember, you’re following your dream and doing what you set out to do even when you’re doing it like a cold turd in a microwave. (We all have those days)

Am I saying not to use word counts? No. I’m saying that they should be used for what they are; a measurement. Don’t place value judgments on it. Don’t use it as a meter stick to compare yourself to other artists. Worry about you and your work first, going for quality before quantity. Of course, you should always take a spoonful of salt with any writing advice anyone gives you, and I’m just spit balling from my own experiences. I found that once I began to use my daily word count as a post-writing measurement, and not a pre-writing death-sentence, I was not only happier working every day, but my word count went up. I would always hit 1k a day, but usually fall short of my 2k goal. Now it’s been weeks since I wrote less than 2k in a day. Take that for what it’s worth.

As always, keep writing.

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June 16, 2015 · 3:19 am

I Have No Idea How To Sell Books

As I sit here today, trying to think of clever ways to push my book, I come to realize that I have no goddamned clue what I’m doing. Seriously. Real talk. Now, I’ve sold books. Hell, for a first time author with no following and no notion on how to capture sales, I think I’ve done pretty well for myself. I sold enough on release day of Darker Shadows to bounce into the middle of the top one hundred horror books on Amazon, and I stayed there for a few days. When I did a free promotion, my book became one of the most downloaded free books on Amazon, and that translated to noticeable uptick in sales afterwards that is still plucking away. Outside of that? Lost, like a naked baby in the woods.

Don’t get me wrong; I get the writing part. That part has always come naturally to me. That isn’t to say that I haven’t worked hard over the years to improve at it, just that it was always something I not only could do, but wanted to. Selling the final product? *pffft* *throws hands in air* I have no idea. You might as well ask me how to get to the moon, because much like getting to the moon, I have a very vague idea of how it works. You write. You get it edited. You make a kick ass cover. You get a whole bunch of fuel… wait, I’m mixing those two things up again. *checks notes* Oh, that’s why! Because after the actual construction of a novel, I’m struck stupid.

Look, the truth is, you can follow all the steps and not sell a thing. You can get a website, do social media, make friends, engage people, promote, advertise, and scream from the rooftops. Not one of those things translates to sales. I’m not actually convinced anything does. What I’m getting at is this: If you haven’t figured out the perfect formula for selling books, don’t sweat it. Nobody has it figured out to the tee. Plenty of people will tell you they do, but those people are liars. Yes, I said it. Those people are dirty, filthy, rotten liars. The only thing that guarantees sales is being a super famous well regarded author already. JK Rowling could release anything and sell it. Joe Blow who had good luck on Amazon a few times won’t always sell five thousand copies of his newest book no matter what he tells you. I have several author type friends who have done very well for themselves, but only on some of their books. One friend pushes a thousand a month, but the vast majority of those sales come from three of his books… he has twelve. (Probably more by now. I’m a bad friend who doesn’t keep up)

Sales are important if we want to do this as a job, but I still think the best way to do that is to write good books. You might not bottle lightning, but I am damn near certain that if you keep up quality over a long enough period, people will notice.

But you won’t do that by reading my slow descent into madness. Go forth fellow authors. Go forth and write.

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June 10, 2015 · 11:25 am

When To Light Your Book On Fire

Let me start by saying that the time is not now. Hold on the gasoline. Put down the lighter. (Or matches, whichever is your preference) We’ve all been there. It comes at different times for different people in different books. You might make it all the way to the end of the first draft before you decide a book is garbage. You may get half way through before you bust out the grill lighter. Hell, you might decide after one chapter that this entire endeavor was stupid, and you should light all books on fire because if you can’t do it, then by god, nobody can.

 

This is not an appropriate solution.

This is not an appropriate solution.

 

Everyone gets to this point, or at least everyone who is being honest with themselves. Maybe there’s a gal or a guy out there who knows with absolute certainty that they are an amazing writer, and they’ve never doubted their work once. Maybe this unicorn of a person has been right on the money every time, and they’ve never put a pen to paper and created something other than a masterpiece. I really doubt it though. Self-doubt comes with the territory in any artistic endeavor. You slave over something mentally, pour a lot of yourself into it, take the hours upon hours to work on it, and then you loathe it.

