/lit/ - Literature

>>20808966
boo

Any anon willing to share their horror writing? I’d love to see what writers interested in the genre are coming up with, especially amateur authors. I am considering delving into horror. Drafting a novel rn that dips into it but never taken the plunge cause horror stories seem so hard to properly execute.

>>20809069
I wrote one but I’m not ruining my chances of being published by posting stuff here, sorry.

>>20808966
The Telltale Heart by Clive Barker is the best example of horror to date.

>>20809073
Lmao
>>20808966
The best horror appeals to the brain stem and uses the readers imagination to fill in the certain blanks. Thus the best horror acts as a mirror into the reader.

>>20809073
Pussy

>>20809150
I don’t identify enough with a website that is legit just rehashed Futaba code to want to post my stuff here, especially when publishers won’t touch anything that has been posted online before

>>20808966
I've always enjoyed trying to write horror stories without monsters, where the monster is implied but never revealed or described. Just the protagonist trapped in the abyss, seeing monsters solely because he cannot bear to imagine there is nothing there with him. I can't find any way to satisfyingly end them, so I never try to publish them.

>>20808966
I keep resorting to lovecraftian cliches (which are everywhere now) and it's pissing me off.

>>20809185
Have it end with him seeing what he thinks is a way out, but as he comes closer he realizes that the light at the end of the tunnel is a actually monster.

>>20809069
I'd like to but there's no chance I will translate any of them to English

>>20809069
One of mine is getting published soon, no can do anon

>>20809248
By whom?

>>20809277
A small literary journal

>>20809398
Too scared to say the name? Yikes

>>20809069
I'll share a small excerpt of my current project, Body Horror: The Carnal Rapacity. I'm thinking of shortening the title to just the second part. It's still just a rough draft. I hope it's not too disappointing.

"John," mumbled Alice, slowly awakening from a deep sleep, "Will you open the window? It's hot in here." She smacked her lips and rubbed her eyes, slowly emerging from the fog of slumber. To her surprise, she noticed the sheets were wet. "Hm...?" There was a slight movement on the far corner of the mattress, the source of which was emitting a strange sound similar to a mouth slurping a melted ice cream cone. "John? Is that you?" She groaned and tossed the covers, groping in the dark to find the source of the dampness. The liquid was warm and had an peculiar quality. It was slimy. Sticky. Viscous. Alice was startled into lucidity and she reached for the lamp by the bed. The light revealed an unbelievable scene, and Alice was struck into a stupor, unsure if she was still dreaming. Sitting on edge of the mattress was her husband, John, doubled over, gnawing on the bloody stump where his penis once was. Mouth wet with blood, he sputtered, "Look, honey! No hands!" She shrieked and flew towards the door, but John was quick as a flash and grabbed her by the hair. "Suck my stump! Suck it, cunt!" It was by that time she noticed her husband was a three hundred foot monster from the jurassic era. "I'm gonna need about tree fiddy," he said.

>>20809069
sure

The girl's natural bitch face looked much more annoying now that they were lost. How they'd gotten lost, or why they had ended up together Greg couldn't figure out. There was this noise that followed the group of students he and the girl were supposed to be with, this constant babbling punctuated by laughs or shouts. That along with the incessant crying of seagulls had gotten on his nerves, so he decided to wander away down the beach when the teachers weren't looking. As he got further, the noise faded out and the dune beside him grew bigger and rockier until he was walking alongside tall white cliffs of jagged stone.

He went for while without seeing another soul, but just as he was thinking he should turn back, he found Mel, a girl from his class who he knew only by name. She was sitting in her bikini on the beach with her feet snug in the wet sand, letting the water lap at her ankles. They both looked at each other for a moment, surprised. Greg hadn't seen anyone else from his class go this way, especially Mel whose mushroom bob of black hair was easy to spot. The glare of afternoon sun bounced off her glasses, obscuring her eyes, but he saw on her mouth the cold and dull expression she always wore. The face of a class know-it-all.

"What's down that way?" She asked, nonchalantly. She didn't really care.

"The rest of the class," he said, slowly, as he wasn't sure what she was asking.

