#horror-writing — Public Fediverse posts

Why Read and Write Horror?

Even though it's not a genre for everyone, author T.J. Payne considers why people read and write horror stories.
The post Why Read and Write Horror? appeared first on Writer's Digest.
https://www.writersdigest.com/why-read-and-write-horror

#Genre #Horror #WriteBetterFiction #horror #HorrorWriting

🖤 February's darkness found its champion.

Nenad Mitrović's The Hangman — a story that redefined how a childhood game ends.

Congratulations to every writer who dragged us into the dark this month. You never disappoint. 🕯️

#DarkDescent #HorrorWriting

man & girl go to mcdonald's to get a filet o fish and a milkshake. as they're exiting the drive-thru girl says, 'baby, you forgot the milkshake'
'don't worry honey, i'll go get one'
and the man leaves the car

while the man is gone the girl happens to look out and she sees a manhole next to the car is missing its cover. she looks down and in the sewer there is a man

#horrorwriting #creepypasta

Shaving: A Greenland Diaries Flash Fiction

Nigel couldn’t believe his beard had gotten this long.

It was down to his chest, tangled and frizzy. It was black, but almost brown at its feathery edges. He could hear his father yelling at him to trim it, his high, almost husky voice echoing in his head. His father was ex military. He loved the clean shaven look and forced Nigel to follow that hairless motif, even though Nigel hadn’t picked up a weapon until the Drum started. Now, he always had one with him. The ravaged green world demanded it, even with the Drum destroyed and the Unnamed no longer hunting him at night.

Nigel wondered if his father was still alive in the nursing home in Saint Louis Park. He had barely been alive before the Drum. It wouldn’t make any sense for him to be spared.

Nigel had been lucky to hide in his Golden Valley home for most of the apocalypse. He had left for a few weeks to join survivors fighting an Unnamed by a lake that kept attacking them. It had been a hard fought battle. Only Nigel and a few others survived. None of them had the appetite for further confrontations with the Unnamed, and they all retreated to their former hiding spots. Those had been the last people he’d spoken to, except for a band of soldiers passing through who told him the Drum was destroyed, and the Unnamed were nonviolent unless attacked.

Nigel felt his dark, reflectionless face. His features were gaunt, weathered by a lack of nutritious food. His cheeks were flat, his nose large, his forehead dry. His lips were cracked and bloody in places. The weather had been fine. It was the fear eroding his flesh. The constant worry of the Unnamed returning, or a crazed Reanimated storming through the neighborhood.

Slowly, above his white bathroom sink, he began to trim his beard. There was no electricity for his razor, so he resorted to a pair of orange handled scissors he kept in his office for trimming documents. They were sharp, but loud as they crushed the fibers between its blades. In minutes, most of his beard was reduced to a prickly edge beneath his fingers. He sighed.

“I guess it’s time. They said it was safe.”

Ahead of him hung a wool blanket, yellow and brown, duct taped to the wall in miscellaneous streaks of silver adhesive. It dangled just above the sink.

It blocked the mirror.

He’d put it up during the first week, when he noticed the shadows watching him. Now, with the Drum destroyed, survivors passing through told him mirrors and reflections were back to normal. They no longer held phantoms.

He slowly reached for the fabric, then stopped.

“I can’t do it.”

He walked out of the bathroom with a shrug.

“I can’t believe it’s okay.”

I really enjoy writing about these quieter moments in the Greenland Diaries, where characters are learning to live again after a horrifying ordeal that shook the foundations of humanity. These bits of flash fiction give me ample opportunity for it. You can learn more about the mainline series right here. Thank you for reading!

#author #blogging #bodyHorror #books #cosmicHorror #darkFantasy #darkFiction #decay #fantasy #fiction #flashFiction #grief #hauntedLandscapes #horror #horrorWriting #identity #isolation #liminalSpaces #machines #memory #monsters #obsession #patrickWMarsh #poeticProse #prosePoetry #psychologicalHorror #shortStories #speculativeFiction #survival #teraryHorror #theGreenlandDiaries #transformation #trauma #weirdFiction #writing

I Can’t Leave: A Greenland Diaries Flash Fiction

Rob had memorized the pattern of abandoned cars in the parking lot outside the building. A red van, a blue truck, a few white sedans, silent and sun faded, lay scattered across the velvet sheet of greenery in the basin around the office tower he’d been hiding in. He’d been fixing a boiler in the basement when the Drum began. Most of the building was empty that first night. Everyone had already left for the day. Only a handful were torn apart beneath the Unnamed’s obscene claws.

And then the office was empty.

Except for Rob.

He had always imagined himself different at the end of the world. At six foot five, all elbows and height, with an unkempt beard dropping to his chest and a perpetually worn Minnesota Twins cap, he’d figured he’d look the part. He had thought of himself as stereotypically male, chew, flannels, and a quiet, lumbering confidence. But when the monsters arrived and stalked the hallways, he learned quickly how fragile that image was. Back on his grandfather’s farm, he and his friends in their local anti government militia had joked that if the world ever collapsed, they’d be ready.