Here’s the thing: You can’t tell much of anything from a first draft, especially if you’re in the middle of it. I know it might hurt to hear this, but a first draft and a rough draft are the exact same thing. For Darker Shadows Lie Below, I ended up re-writing two thirds of the book in the second and third drafts. Some writers redo the entire thing after the first draft. Sometimes all you need is a few tweaks in edits, and sometimes you need a lot. Hell, there are occasions where you don’t need much at all. After a little time you come back to read what you wrote only to find that you really like it; and if you like it, someone else out there probably will too.

Don’t quit. Don’t burn your book. The absolute worst thing that can happen with it is a learning experience. You finish, you hate it, and you come out better prepared to write the next one. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Unless you aim to just be a one and done writer, there is always the next book. Finish what you’re on, and don’t get too caught up in the self-loathing. A little bit can be motivating, but too much of it is literary kryptonite. It saps your will to work, it takes the joy from it, and it makes your writing insecure. (Which is to say bland)

I don’t know if you’re a good writer. Maybe you just scribble out four letter words in crayon on a coloring book. Maybe you’re the next Hemingway. What I do know is that if you don’t finish, the rest of us will never find out.

Keep writing.

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March 17, 2015 · 9:59 pm

The In-Between Time

Howdy, howdy, howdy. Been a while since I’ve done any writing on ye olde website. I’m going to be honest, a big part of this is because I’m not always sure what to write on here. I like fiction, but fiction short stories on a website struck me as a little strange. (Though I’m warming up to the idea. My most viewed article was a short story) I like to give out advice on here too, but it strikes me as a little disingenuous to do so.

Why you ask? Because I’m just a student myself. I’m learning, and like all students, I make a lot of mistakes along the way. There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes. I’ve always been a firm believer that you learn more from failure than success. No, the issue is passing things on to other learners. I don’t like the idea that my advice might lead someone astray. After all, things that work for me might not work in the least for you. Where I like to write 2,000 words a day, you might get burned out. (Or find it’s not enough) While I like to write back stories on my characters that nobody else gets to see, you might find it a tedious and fruitless exercise.

Above all, I don’t want to come off like some old pro on here. I’m so green that I still have the plastic on. I’ve only published one book, and I’m working on getting an agent to sell the rest through more traditional means. I find that that are too many chiefs and not enough Indians in the writing world. Every website and author presents itself as some wizened old sage giving off advice from atop the mountain. Many of them are. Some of them are not. I’ve learned to take any advice with a grain of salt. There is no one size fits all way to write. The only price of admission is your time and dedication, everything after that is just trying different things until you find what works best for you. There are no guarantees. Nothing is certain in this industry.

But enough of that, it sounds a little too morose.

I’ve been a busy man this year. Since December of 2014 I’ve finished the first draft of two books, edited one, and now I’m 22k words deep into my fourth. It’s been a very productive time. The second one is a great story about a group of refugees surviving after the world came to a cataclysmic end a decade before. *Digs around in folders* Let me see if I can find the blurb I wrote.

—

“The old world is dead, and mankind struggles to survive in the shadows of the new one. Kyle, Sara, and Tim are scavengers, hiding in the remains of human civilization from the hungry things that destroyed it. Surviving on the few remaining items that haven’t rotted in the thirteen years since mankind was nearly wiped out.

But something has shown itself. A terrible creature that shows there is an intelligence to the madness of the beasts that destroyed the planet.

When the group finds Kaylee, a little girl who claims to know of a safe haven somewhere in Tennessee, they embark on a desperate journey to find it. Memory and loss, depravity and salvation— their last, desperate run will put them face to face with horrors of both man and monsters the likes of which they’ve never seen.”

