This week’s questions is:

 What part of character creation do you find the hardest?

Book recommendation of the week is: The Occupation Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

My blog review and lessons learned How to use character occupations to deepen your characterization 

Grab The Occupation Thesaurus here.  

I was delighted to be interviewed by AG Billig on her Self-Publishing Mastery talks channel. We had an amazing chat  about adulting, parenting, creativity, routine and more. Watch here.

Find out more about today’s guest:

Website: www.alexbryantauthor.com 

Read his books: https://books2read.com/theidentitythief 

Instagram: @alexbryantauthor 

Facebook: @alexbryantauthor

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Rebel of the week this week is HB Lyne

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

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Thank you to new patron Cari Buziak. Also a huge thank you to all my current patrons, you help not only to keep the podcast running. You make me feel like my potty mouth antics are worthwhile. 

If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack 

That’s sacha with a C not an S

THIS EPISODE WAS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE

Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

The post 042 Character Psychology with Dr Alex Bryant appeared first on Sacha Black.

I had a date night recently and we happened to watch a film: London has Fallen. It gave me somewhat of an epiphany watching it. Horror in its most basic ‘blood and gore’ sense, is changing.

As a kid, I thought sword fights and giant spiders were terrifying. Granted kids find a lot of things scary but it wasn’t that long ago that adults cowered behind the sofa over the Blob, which barely caused me to raise an eyebrow recently, and only because it was that bad!

So why then, did I find this cheesy American action film only rated 15, so horrifying?

It’s because, horror, like society, is evolving. It’s thrown off its red paint blood shackles and picked up terrorism and child napping instead. We can learn a few lessons from it that can be woven into ANY type of genre.

The films plot in essence was: eye for an eye. America hit somewhere in some middle east country for some inane reason I forgot. A middle eastern guy wanted revenge cause the hit killed his daughter and maimed his family. To do it he (and his remaining family) orchestrated the murdered of the Prime Minster to get a state funeral. Then blew shit up in London whilst the American president was at the funeral. Apparently killing the British PM is easy, but the President is impossible…?!

Pretty trite for an action plot if you ask me. The only interesting thing was that it was based in London, (not something I’d seen before).

It was more than somewhat unnerving watching iconic British buildings get blown up. If there’s one thing the British are, its proud of their heritage and I can’t think of a recent film that’s blown anything other than the White House up. What I wonder is how American’s feel watching their iconic buildings get blown up? Are you too saturated by similar movies to be unnerved anymore or does it still have that shock and awe impact?

Fear isn’t just fear anymore, someone decided to re-write the manual and create psychological fear instead. It’s different, its more, its worse than normal fear. It makes the things that go bump in night look like fluffy teddy bears sprinkled in love hearts.

‘Psychology’, whether fear related or thrilled up, seems to be the new publishing black. Since Gone Girl went nuts, psychological thrillers are all the rage. Now it’s all The Girl on the Train and Before I Go To Sleep.

Horror has traditionally been about taking violence and gore to the extreme. For example, graphic descriptions like this one from James Howell‘s Guinea Pigs book which I read recently (post live 25th April 16).

“One of the hyenas clamped its mouth over her face and tore out an eyeball. The other animal chewed off her nose and lips. Her leg throbbed, the femoral artery ruptured and her life squirted away in thick red jets.” James Howell, Guinea Pigs, buy it here.

BUT, what makes this sphincter tightening psychological horror, is the context surrounding it. The woman being eaten was not only alive and awake, but had been purposefully paralysed (we also knew that was one of her worst fears) and had to watch herself be eaten alive by the hyenas. Read it again knowing she’s awake and watching her flesh get masticated and tell me it isn’t just that bit more gruesome and horrifying!

But what is it about the fact she was awake whilst having her flesh eaten that made it so psychologically terrifying?

1. Because we knew she didn’t want/was afraid of being paralysed
2. Because she couldn’t save herself – she was totally helpless
3. Because she was vulnerable
4. Because it had a particularly gruesome gore factor on top of the above

If you think about it, numbers 1 through 3 are states of mind – emotional constructs, and things that we can therefore ‘feel’. They’ve not actually got anything to do with traditional ‘horror’ as we think of it.

It’s only that the gore gives it its horror context.

Psychological horror is about the emotional state the reader is in, the gore you make them see as per the genre is almost irrelevant.

Here’s another example from another book I am reading currently (yes I read several at once, shoot me.)

“He was standing on the back of a charred sofa bed, swaying a little unsteadily on his short legs, with a makeshift nappy bunched up to one side and sagging to his knees.

“Mattieu!” Jérémy screamed again and scrambled frantically toward the child, one arm outstretched to grab him. A war whoop came from below, followed by the rattle of automatic fire and the screech of bullets ripping along the top of the flimsy barrier. Then came the duller thud that sent Mattieu spinning, spraying blood in a wide arc. Jeremy, still reaching up, caught the next three bullets and the brothers fell together, limp and strangely tumbled, in a light rain of chipboard and pine.” Jane Dougherty, Abomination buy it here.