She squinted behind her glasses and twice tried and failed to spit out a sentence before saying, "I just came from that way," She pointed down the way Greg had been heading, "That's where everybody else is last I saw."

They stared at each other and neither spoke. She got to her feet. Puberty had stretched her vertically but not horizontally, so the girl now standing looked coltishly long and narrow. She crossed her gangly arms and held her elbows.

"Did you mean your friends are down that way?" She said in a raised voice, "I mean the way you came from."

He shook his head and then looked down the long stretch of beach where he had come from. No matter how he strained his ears, there wasn't even a distant buzz of human voices, only the swish of the waves up and down the beach. And where had the seagulls gone?

>>20809073
can you at least give us a title so that if ever it does super well i can read it then?

>>20809521
naturally

>>20809185
He gets out and lives to tell the tale. It's never confirmed if the monster was real or not, but the idea that it might be haunts him until he dies

>>20809069
What is your quasi-horror novel about? What are you thinking of doing if you do take the full plunge into horror?

>>20809657
>>20809678
I like these, for what they are

>>20809657
"John, will you open the window? It's hot in here." Alice rubbed her eyes, emerging from the fog of slumber. There was a movement on the far corner of the mattress and the sound of a mouth slurping a melted ice cream cone. She noticed the sheets were wet. "John? Is that you?" She tossed the covers, groping for the source of the dampness. The liquid was warm - and slimy. Sticky. Viscous. Startled, Alice reached for the lamp and revealed an unbelievable scene. John was sitting on edge of the mattress, doubled over, gnawing on the bloody stump of his penis. Mouth wet with blood, he sputtered, "I'm gonna need about tree fiddy."

>>20808966
How to get scared Lit? I do not understand Horror books and movies. I get scared when a play horror vidya, but I feel nothing about books. The fact that it is just a writing totally kills the mood for me.

Ga4pd

I can't believe how bad horror writers are , all you have to do is create a scary story that's both entertaining on the surface for the casuals and it only gets more entertaining the more you dig
Silent hill 2 managed to be the only horror medium that respects itself and the audience
it's not easy but if a group of japs managed to do it you can too!
give me monsters that are mysterious and scary and unrelenting with characters that don't suck ass and let ME connect the dots between the monsters and what they represent
please recommend me stuff like that <3

>>20808966
i real problem i keep having is feeling rushed by wordcount limits from magazines, like i don't have enough room to develop characters in a way i find sufficient while also keeping room for scary stuff, and so the characters get condensed. maybe it's a skill issue

>>20809110
>by Clive Barker
hmm

>>20808966
what book is the picture from?

>>20810894
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

>>20810930
thank you!

>>20809924
cause of death: redacted

>>20810539
I dont get scared reading books either but I love horror books. They have a certain mysterious undertone (even the ones that are explicit about the horror which is weird) that I find really appealing. Its different from actual mystery to, I dont find most mystery nearly as interesting. maybe its just the subtle flip from the mundane to the viscerally terrible or unknown couple with the tone that is so comfy.

>>20810816
I think you gotta learn to do more with less. I've been writing horror flash fiction so it can be done.

>>20810539
Helps to use your imagination.

>>20809657
Well. That escalated quickly.

>>20809220
Lovecraftian horror feels a bit played out at the moment I agree. Particularly after Bloodborne and that whole wave. Body horror is evergreen imo, if you're looking for some horror material to work with.

>>20810823
Lol fuck

>>20810823
I 100% meant to say the Hellbound Heart not Poes shit

>>20811020
Post link fag

>>20810539
>"Imagine horror to get scared"

Anon, you contaminate this board with your genius

>>20811020
>"Imagine horror to get scared"

Anon, you contaminate this board with your genius

>>20809069
No

Oh I have one! Here is a three line horror story I just made up, completely original:

>>20812528
Held in the distended hook of his hand, he saw
From the staring stalks of his own hollow head
The eyes of his Father.