But once the Unnamed descended and began mutilating and resurrecting their victims, the only thing Rob grew adept at was hiding.

For someone so tall and broad, sneaking through the office should have been impossible, yet he’d shaped himself to its shadows. He learned to bend beneath desks, wedge between bookshelves, flatten against cubicles. Even when the Reanimated drifted through, he found ways to slip past them, though other survivors told him not to fear them. Those survivors were nothing like him. They weren’t afraid of the shadows. They fought them day and night. He’d heard their skirmishes echoing through the Drum. Even now, with it finally over, the night outside carried only wind, insects, and the soft groan of the building settling.

How were they so brave?

A few survivors had passed through recently and told him he could go home, or even find work with the Reestablishment. But he couldn’t force himself to leave the gray block of the office. Every time he packed his few supplies, slung the rifle he’d taken off a dead soldier, and started toward home, he barely made it a few blocks. A shadow, a rattle of debris, a shift in the wind, anything could spook him, and he’d sprint back to the familiar corners of the office floor.

Day or night didn’t matter.

He just couldn’t leave.

Thank you for reading my flash fiction from the Greenland Diaries. In this story, I wanted to show a character you might expect to be strong because of how they postured their identity, but when the apocalypse appeared they realized it was all an image without integrity. They weren’t actually built for the conflict they thought they were seeking. Monsters are an excellent mirror.

#author #blogging #bodyHorror #books #cosmicHorror #darkFantasy #darkFiction #decay #fantasy #fiction #flashFiction #grief #hauntedLandscapes #horror #horrorWriting #identity #isolation #liminalSpaces #literaryHorror #machines #memory #monsters #obsession #patrickWMarsh #poeticProse #prosePoetry #psychologicalHorror #shortStories #speculativeFiction #survival #theGreenlandDiaries #transformation #trauma #weirdFiction #writing

THE MONTHLY CRUST SEPT-OCT EDITION
Shut up and read about my life and what I've been working on for the past month and a half! #tabletopgames #boardgames #horrorwriting #fictionwriting #scifiwriting #writingcommunity #howmanyhashtagsdoineedtobepopularonbluesky

http://mutantpizza.net/2025/10/15/the-monthly-crust-sept-oct-edition/

Submitted a 1,600 word "religious horror" story today. After watching some youtube videos on this particular sub-category of horror films, it feels good to have a name for it. I'm fairly new to writing horror so I have a lot to learn. #horrorwriting #horror #writing

I registered for this course just now. I’ve been eyeing it for a while. I hope it’s good! https://www.unb.ca/cel/enrichment/leisure-learning/writing-horror-online.html #HorrorWriting #WritingClass #Horror #WritingCommunity

"Horror Writing Prompts" by Rayne Hall.
This book is crammed with fertile seeds for fiction that will thrill, disturb or scare your readers. Each prompt comes with a wealth of suggestions for how you can develop it to suit the kind of story you want to write. Plant those seeds into the rich ground of your own imagination, and watch them grow.

Paperback ebook. mybook.to/HWP

#writing #fictionwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity #horror #horrorwriting
#halloween

One thing I like about many of the stories in American Horror Stories is the way a lot of the horror has its seed in some unmet need of the protagonist and in some way, they make a choice to fulfill that need, a choice that can lead to a bad end. It's a working theory of the story structure and I'm thinking about it as I watch Tapeworm, the third episode of season 3. #horror #storytelling #horrorwriting

😊 Sulu the book-reading black cat recommends:
"Writing Gothic Fiction: Learn to Thrill Readers with Passion and Suspense" by Rayne Hall.
E-book or paperback. http://mybook.to/Goth

#fictionwriting #writing #writingtips #cats #rescuecat #luckyblackcat #catsofinstagram #writingcommunity #writingcommunityofmastodon #writerscommunity #writerscommunityofmastodon #horrorwriting #horrorwritingcommunity

I love the horror writer's technique of allowing the reader to be in on what's going down in a story before the point of view character figures it out. I'm reading Anne Rice's The Witching Hour and I am marveling at such techniques as well as others she uses to create various reactions in the reader. Magic, really, but also of course skill. #HorrorWriting #HorrorReading #WritingGothic #AnneRice

@Melbin_Mike I've written fiction re: mental illness from both a first-person singular point of view and a first-person plural point of view. If one is portraying a mentally ill person/people via 1st person, there is an opportunity to demonstrate what you are describing by how the narrative is told. For example, does the narrator illustrate this both/and capability? However, sts lit magazines may shy away from publishing this.

#HorrorWriting #MentalIllness #bipolar #publishing #writing #writers