From: the cold hand of edsel bertha Subject: EXERCISE: Quiver and Quake Comments: To: the chattering teeth [WARNING! Contains explicit invitations to horrify and suggestions about things that could go bump! in your stories...] [only a few more days left in our Halloween Contest! Remember, take this sentence -What waited there was powerful and hungry and alive, alive, wild and -fierce and old and strange-- add your own touch of gore, twist of tale, or other mysterious seasoning, mix well with pitchforks, and send in that story or poem! 3,500 or less words, with the whimsical notation Halloween Sub: in the subject line. may the frightfullest entry win!] In recognition of the season, I thought we might try a little exercise in fear... 1. Think of something that makes you shiver a bit. Maybe a spider on your hand, or blood dripping on the floor, or something else like that. Think about the way it makes you feel, all the little shivers and quivers it gives you. 2. Take a scene. One of your characters is...putting their hand in a box? Reaching into the closet to get a coat? Opening the suitcase? 3. Okay? Write that scene, with the characters brightly chatting, wondering just where Annie went, and so forth. 4. And bring that hand out of the box with the black widow spider perched on your wrist! Or pull out that damp coat--and watch the blood spill on the tile floor. Or maybe twist that lock open, lift the top of the suitcase, and POP! goes the weasel? No, Annie! 5. Refine that last part. You want us to jump, but you also want us to feel the fear, the sweat breaking out on our forehead, the shiver that runs down your neck and into your collar, the very physical sensations that go with that particular fear for you. Maybe the spider on your hand makes your arm go numb--put that in the scene. Maybe the blood dripping makes the background turn into a black-and-white montage, with only the bright red drops still in color--put THAT in your writing. Make us feel terror. Show it to us. And that sudden shivery shake that wells up in the middle of sleep will make us recognize the master of nightmares--you horror writer, you! Very simple--nice normal scene, then the sudden introduction of the element of horror. Use your characters to scream, to fall backwards, or whatever--and make us JUMP! For those still looking for scary elements, a few suggestions: bats, birds, other flying things mice, rats, snakes blobs, slugs, slimy bits and pieces body parts. especially independently moving ones (hands, hearts, etc.) burning, energies, lightning, ... dogs, cats, predators--werebeasts! insects, spiders, scorpions living dead, monsters, mummies, zombies parasites--sickness, illness, etc. phantoms, ghosts, hauntings vampires, warlocks, witches, cannibals vines, trees, etc. especially if they move disturbed graves, crypts, tombs various ways of dying--beheading, live burial, chain saw, dismembering, being eaten alive, burning, hanging, impaling, the rack, being sacrificed, being skinned, mutilation... And for those who have read this far, and still want a new one-sentence seed for their writing this fine friday... "It screamed when I hit it the third time," she said. There you go. Who is she talking to, what is "it", what did she hit it with, and so on and so forth? Did you hear something snickering in the corner? Nah, must be my imagination...or maybe the muse of the season? *yeesh--now I'm going to have to sleep with the lights on* tink