>>20812528
why, my peanus weenus of course

hahah!

it's my weeeeeenus peanus! hahah

>>20808970
I am scared, anon

>>20812536
this becomes scary, if you imagine it held and waved atop a spiked stick like that scene in Zola's Germinal

>>20808966
>The sunrise at the LAN party.jpg

>>20812558
In case you have never read it:
(...)
But the women had another revenge to wreak on him. They moved round, smelling him like she-wolves. They were all seeking for some outrage, some savagery that would relieve them.

Mother Brulé's shrill voice was heard: "Cut him like a tom-cat!"

"Yes, yes, after the cat! after the cat! He's done too much, the dirty beast!"

Mouquette was already unfastening and drawing off the trousers, while the Levaque woman raised the legs. And Mother Brulé with her dry old hands separated the naked thighs and seized this dead virility. She took hold of everything, tearing with an effort which bent her lean spine and made her long arms crack. The soft skin resisted; she had to try again, and at last carried away the fragment, a lump of hairy and bleeding flesh, which she brandished with a laugh of triumph.

"I've got it! I've got it!"

Shrill voices saluted with curses the abominable trophy.

"Ah! swine! you won't fill our daughters any more!"

"Yes! we've done with paying on your beastly body; we shan't any more have to offer a backside in return for a loaf."

"Here, I owe you six francs; would you like to settle it? I'm quite willing, if you can do it still!"

This joke shook them all with terrible gaiety. They showed each other the bleeding fragment as an evil beast from which each of them had suffered, and which they had at last crushed, and saw before them there, inert, in their power. They spat on it, they thrust out their jaws, saying over and over again, with furious bursts of contempt:

"He can do no more! he can do no more!—It's no longer a man that they'll put away in the earth. Go and rot then, good-for-nothing!"

Mother Brulé then planted the whole lump on the end of her stick, and holding it in the air, bore it about like a banner, rushing along the road, followed, helter-skelter, by the yelling troop of women. Drops of blood rained down, and that pitiful flesh hung like a waste piece of meat on a butcher's stall. Up above, at the window, Madame Maigrat still stood motionless; but beneath the last gleams of the setting sun, the confused flaws of the window-panes distorted her white face which looked as though it were laughing. Beaten and deceived at every hour, with shoulders bent from morning to night over a ledger, perhaps she was laughing, while the band of women rushed along with that evil beast, that crushed beast, at the end of the stick

>>20812528
That was his chance to get out of here
Now it's gone, and he remains
I begin my work on his new test.

>>20812567
Hehe

>>20812573
Is it a driving test?
Driving is scary

>>20812587
6 points 11 points 14 points
He's failed again
He is trapped. He cannot escape

>>20809988
It’s about a jaded neuroscientist, teaching at a community college, who tries to subject a person to complete sensory deprivation from birth.

>>20812572
This scene resembles almost some rite of the maenads from far antiquity. Amusingly I only just noticed (later down) one of the women is even named Philomene. It is like Titus Andronicus

How to write horror:

I got this strangely enough from an architecture essay, that was investigating how poorly designed buildings could haunt people lol.

The essay also makes an interesting point, that horror arises from a desire to understand deviance.

In this way horror actually represents tolerance, a willingness to look.

To write horror, you must know what horror is:
- doubles and clones
- exquisite corpse
- only partially dead (important: distinct from actual death)
- reiteration, reflexivity (repetitions, creepy mirror...)
- homunculus or gigantism
- trojan horse (or think parasite)
- distortion and disproportion
- solidity vs stereotomy (means cutting 3d objects. in a non-architecture context, I think this means dismemberment)

the essay is here
https://reallifemag.com/what-lies-beneath/

To invoke horror you need strongly to use associations, you need to conceal something. It is literally TS Eliot objective correlative theory lol, you cannot say

THE MONSTER IS FRIGHTENING!
REALLY FRIGHTENING!

because this is comedy. So what you need to do is engineer some subset of word associations that evoke an environment or fearful situation, without saying exactly what it is... the uncertainty is part of the horror. You need to defamiliarise the words to the point of fear.

>>20812534
So for example what I did here was basically retell Oedipus lol. But without using any words like murder or blood, because that is too obvious.