—

There we go! I’m really excited about this project. I learned a lot from editing the first book, and it made the second one much stronger. The early opinions on it from my beta readers have been fantastic, and I can’t wait for a larger audience to see it. At it’s heart, it’s a story about a family, not about monsters. It’s about memories, and how we chose the people who mean the most to us. It’s a tense and emotional ride, and if I’m doing my job right, it should leave you wanting more at the end.

Expect to see articles from me in the coming weeks about this and a few other things. I’m trying to come up with new content for the site rather than just offering up novice advice.

Well, except for one piece. The perennial writing advice.

Keep writing.

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January 23, 2015 · 12:01 am

Being Gracious, Being Professional

Not so long ago, I wrote a post about why it’s obnoxious to collect fifty thousand people on Twitter and spam them with, “99 cents today only!” It’s bad business. It makes it look as if you think of the people who enjoy your books as nothing more than a numbers game. Really, at the center of the matter, it comes down to a lack of courtesy.

Don’t get me wrong, writing is a business. There are no two ways about it. If you want to continue enjoying your life as an author, you either have to make your money doing it or continue a second job. But it’s actually social work at heart. Yes, true, when you’re in the throes of creation it’s just you and the words, but after that you have to get out there. Even if you’re a traditionalist, you have to make face time with people at some point.

Recently, I cleaned out my Twitter. When I first got on it I would follow anyone who wrote. I ended up with about three hundred people at one point, but I didn’t enjoy it. My feed was full of folks either hawking their wares or re-tweeting whatever clever catchphrase someone else had come up with. That’s not interfacing with other people, that’s screaming at them.

I know, I know, this makes me sound snobby. That’s fine, I’ll wear it. I’d much rather see artists and friends talking about their work and their lives than have them always pushing the hard sell. At the end of the day, I would rather dialogue and learn from a few people than roll the dice and hope a few of my 50k followers buy my book.

I’ve been told time and again that a massive following is what sells books, but I think some people confuse re-tweets and Facebook likes with sales. I’m a firm believer that quality comes first. Write the best book you can. The second step is being gracious. Go out and be you. Talk to people. Meet folks. Write about what you do on Twitter and Facebook. Don’t take the social out of social media. It isn’t Craigslist or a Sunday morning market. Good salesmanship is important, but you become an infomercial if that’s all you have.

Make connections outside of your normal circle of friends. Not only will your life be better for it, but you’ll probably sell a few books too. Does it translate to instant sales? Well, no; but the truth is, nothing does. If you’re looking for the quick and easy way to make it in this industry, you’re going to wind up on your ass. (Or looking like one) There is no magic button. The people who got successful right off the bat were lucky, talented beyond belief, or both. You can’t bottle that. Be cool, and be yourself. People will always respond better to that than to hawking.

Success can’t be broken down into a formula. If it could, anybody who put in the work would be a success. Just keep producing quality work, connect with people, and don’t miss an opportunity when you see it. Writing is a long haul game.

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January 14, 2015 · 11:57 pm

Poetry & Prose

A good friend once told me, “No poets hang out with people who want to read their work.” And I find that to be shockingly true. If I offer a friend the chance to read my latest story, they jump at it. And while I offer it a lot less, the few times I’ve given anyone the chance to read my poems, they politely decline. (Or accept and never do.)

Maybe I’m just bad at it. That thought has occured to me. But even if I, or my readers, are really bad at poetry, there’s still a lot to be said for it. Someone once said that poetry is life. That’s a little dramatic for my tastes, but it is worth noting how long poetry has been around. It predates literacy. Back when we were still hitting things with clubs, poems and songs were how we passed down information. Some of the oldest written stories we have are written in poem. It’s not an accident. Poetry is a way in which people think, and a vehicle for them expressing that to the world. Some of my favorite prose is reminiscent of poetry. It rolls off the tongue and is pleasing to the ear, an essential quality in poems. (At least to my limited understanding of it)

Without meaning, poetry is just pretty words. Without a sound that catches the ear, it’s just prose in really short sentences. Poetry has to have both in order to work, and that’s where it can be of use to writers of prose. There’s something we need to talk about folks. Nobody puts down a book and says, “Man! He explained everything so much, and had so many unnecessary words! It was awesome!” There are two huge mistakes I see with newer writers. (Myself included until my editor beat me with a stick) We either use too many words in an attempt to fill in the gaps we don’t think the readers will fill in themselves, or we get so lost in the meanings behind the stories that we fall on our face with the actual language.

