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3 Things You Need To Create The Perfect Gothic Story With @Icysedgwick

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Gothic TalesOver the next month or so I am trying to finish my book so I can do the underwear eating exercise of handing my book baby to beta readers, *gulp*. I wanted to keep to two posts a week, but couldn’t with all the extra writing. So a few lovely friends have offered to step in and take the reigns for some of the posts. Be nice, play gentle and happy clappy rounds of applause please.

Today the lovely Icy Sedgwick, who came to the Bloggers Bash 2016 is talking to us about an area of her expertise: gothic stories. Icy is studying a PhD in film studies looking at space in haunted houses, so she really does know a thing or two about this.

If you want to know some neat little tricks to perfecting gothic tales, check out Icy’s tips below: [Read more…] about 3 Things You Need To Create The Perfect Gothic Story With @Icysedgwick

The Great Horror Hoax – How to REALLY Harness A Readers Fear

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horror hoaxI’m terrified of spiders. I know. So cliched. If it helps, I am also terrified of boats – although the reasoning behind that is a little foggier given I swim like a fish – I must have drowned in a past life.

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. [Read more…] about The Great Horror Hoax – How to REALLY Harness A Readers Fear

Writespiration #66 2 Sentence Horror Story

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2 Sentence Horror Story
One of my ongoing series is about villains and creating the scariest, most evil of all bad guys. A friend showed me this concept somewhere else so I thought it would be nice to break up the NaNo-age with a bit of a trip to the dark side.

Two sentences… make em as scary as you can… Here’s mine:
[Read more…] about Writespiration #66 2 Sentence Horror Story

6 Terror Tactics For Really Scary Villains

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Villains are meant to be scary. I don’t know about you, but I’m finding them increasingly weak in popular culture. So here are 6 tactics to help you create scary villains.

I first watched the Exorcist when I was about 9, I don’t know whether it was the projectile green vomit or badly done makeup, but I wasn’t impressed. If I’d watched it for the first time now, it might be a little different. I was skeptical about everything back then. These days I’m only skeptical about some things because I know there really are things that go bump in the night. Scary movies, books or stories, have a bigger effect on me now—yes, I leave lights on, scan rooms and ceilings and ensure there’s a hockey stick within reaching distance!

I’m my own worst enemy and can never please myself. I started this series because I wasn’t happy with my villain or the villains in popular culture, guess what, I’m still not. So I started investigating what makes a really scary bad guy. This post aims to identify what sets apart your Lemony Snicket from your Michael Myers (Halloween). [Read more…] about 6 Terror Tactics For Really Scary Villains