So I think the threeline horror story idea is, try to retell some horror scene. But do not use any obvious words like ghost, murder, zombie, vampire, blood, gore etc.

The additional gothic approach: always make it about family. Family is horror, because for most people it invokes regression to either childhood or childrearing, the most frail and vulnerable states of the human condition.

>>20810978
I feel precisely the same way, what are some of your favourites?

>>20810214
Bad pacing. Too paint-by-numbers. The clunky wording of the original puts the reader in a hazy mental fog like Alice finds herself in, and the slower pace helps build tension.

>>20812774
I really like a few stories by thomas ligotti (night school, the red tower, the town manager, gas station carnivals). poe (fall of the house of usher, the black cat, the cask of amontilago). lovecraft (the thing on the doorstep, dreams in the witch house). algernon blackwood (the willows, the wendigo). william hope hodgeson (house on the borderlands). Short stories like that. Im trying to remember the last horror novel I read, I think it was house of leaves which I thought was half good (the navidson record and the descent into madness of zampano were cool but the formatting was only fun for the first 100 pages. then it got tedious and the protagonists story ark was winy and lame). what are some of your favorites?

Is supernatural horror still as effective as it was in the 1800’s/early 1900’s? Of course, timeless works such as The Willows by Algernon Blackwood still give me chills, but that feeling probably nothing like the terror it must have inspired when it came out, but I wonder if the ghost story is still a viable way of producing spooks.

>>20813821
ghost stories will always be relevant

>>20812647
>>20812667
These are good posts, thanks anons

>>20812688
I liked it, the three line horror exercise seems like a good one

What qualities make Ted the Caver such a terrifying web story? How does the author manage to evoke claustrophobia and terror so effectively?

Barbara slept with open eyes and dreamed about the book. It lay on the kitchen table, its red cover standing out against the dark wood. The kitchen was the kitchen, but different––like the worn face of an old coin. Etc.

Anyone got any body horror recommendations? The best I've read was 2 Arms 1 Head.

>>20812647
This is spot on. I'd add "injury" to it, as well-written sentence or two about how a character got their hand impaled by nails can definitely make someone shiver. Like body horror, but still in the realm of "I 've seen this before in a gore video/real life"

>>20810930
>>20810894
Specifically the edition illustrated by Mervyn Peake, of Gormenghast fame

>>20815542
Gormenghast, Titus Groan are incredible phantasmagorical visions of the grotesque (I have not read Titus Alone). To fully appreciate Gormenghast, you should read Titus Andronicus, and contemplate this quote

TITUS. Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me.
These are their brethren, whom your Goths beheld
Alive and dead; and for their brethren slain
Religiously they ask a sacrifice.
To this your son is mark'd, and die he must
T' appease their groaning shadows that are gone.

Later, his daughter ravished, her tongue cut out and hands amputated, having slain his own son and then having cut off his own sword hand in a failed attempt to prevent another son's execution, and concocting an elaborate revenge plan to murder and bake the decapitated remains of a Barbarian Queen's progeny in a cannibal pie - this soliloquy from Titus would go on to inspire Mervyn Peake to write Gormenghast.

>>20810823
What is wrong with Clive Barker? I thought he was cool.

Definitely better than S. K*ng

>>20812647
I will read this, but I awear to lord, if this doesn't help me write Spooky Spooks, I will find you and I will call you a PooPoo Face

>>20808966
Mix in something that you can't look away from alongside something of a perceived inevitable and boom perfect horror.

INTRO: PONDS are in everyone.
In everyone we share a breath, like a pond shares water.
In everyone we meet like the streams meet a lake.
In everyone we gather like the lakes meet the river.
In everyone we unite like all rivers to the ocean.
In everyone we share an ocean.
In everyone, in time, we share.


CH.1: UNDERSTANDING is ever ending.
A pond where waters end will carry on in another direction.
In the other direction, waters meet, crashing in a state perplexed.
Perplexed until the waters calm, then make their way together.
Pond to pond, the waters exchange, to be the same may they never.
Each pond makes a lake, each lake makes a river.
Each river meets the ocean. An ocean ever ending.


