Category: writing inspiration

Crossing Subgenres

~ allenhuntsman ~ 3 Comments

I learned this writing exercise from Tim Waggoner’s instructional book “Writing in the Dark.” It’s a fun way to explore the muscularity and flexibility of story ideas, and a great way to uncover unique ideas.

First, pick one of those story ideas you’ve stowed away in a notebook somewhere. Here’s one of mine: What if a man discovered a strange alien monolith buried in the middle of the desert and becomes possessed by alien entities as he dabbles with it? Initially, it seems to fall in the science fiction/creature horror subgenre. But…what other areas could the idea cross into?

Step two is just that: crossing over. What if this were a psychological horror story instead? Perhaps he’s a professor who finds some Native American artifact, becomes possessed by his obsession with it, and the alien entities are the symptom of his madness instead. What other places could we take it? If this is a supernatural possession, we can cross over into the realm of cosmic and body horror as well, overlapping subgenres.

I highly recommend Tim Waggoner’s book, especially if you write in the genre of horror. However, I think some of the writing exercises from his book are applicable in other genres as well.

Let me know what you come up with using this exercise.

Why Do You Get Writer’s Block?

~ allenhuntsman ~ Leave a comment

Today I want to discuss a writer’s arch nemesis: writer’s block. Writer’s block has many minions of many shapes and sizes. Today I want to take on a few common reasons.

One common reason is lack of interest in what you’re writing. Perhaps you’re trying to chase the marketplace, hoping to catch a popularity wave. Or maybe you think friends and relatives will be pleased by what you’re writing (much of the time, I’m afraid, you’ll discover they aren’t pleased). However, every time you sit down to work on a project, your blood is cold. Every sentence, paragraph, plot point, and character seems stilted, trite, awkward, and lifeless. Sounds like you need to pick a new subject, something that excites you to sit down before the computer or notebook. Readers can tell when a writer doesn’t believe in or enjoy what they’re writing.

Another reason is becoming overwhelmed by the size of a project. It’s hard to sit down imagining the next several months to a year you will spend working on a novel. Such thoughts can overwhelm the writer. As Stephen King once said, I paraphrase, it can feel like floating along the ocean in a bathtub. Instead of looking at the full scope of the project, break it down into smaller tasks. Today you will write one scene, or you will write for one hour. Over time, that one hour per day will prove to be quite fruitful.

Perfectionism is another common cause for writer’s block. Do you find yourself reediting the same page over and over to the point that you and your test readers are ready to rip their hair out? Do you overthink an idea to the point it turns to mush? It’s time to calm down and quit being a control freak. Even some of the most popular movies and works of fiction exhibit imperfections. I started to make a rule for myself: four drafts, and then I’m done; it’s time to send it into the world, even if there is a wart or two. At least I’m being productive, which is more important to me than being perfect.

How do you tackle writer’s block?

Goodbye to Writer’s Block: All Thanks to the Pomodoro Technique

~ allenhuntsman ~ 2 Comments

Over the past several months I was struggling with writer’s block. Everything I tried to write crumbled like wet paper. Recently, I came to realize the reason for my writer’s block, and the means of fixing it.

Writing a story can be quite a task, especially if it’s a novel. You could end up spending three months to a year writing a novel. The enormity of the task can be overwhelming. I found even the task of sitting down for a few hours to work on a story to be overwhelming at times.

Then I discovered the Pomodoro Technique, the method that turns time into your ally, breaking it down into manageable chunks. The technique is simple:

Step One: Pick a task (in this case it’d be writing).

Step Two: Write for twenty-five minutes straight.

Step Three: Take a five minute break.

Step Four: Repeat four times.

Step Five: Take a thirty minute break.