Poetry helps with both of those things. In poetry, having excess words is much more noticeable. Yes, plenty of poets still get away with it, but it becomes obvious in their poems. Long form poems that drag on and on about the same thing for a few dozen lines induce a mighty yawn, and then get put aside. On the flip side, poems so caught up in meaning that they become a garbled mess to listen to are cumbersome and unsatisfying. There’s something to be said for a hidden meaning, but when it’s so vague that you can’t figure out what it is, it stops being enlightening in any way.

Writing poetry can help prose writers see where they tend to err on either of those issues and adjust accordingly. In order to write poems with any talent at all, you have to read them. I started doing both, and I swear up and down it’s helped my prose writing a lot. I still suck at poetry, but it doesn’t stop me. Those are almost entirely for my eyes only.

If you’ve never considered it, give it a try. As a youngster, even as into writing and reading as I was, I never got into poetry. I considered it a poor man’s storytelling. Now, a few decades later, it’s just one more thing I’d like to go back in time and slap myself for. If you feel the same way now as I did then, please, try it. You might be shocked at what it does for your understanding of storytelling.

And as always, keep writing.

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January 6, 2015 · 6:47 pm

Excessive Character Descriptions (Stop It)

I love my characters. Despite most of them having huge flaws, and several of them being downright bad people, they’re a lot of fun to work with. In fact, the flaws make them more likeable than they would be without. A story about a good guy only doing good things isn’t much of a story. Internal conflicts and defining traits make characters relatable. They are the unique things that set them apart and draw them for us. A gay priest for instance, will instantly stand out. How does his religion affect his desire? Is he ashamed of it? Does he act on it? There are so many questions tied up that basic concept that it’s almost a story in and of itself.

Showing who a character is and shoving a readers face into it by telling are two very different things. Over explaining characters is a mistake I see a lot, even in more experienced authors. The gay priest becomes a good example of this. Just telling a reader he’s gay does nothing. It’s clumsy. Actions speak louder than words, even the most subtle actions. (An action just being subtle tells us about a character) Him thinking about what it all means, and showing us how it affects his daily actions, will always be more interesting than just reminding us he’s gay. While books are of course all words, how we use the words is what I want to talk about today.

I’m not saying that flat out stating things about a character is useless, just that it should just be done sparingly, and never on it’s own. In my second book I have two characters who have been around since the world went to shit ten years before. Sara is the gay daughter of a very conservative religious family. Kyle is a black sociology professor. Neither of these things are described until they are relevant to the story, and even then, they aren’t flat out stated. Why? Because informing someone of who a character is based on sexual preference and skin color isn’t actually telling you anything at all. Moreover, I like the idea of playing with the readers assumptions. If you filled in Kyle as a white character, would you look at him a little differently once you knew he was black? Would it change the way you see his actions? (Spoilers: It shouldn’t) I see a lot of stories in which sexuality and race are the defining characteristic of a person, but truth is, that’s bullshit. Does it change how those characters see the world? Of course. Does it tell you anything about them? No.

The only time Kyle’s race is mentioned is in a flashback in which a colleague accuses him of getting a job because of it. It’s hinted a few times in narrative, but never stated otherwise. Sara’s sexuality is only mentioned when a character asks her if she’s romantically involved with Kyle. She never says she’s gay, only offhandedly comments that Kyle isn’t toting the right equipment. If the book was about life in the city, I might have done otherwise. If the story was an examination of race and/or sexuality, I would explore it deeper. It’s not. It’s the tale of a group after the world ended. Their sexual preferences and skin color are only as relevant to one another as other characters/readers make it. It changes the way they see, understand, and feel things compared to one another, but all of that is expressed through thought, action, and dialogue.