CH.2: ACCEPTANCE is never empty
An ocean of water is made of currents to end in every direction.
In every direction it feeds the waters of rivers, lakes and ponds.
The ocean moves from seas to skies, showering and flowing throughout.
Every river, lake and so on, share between the ocean’s bonds.
One ocean to gift all, each river gifts each lake.
Lakes gift to ponds, each separate but never empty.

CH.3: PATIENCE is evermore
Water in everything. Water Flowing. Time is its only direction.
A guide to flow is the currents, the rivers the lakes the ponds the snow.
The still waters may take a little longer to meet and flow.
The water which all carries from ocean, a piece of all water’s reflection.
All water to flow with all water and be still.
All water to become currents evermore.

>>20808966
the best kind of horror is realised horror

Here is another three line horror story attempt of mine:

>>20812534
That night she dreamt of honey and carrion, the hives
Amongst the bare ribs of lions. This is where your god has brought you, he said.
And gestured at the stake in the sand.

>>20815669
gargh it is not three lines the format got messed up argh THE HORROR

>>20815601
Wow thanks anon. I thought I knew a lot about Peake but don't remember ever coming across this. I'll have to give Titus Andronicus a read.

>>20815651
Can you elaborate on that?

>>20815747
So something to remember about Titus Andronicus - it is one of Shakespeare's earlier plays. It was apparently incredibly popular at the time and successful, probably like the Hostel film of its day lol. A lot of critics despise this play, they think it is just too grotesque. For me this play is becoming more and more relevant given the world we are in today.

All the mutilation and dismemberment in Titus Andronicus, the entire atrocity exhibition, is really about a simple message: how the warfare of the purportedly civilised society of Rome has dismembered and disfigured human dignity, literally made the father kill his own sons. There is at one point a scene in the play where Lavinia points out a passage from a book of Ovid (she cannot speak, her tongue has been cut out). It is the Philomene scene, it hints at the identity of her torturers. But if you think about it, what Shakespeare is really saying: we cannot see the atrocities, until they happen to us, by then it is too late. You can only find answers and echoes in the voices of the past etc, in history, and its forgotten record of atrocities.

Also, Steve Bannon in investment banker mode financed the Julie Taymor 1999 film Titus. It is a good film (it changes a few things, but it does not detract at all from the message). Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal Lecter... see, cannibalism, good casting) is in the film, he overpowers everyone with his dramatic delivery. If you cannot handle reading Shakespeare, just watch that instead.

>>20814875
The Troop is a great read. I was surprised at how well the characters were written, captures the mindset of young teenage boys perfectly. The authenticity keeps everything grounded as the story gets more unpleasant.

How are M. R. James' ghost stories?

>>20816991
Great language, great fire place feel, slow pace.

What difference does prose make for horror? I’ve noticed that more modern horror authors such as Stephen King have much prose than the masters such as Poe or Algernon Blackwood.

Why is Algernon Blackwood terrifying while Stephen King is so-so?

>>20815868
Alright noted thanks.

>>20809069
Sure fren

I was so bored to tears that I had been barely listening to Kierra when I spotted the knife laying on the pavement. The glistening steel in the streetlight caught my attention as I diverted away from the middle of the conversation towards this new kindle of potential excitement. I stifled a soft gasp as I saw the crimson taint of blood on it and judging by the bright color of it, it was fresh blood. I knelt down and saw something else on the handle; Etched into it was the poorly spelled word "eviscerate". I admit, it took me a brief moment to apprehend it.

I felt something touch my shoulder and I almost jumped as I turned to see Kierra standing before me with shocked eyes. I had been so captured with what I saw I had forgotten about her completely.

"What the hell," She murmured, softy.

I look away from her back to the horrid knife and that's when I noticed the faint trail of blood leading into the forest. I was no tracker and i've never hunted before in my life so I wasn't tempted to follow it.

Not that I needed to anyways to see the figure lying in the brush, his bare feet sticking out and I did a double take at them. There was definitely color striated claws attached to it's toes. My thoughts rushed into a frenzied, almost schizophrenic mania. How the hell did we not see any of this?! What was happening?!