Keep in mind, you don’t have to follow the process stringently if you don’t want to. For instance, you could break your twenty-five minute sessions throughout the day in any way you want. Instead of sitting down before my notebook thinking to myself, “I’m going to write an entire story,” or “I’m going to write for four hours,” I said to myself, “Let’s go for twenty-five minutes and see what we can get down on paper.” Twenty-five minutes didn’t overwhelm me in the way four continuous hours would have. I could manage twenty-five minutes. After my five minute break, it was easy to say to myself, “Hey, I can do another twenty-five minutes, can’t I?” I sure could. It’s a simple psychological trick that gets you focusing on each tree one at a time as opposed to the enormity of the forest. If you’re stuck in the rut of writer’s block for similar reasons, I highly recommend the Pomodoro Technique. It’s a great way to build a writing routine for yourself, and the fun quotient increases as well.

Twenty-One Horror Classics I Must Read

~ allenhuntsman ~ Leave a comment

“Read a lot, write a lot.” That’s the number one rule for the aspiring writer. You just got to do it. Practice. Try different approaches. Try new things that challenge you.

Reading is invaluable to the writer. It’s sort of the stream of life for the writer’s imagination, the place he or she goes to fill their head with more words when their well has run dry. We read to be inspired by the work of others, to learn from their narrative strategies. Then we turn to our own work in progress and find new ways to utilize those strategies, to give them a unique spin with our own voice.

Horror is my mainstay, and when I came across this list in the revised addition of the On Writing Horror Handbook by the Horror Writers Association, I nearly shrieked in excitement like a giddy child. Some of these I’ve read before and certainly deserve a revisit. Some will be a new experience for me. Here we go:

1. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

2. Dracula by Bram Stoker

3. The Ghost Pirates by William Hope Hodgson

4. The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James

5. Burn, Witch, Burn! by A. Merritt

6. To Walk the Night by William Sloane

7. The Dunwich Horror and Others by H.P. Lovecraft

8. Fear by L. Ron Hubbard

9. Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson

10. Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber

11. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

12. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

13. Richard Matheson: Collected Stories, Vol. I, II, III

14. Hell House by Richard Matheson

15. The October Country by Ray Bradbury

16. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

17. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

18. Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg

19. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

20. The Stand by Stephen King

21. Watchers by Dean Koontz

Happy reading!

Nightmare Shard: An Exploration Of Minds

~ allenhuntsman ~ 4 Comments
Image by Ivan Aleksic

Some minds are like a beautiful meadow, a field of grass dotted with colorful flowers. Thoughts flow like a crystal clear stream. A mind of pristine concinnity.

Others resemble a grotesque dungeon, a constricting space of stirring shadows and rattling chains. Thoughts wander blindly like prisoners, wailing at walls of misgiving and despair. A mind of haunted asymmetry.

DeathGroundWriter Workshop: Exploring Your Character’s Private Room

~ allenhuntsman ~ 2 Comments

Image by Aaron Burden

You’ve probably heard this writing metaphor before when it comes to characters: what is depicted on the page is just the tip of the iceberg, hinting at something more vast and complex beneath the surface. The vast structure beneath the surface of what you see depicted in a scene is the backstory of that character: what came before to make them who they are in the present. Even if those buried traits do not rise to manifest themselves directly in a scene of your novel, they still serve as an indirect influence in subtler ways.

I like to imagine my character alone in their bedroom. Maybe this room is a small studio apartment, or one of many in a grand mansion. Perhaps your character is a drifter staying in motel rooms or sleeping on strangers’ couches. Whatever the scenario, how they interact with that room will tell you a lot about them. Are they extremely tidy? Do they carefully fold each piece of clothing and stack it in the same place every night? Do they feel near panic at the slightest sight of dust and must clean it immediately? Why? What influences them to be this way? Did a family member from their past exhibit this same behavior? Does your main character still hear this family member’s demanding voice echoing in their mind? If the room is tidy or messy it reveals a lot about the character’s personality and backstory. Explore it.

What else can you describe about his/her private room? Does abstract art hang on the walls? If so, what does that tell you about your character’s way of thinking? Perhaps instead they like to display pictures of family. This tells you family is special to them. Why? Is their a particular family member they value most? All kinds of character revealing pathways to explore in the art and decorations throughout the room.