It’s the same with any character. Unless someone being a red head is relevant, I don’t see much of a point in bringing it up. Kvothe in The Kingkiller Trilogy gets comments about his red hair a lot, and therefore his red hair is relevant. It also serves to show us that he stands out in a setting where red hair is uncommon. It makes him memorable when he is one of two characters who has it. Someone being 5’9 in a story of people who are all roughly 5’9 adds nothing. Telling us they have blue eyes and never bringing it up again is pointless. There are better ways of painting a picture. I seldom fail to notice when a book describes a character and does nothing with it. It’s word fat that can be cut to make a leaner narrative. (Always a good thing)

If someone gets teased for their weight, that’s a better way of telling us they’re fat. If they feel ashamed when they eat, you’ve done more to describe them than you would by telling us their pant size. (Inversely, saying that your character doesn’t give a damn what people think and eats what they want does the same, but paints a more confident picture.) If people call your character too-tall, or you mention he has to duck to get into doorways, that’s fine. If men are constantly showering your heroine with attention, we’ll understand that she is attractive. In any case, writing around the physical description serves more of a purpose than barreling through it the vast majority of the time. It gets us into the world without intruding on the narrative.

It’s just as true for personality, if not more so. Telling us anything about a character is weak. When I see. “Sara blushed, shy as ever,” it reminds me of a profile on a dating site. I like walk’s on the beach, and good friends. I’m very shy! “Sara’s cheeks heated up as the man smiled at her,” does the same thing. A character quickly losing their temper is better than telling us they have a short temper. Watching an addict make excuse after excuse for his behavior– watching him alienate everyone who loves him– is always better than just saying, “Aaron had a problem.” Making a character stand out is essential, but that doesn’t give a writer free reign to beat us over the head with telling instead of showing. Telling is at the heart of most bad writing, and this is no different.

Rushing is part of the problem. If you want to hurry up and establish a character in order to get on with the plot, you’ve already fucked up. A character should be revealed through the story. A good tale is more about the journey than the destination. If that wasn’t the case you could just sum up Lord of the Rings as, “Two hobbits threw a ring in the mountain, proving that the little guy can overcome anything. Also, technology is evil.” We should come to understand the character’s world view and who they are by how they handle what’s going on around them. They are as much the story as the plot itself. (Oftentimes more)

You’ve also got to remember, readers aren’t dumb. If you drop clues, they’ll get it. You don’t have to explain everything to them. If you don’t tell us what a character looks like, we won’t think it’s a faceless monster.

(Pictured: A non issue.)

(Pictured: A non issue.)

If your hero relates to a black woman being harassed by cops because he’s been persecuted as a gay man, we’ll understand their struggle. If it doesn’t matter, you shouldn’t bring it up anyway. Show us who your characters are. We’ll pick up on it. Promise.

As always, keep writing.

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December 27, 2014 · 9:21 pm

What Scares People?

Fears are at the root of horror, but fear is a really broad term. After all, some people are scared of spiders, while others are afraid of germs. Some people stay up at night worrying about their children, while others are concerned they will be failures across their whole lives. As writers, we use those fears for many purposes. We can show people how much it hurts our characters to lose their child in order to caution them about loving something while you have it. You can do it just to get them to shit their pants in terror. You can use it to show that death is inevitable, and it’s only a matter of time. But why is it that some things are so much scarier than others? Why do some films and books terrify us, while others are almost laughable, despite their horrifying monsters?

It’s not about the specific phobia, it’s the unifying concept of fear itself. Fear, at it’s root, comes from the unknown, and death is the ultimate unknown. Death is the trunk of the tree from which all fears blossom. (Be it your own or someone else.) Spiders and snakes might be unpleasant to look at, but it’s the things they can do and what they represent (Disease, poison, ugliness) that really scares us. Even fears of being stuck in a coma or trapped inside a casket at their base are fears of something similar to death. No longer being an actor in the world, just a passive participant who can’t do anything but live with that overwhelming horror until they finally (or never) do perish.