This is perhaps only horrifying to anyone that’s a parent. But I actually had to pop the book down momentarily. Dead kids is hard and horrifying, at least to me anyway. But especially in the context of the book, where basically the whole world is coming to an end!

But what of the film, and how is this relevant to other genres? London has Fallen is psychologically horrifying because its was SO real, and so possible. Being that close to the truth in a society whose major broadcasts are fuelled by terrorism made me feel vulnerable. Sure, I know it was just a film, I know I’m perfectly safe in London, but it still sowed a seed of doubt. I could open my whole conspiracy can of worms now and talk about New World Order and how the film industry is brainwashing society to accept whats to come, but I won’t…or maybe I just did.

Moving on.

How does this apply to other genres?

Horror, fear, and terror aren’t reserved only for lovers of the night fan club. Characters in my fantasy novel need to be scared, REALLY scared, characters in romances need to be scared of losing their loves etc etc what better way to make it realistic than through psychological horror.

Making characters vulnerable and helpless/hopelessness, as well as playing on their fears and finally sprinkling with a little context fits in any genre, in any story.

Thoughts? Do you think horror is changing? How do you harness a readers fear? What are you afraid of?

If you liked this post and are interested in my non-fiction book on creating villains: 13 Steps to Evil, why not sign up for updates and even more exclusive writing content? Sign up here.

The post The Great Horror Hoax – How to REALLY Harness A Readers Fear appeared first on Sacha Black.

Does anyone else struggle to celebrate success? Maybe you ran a marathon, got a new job, published your first book, or even your third? Did you celebrate? Or like me, did you brush your last achievement under the carpet? And no,  sending a text to tell a friend, sitting down to have a cupper or casually dropping into conversation you latest accomplishments does not constitute a celebration.

So why do we do it? Why are so many of us completely incapable of accepting praise, or internalising our achievements and attributing them to hard work and a bit of sweat rather than ‘luck’ or external factors?

I spoke about this a little when I finished the first draft of my first novel because for once, I was determined to celebrate and take stock… and I did… for five minutes, and then I started writing Adultland! Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me? I took almost a year to write my first novel. It was an achievement of a life time because it took me one step closer to my dream. But did I go out for dinner? Did I crack open a bottle of champers? No. I wrote a blog post instead. Sigh.

This little mindset is an actual thing. It’s called Imposter Syndrome, and quite frankly it needs banishing to room 101.

Imposter syndrome as described by wiki is:

“…a term coined in the 1970’s by psychologists and researchers to informally describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. Notably, impostor syndrome is particularly common among high-achieving women,^[1] although both genders are affected in equal numbers.^[2]“

It is said that 70% of people will at some point in their lives suffer with imposter syndrome.

Almost every writer I know suffers from imposter syndrome. Lots of writers I know (myself included) can’t seem to call themselves writers let alone authors. Yet, they spend all their free time writing, and most, have published books. If you have a book published then you’re a goddamn author. Arguably, if you have written a book but it is not yet published you are also an author.

Where have these self imposed, self depreciating standards come from? And why can’t we seem to acknowledge that our successes no matter how big or small come from our own sheer bloody hard work?

The thing is those with the syndrome actually self perpetuate the problem. I’m using writing as an example, but this is replicable across a multitude of situations including work.

ONE

We work harder and writer longer to avoid being discovered as an imposter, which leads to praise because practice makes perfect, and the praise leads to more imposter feelings and fear of being found out.

TWO

Sometimes we write or engage in fads – like writing about writing, or writing in a certain genre or even using hashtags because we think thats the right thing to do and what people want to see, but if thats not what your passionate about that can lead to feeling like a fake – or an imposter

THREE

We seek out others, make writerly friends and build our blogging communities, but when you get praise you end up feeling that its because you’re friends or supportive of each other rather than being based on your skills and ability as a writer.

FOUR

The last way people with imposter syndrome self perpetuate is through avoidance. Its the one I find the saddest. Writers avoid displaying any confidence in their abilities. They believe if they actually believe in their abilities they will be rejected by others. So they convince themselves they aren’t intelligent and do not deserve the success in order to avoid rejection.

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I’m not sure I have the answer to this. What I do know is that when you are aware of something, behaviours in particular we are more able to control them. It’s like a habit, if you pick your lip, bite your nails or have a phrase you repeat and no one has ever told you about it, then the behavioural action is unconscious. When you are consciously aware of the behaviour you can modify it.

I really think it’s about time we writers, acknowledge our work as our own achievement. We need to recognise our skills but more than anything the enormous effort we go to, to produce the work we do.

I for one am going to try and celebrate the small things in life. Maybe I scheduled an entire weeks worth of posts which freed up enough time to focus on writing my novel for a week. Next time I finish a chapter I’ll slap myself on the back. Next time I submit to a comp I’ll toast to myself.

I’m going to be kind to myself, appreciate and celebrate the work I do.

I think you should too.

Let me know in the comments whether you celebrate the big and small things in life, and if you do, how?

The post Feel Like A Fraud? Give Imposter Syndrome The Middle Finger! appeared first on Sacha Black.