There’s one important question I always ask myself when exploring a character’s private room. This question really penetrates the heart of them, the juicy center: what secrets do they conceal in their room? It may be an object hidden in the closet or under the bed. What does that object mean to them? Why is it kept hidden? This question can lead to some fascinating answers about your character, and sometimes the answer is the course of a plot, which happened to me while writing a short story called “The Butterfly Girl” (unpublished). I discovered that a hat belonging to her father was very special to her, because it triggered precious memories to her mind about fishing with her deceased father when she was a child. Later she uses the hat as part of a conjuration ritual in an effort to contact her deceased father’s spirit.

The secret doesn’t have to be an object. It could also be an activity they practice alone that nobody knows about. Either way, exploring your character’s bedroom is an invaluable tool for character development and backstory.

Happy exploring!

Nightmare Shards: Fragments Of What Could Be

~ allenhuntsman ~ 3 Comments

I’ve heard it said that we dream every night, but we usually don’t remember our dreams. Seldom do I remember mine. Only a handful of times can I recall the details of my dreams vividly, and the few fragments I do remember seem like they would serve as inspiration for a really good horror novel, or collection of shorter stories. I’ll tell you about them, and perhaps in my examination, further inspiration will germinate.

Back in high school much of my writing consisted of emotional ejaculations all over numerous notebook pages–free verse entries I claimed to be heavy metal lyrics. Me and a group of school chums started a power metal band called Codessa. I took on bass playing duties and lead vocals. Day in and day out, while I should have been taking notes and completing homework, I spent most of my time indulging in my teenage angst, writing songs with titles like, “Internal Bleeding”, “A Demons Crucifixion”, and “Can’t Deal With Myself When I’m Dealing With You”, and composing nauseating doggerel with lines like this, “Your hypnotizing scream. What does it mean? The confusion of this is making me insane. In this world of the mentally ill. All souls I’d kill. Kill the will to feel.” So on and so forth. Stilted bursts of trivial vexation.

No surprise, the band didn’t make it. We all graduated high school and went our separate ways, as the story always goes. Then one night I had the dream. I know what partly inspired it. Having seen the movie The Ring not too long before my nightmare, I’m sure the wretched figure crawling out of the screen in the movie played an influencing role.

I found myself in a derelict church. Cobwebs festooned the corners of the ceiling and draped over the abandoned pews. I stood at the end of the aisle, near the pulpit. Waiting. A storm raged outside. Rain and wind pummeled the building. Thunder rumbled. I saw her, a woman in a white wedding dress, face covered with a veil, slowly walking toward me, hands behind her back. I waited as the lightning flashed, highlighting the scene with flickers of electric blue. Soon she stood before me, removing the veil with one emaciated hand, revealing a desolate gray face that hissed at me with horrid anguish. No eyes in that gaunt skull, just pits of darkness. She then revealed a dagger with her other hand and stabbed me repeatedly. The last thing I saw before waking up was the sight of my bleeding body curled up on the ground.

I was stunned. I remember every detail with near perfect clarity. The dream is responsible for my renewed efforts at writing fiction. I abandoned my efforts of writing lyrics for heavy metal music after experiencing this dream. I wanted to complete the story the nightmare image suggested. I’m still seeking the answers.

Years later, another nightmare hit me like a high velocity bullet. I woke up feeling like I had been physically indented by the dream, as if something had entered me. Again I wandered about a nearby church. There was a small graveyard just behind the church building. A sickening feeling of terror overwhelmed me as I walked amongst the gravestones. All of them were marked with strange graffiti (by golly, I think I just discovered the title for this story–strange graffiti), alien symbols of crosses, swirling circles, and bizarre shapes covered each grave marker. I wanted to scream, but for some reason I couldn’t. It was too overwhelming for me. I wanted to run away, but the nightmare held me in that unholy, desecrated place. I awoke gasping, as though I had escaped a room filling with poisonous gases.

Nightmare shards, fragments of what could be. In time, my friends, these tormenting visions will be made whole.