Cinderlite

Through a friend on DW, mxcatmoon, I discovered another community on DW. It's called spook_me and it's a spoopy writing challenge! It focuses on monsters (you get to pick which one appeals to you the most), and they give image prompts for you to choose from.

I picked Tentacle Monster (prompt image), largely because I'm planning to write for Homestuck. There's a character named Rose Lalonde whose username is tentacleTherapist. More than that, she's associating with eldritch beings/horrorterrors, which is what I'm basically going to be writing about. I'm really excited to be given the chance to write it, but it's definitely going to end up sloppy because it'll be my first time writing horror when I rarely even read it. It's just not a topic I'm very invested in, unless it's like Cosmic Horror or Psychological Horror. Those are the only types of horror that you'll ever find me indulging in, something like The Magnus Archives or Doki Doki Literature Club, or even Hatoful Boyfriend.

I've also decided to format my fic like an official pesterlog from Homestuck. Most of it won't truly matter because there will only be like 2 times in my short fic where the chatlogs are even available. It's mostly one-sided messages from Rose to Dave, and then Dave to Rose at the end. Still, it took me a good hour or two to figure out how to use and make the CSS for the A03 Work Skin to work the way I wanted it to. It's going to look great by the time it's done. I'm incredibly excited, even though I keep procrastinating the actual writing of the fic (I hope to finish it this weekend regardless). Even making this post is a form of procrastination. I think that's because it's a struggle to write a new character + a new genre at the same time. I'm afraid of failure, even though the only way to improve is to keep trying.

Does anyone have any advice on how to write horror, if you have any experience on it? I did some research on it, and learned a few things, but the best advice seems to be that if you're creeping yourself out, then it's a good bet that you're on the right track. I'm worried about that, honestly. I'm not afraid of Eldritch/Cosmic Horror, but some of the little hijinks that happen to Rose are things that would terrify me. (I'm of a mind that it'll start with terror and turn to horror as I write it, mixing subgenres). ♥

The best thing about the spook_me community is that they don't care what you include in your fic. Mine's going to have light Dersecest between Dave and Rose, nothing overly blatant or explicit, but it'll be there. I'm not sure how I'm going to include it yet, but I'm eager to see the dynamic develop between the two of them.