Finding resources and writing horror

A comfort break from the webinar

Good morning (well, it is while I'm writing this). Here we are in the second week of January and I am getting to grips with my writing goals. Having the 'Legend Planner' is helping me stick to my monthly goals. I have submitted to three publications already (two short stories and two poems), and I have a fourth lined up, but I have to wait for the submission window to open later in the week.

I completed my piece of short fiction before the end of last year, and it is now sitting before I attempt a first edit. Written in small sections and not in order, I might have to tweak how this run. I've not been back to the other piece of fiction I was writing yet as I'd forgotten how long it takes to find a relevant piece and a relevant publication to submit too! I have, however, edited a couple of stories.

When working on my writing I tend to start in the morning and finish at lunchtime or before, depending on what I am doing. My brain works better that way.

How many of you have heard of Reedsy? I came across them last year when I was taking a course on how to self-publish. I subscribed to the email posts, but recently I have been looking at all the things they do, and in today's email I see they have a name generator, book title generator and a plot generator. Now that sounds fun. There is much more, like weekly prompts and a short story contest, and Apps for writing. I think I need to take a closer look at some of these. I note there is a formatting App, but having scanned through quickly, I haven't yet seen the advantage of this. KDP have their own formatting template which I was happy with. Maybe if you publish elsewhere it might me useful. But if you use this App, or others and can shed light on it/them do leave a comment.

Likewise, if you use other resources that you would recommend, please feel free to comment on those too. I am sure there are loads of things out there I don't know about.

On Saturday I took part in a three hour webinar on How to Write Horror, through Writers Online. I signed up out of curiosity and to expand my horizons. I found it very interesting, especially the sub categories. Horror isn't something I have ever considered writing. I have visions of those awful films I won't watch like Saw. I'm not into gore. However, I have written around the edges with ghost and gothic. These seem to be sub genres of horror. The webinar looked at forming characters and we used images of people to answer questionnaires about the protagonist and antagonist. There was an exercise on atmosphere and another picture prompt for an item before trying to write a scene. People shared. I didn't because a) I know so little about horror (and the monster picture prompts did nothing for me!) and b) it took me too long to form any scenes. Others obviously watch and read horror, so I was the oddball. Fair enough, I'm happy with that!

I found it enlightening, and it did help me establish what I would feel comfortable writing, which was a bit more than I expected. My out and out horror writing is slasher and extreme horror, so no gore from me. But if you want frightening, I might just be able to do that.

So, that my friends, is my round-up of the week. Do leave any comments about anything I have said and we will catch up again soon.