All of that said, as horror writers, we need to give that fear color. We outline it as killer clowns, ancient evil gods, zombies, and crazy ex-lovers. How we color it is how it affects our stories. After all, a book about an evil clown that just sorta sits around and plays with his tiny clown car isn’t actually a story at all. And here is where I think most horror goes wrong. We focus so much on the monster itself, we forget the fear. We make these grand scenes in which the monster does something scary, or the unwitting teenagers get chopped up, but we forget to make that gesture have impact. We mistake the actions themselves for horror.

Fear is in the character, not the monster, and certainly not in what it does. In order for the reader to feel that fear, we have to first create a character they can identify with inside the story. We then have to make that character face those fears (or refuse to face them), in order to bring the fear out of our character. In doing so, we scare the reader as well.

Let’s look at three examples:

The giant spider came at her and she screamed.

This sort of writing has all sorts of problems. Yes, we know there’s a giant spider, and we can guess that she’s scared because she screams. But a giant spider by itself isn’t scary, and while someone probably would scream when they see one, but that doesn’t tell us anything. Saying, “She screamed,” in a scary situation is right up there with, “He breathed.” Yeah, it can add something given the right context, but here it just falls flat. We’re also telling what’s going on instead of showing, which at it’s heart is a big part of what makes flat writing flat.

It came at her on eight massive legs, it’s gaping maw chittering, it’s countless eyes reflecting the moonlight overhead. Rebecca screamed and looked away, closing her eyes and hoping it wasn’t real. The sound didn’t stop, and the thing drew closer.

Better. There is more detail, and we focus more on working around the horror rather than steamrolling over it with our words. Your imagination can’t scare someone else as much as theirs can, you just have to lead them there. Let them fill in some blanks, but don’t overdo it. Descriptions can highlight aspects of something, but they shouldn’t be the only way you tell a story. Still, we barely touch on Rebecca herself. She’s just a participant right now, not the protagonist. We need to be inside of her head. Fear, after all, isn’t an action, but a reaction.

It walked towards her, its fangs gleaming in the dim moonlight spilling in from the window.

“It’s going to get you!“

“Please.. No!” She clawed at the wall behind her as it’s eight massive legs brought it closer and closer.

“It’s going to bite you and suck out all the juices until there’s nothing left!”

The darkness of its eyes had endless depth. A portal to a place where no sunlight ever shone.

“Because you’re a bad girl, Rebecca! And spiders get the bad girls!“

She fell to the floor, burying her face in her legs, rocking back and forth as the chittering thing closed the distance between them.

“Momma! Help me, please!”

 

Still not perfect, but you’re in a better place here. We see that Rebecca has been warned about the Spider, and that some deep rooted fear had put the idea in her head long before it even showed up. We know she’s afraid, and we can see by her reaction that fear is making her break down. Ladies and gents, you just got inside of the characters head without ever saying, “Rebecca though/thinks/wondered/etc…” We also give the scream depth. Saying, “She screamed,” can mean a million different things. People scream at concerts all the time, and my cat screams at me whenever it wants food. By showing what she screamed, we can see it’s a scream of horror without ever telling the reader so. Rebecca is afraid, and if you identify with Rebbecca, you are either afraid with her or for her.

That is where fear lives. Fear isn’t just the understanding that something is about to hurt, it’s the certainty that all the things we don’t want to think about are real. It’s knowing that every story ends with, “And then they all died,” if you follow it long enough. It’s the ultimate, “Even when you win, you lose.” Fear is in our understanding and reactions, not in the monsters, and our job as horror writers should be to drag those fears out of the reader and put them right in plain view. (Even if you never see the monster) You can’t do that by telling someone about a monster, and you certainly can’t do it just by describing something. It’s in tone and character more than the monster itself, and ultimately, it’s inside the reader.

And I guess that sums up my thoughts for today. Fear is an emotion, and emotion lives in the (wo)man, not the monster. Focus on how and why that character is scared, even if they don’t know. Your monster will never terrify someone as much as the their own psyche, no matter how hard you try.

And as always, keep writing.

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