As I turned to Keirra to tell her to call 911, she was already running down the beaten path back to the parked car.

I felt an immediate shot of volcanic anger pour into my being. So motherfucking much for 'till death do us part'.

But the anger was forgotten as soon as it appeared as I heard something completely alien to my ears. It sounded like attempted speech but I wasn't sure as I looked back at the brush, at where the new sound was coming from. I didn't dare make any sound as I stood frozen in a terrible anticipation of dread and horror. As I stared into the now shivering brush where the figure was, I suddenly remembered the knife. I looked down and quickly bent to grab it, my fingers just managing to curl around the handle, before feeling something slam hard into me.

I fell to the ground with an audible smack before feeling a searing pain burn into my neck as sharp needle points pricked into it. I gasped in reflex and felt a heavy body on top of mine, I saw fists go up into the air and slam down onto me as I managed a choked scream. My hands shot out at random and tried to grab at anything to attack the attacker before finally winning the grand lottery as I grabbed what felt like the knife. It's blade cut into my hand as I held it fiercely and realized what was the matter before grabbing it's handle and slamming the knife into the attacker repeatedly.

>>20819142
Not bad, got a few thoughts on it. First, the prose feels a bit overdone, although that may just reflect my personal tastes. Second, I was expecting some sort of unreliable narrator thing, because he seems a bit all over the place. Things don't exactly feel real. With that said, I liked it and want to know where it goes. Is this part of a short story or a novel or something?

>>20819221
It's part of a short story. I admit it's not my best, I just thought of it on the spot at the time. But if you can stomach this putrid site called reddit, then you can read the whole thing here
https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/uvqifa/a_moments_dynamic/

>>20819376
Hey anon, thanks for sharing. Looks like you've been pretty dedicated to writing short horror over the last few years, well done. As for your story, it's a nice enough sketch but it does feel a little paint by numbers / cliched. I'd encourage you to experiment a bit more, get off the beaten track. Of course genre constraints are going to limit you a bit, I understand that. Anyway, keep it up!

>>20819432
No problem and thanks anon. I'll keep your words in mind!

>I was so bored to tears that I had been barely listening (...)
I feel like the statements "I had been barely listening" and "I was so bored" overlap. Isn't boredom implied in not listening (as the default reason)? Maybe the overlap is not one hundred percent, but it's big enough to make the sentence feel a bit empty. "bored to tears" is very clishé.

This has been a good thread, glad I made it. Better than /wg/ in any event. Plus horror's shown itself to be the most vibrant lit scene of the past 15 years by a long shot.

>>20816991
almost all of them are slow burn to campfire story type pay off at the end. fun and comfy but hardly the best out there. 6.5 to 7 out of 10, good fun, great if you want to spook others by telling the stories yourself.

>>20818429
Its the difference between setting the tone implicitly vs explicitly. the best horror has a prose style that evokes a sense of dread while depicting the mundane as well as the fantastically horrible. I have heard people describe kings style best by saying that he has bad horror prose but decent normal people romantic prose, so when the horror hits it hits hard, but it isnt a constant in the story. in other words he is a decent slice of life writer who likes to hack horror into his stories.

>>20820551
I've always figured that this was why pure horror novels are so hard to write, because you've got to keep the pressure on the whole time without it getting stale. Much more doable with short stories etc.

>>20820591
I dont know about having to have the pressure on 100% of the time. some times its good to take the pressure off only to reapply it after you make your audience feel secure. that way the story is more like a roller coster than a down hill bomb. the important things are that you keep the tone in mind when telling the story, you learn to apply it subtly so that it can build and wain without being jarring, and that you can do it implicitly so you can avoid the lame cliches (for example "then I saw it. thinking back on it now, I wish I hadnt.")

>>20820625
Yeah that's a better way of putting it. The thing of building and easing the tone strikes me as particularly hard for horror.

>>20821100
I feel that but Im sure with enough practice and experimentation it can be figured out, especially with some good examples to draw inspiration from.

>>20821269
Yeah that's it. For the moment I'm keeping it short, makes the tone easier to manage.