Subject 21

I watch the sunset bleed.

Its outer edges drip like molten gold, and I hear the hiss of steam before I ever see the clouds rising from the arctic snow.

“Told you,” Raens says. He stops short of me, slings his rifle over his shoulder and folds his arms. He surveys the sunset like it’s a regular occurrence – an everyday thing. “There’s a reason this place is under lockdown.”

“So it’s true,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. “No one’s left for three years.”

“Not a soul.”

Great question. Thanks for the ask!

Fear is such an interesting emotion. Oddly enough, its closest relative is humor. Both rely on subverting expectations to be fully effective, and both work best with 'punch lines' you don't see coming.

In that sense, I think the best way to explore fear is to consider what your audience is most unnerved by followed by what they'll least expect. Mash these together, and you have an effective scare.

For example, if you're writing sci-fi, your audience might be spooked by the concept of alien abductions. The typical set-up involves a flying saucer descending and little green men zapping up pedestrians and then probing them in... Well, places.

But what if, instead of a flying saucer, it was a solar eclipse?

And what if everybody who looked directly at the eclipse had aliens beamed into their minds?

What if the aliens didn't abduct people, but people inadvertently abducted aliens, and now both parties suffered as a result?

You see what I'm getting at.

These psychic entities could torment a person in a language they can't comprehend (maybe shrill tones, high frequencies, insanity, etc.), and all of it kicked off because they broke a social taboo by looking at an eclipse.

This is a rough example, but it shows how you can flip concepts on their heads using familiar concerns. Throw your audience off their game.

Nobody's scared of vampires or werewolves because we know too much about them—they're a solved equation. To really terrify readers, you need to unbalance them. Present them with a problem without an answer. Force them to discover the answer for themselves, and in the process, they'll explore all the horrible ways it might go wrong.

The real trick giving people the proper puzzle pieces. Once they have them, they'll build their own boogeyman, one more terrifying than words could ever conjure. Stephen King might have said that... or maybe it was somebody else.

I don't remember.

Point is, you'll never beat out a person's imagination when channeling their greatest fears. Your best bet is to give their psyche a bit of ammunition, then sit back and let human nature do the rest.

monks meditate. writers brood. these are fundamental laws of nature, people.

idk why, but the closer we get to autumn, the more i wanna move to a cabin in the woods and spend all night writing by candlelight

the best words are those that come to you in the quiet moments, that knock upon your heart and whisper, 'open up.'

words are magic.

they're spells, incantations that can make people laugh or cry. they can manipulate thoughts. forge belief. at their most powerful, words can change the future and reshape the past, but despite all this, we pretend that magic isn't real. that it's make-belief.

but it is real. it's all around us, a never-ending influence on our emotions. when we read the wrong words, we feel alone and hopeless, we feel angry and scared. but when we read the right ones, we elevate ourselves. we grow.

this is the truth: we are all sorcerors of this reality, and every day, we're given a choice of which spells we cast. we can encourage, or we can devastate. we can choose love, or we can choose fear.

our choices matter. they matter because we are more powerful than we realize. they matter because our words shape our world, and they shape the worlds of those around us, too.

they matter because words are magic.

and so are we.

The military base doesn’t exist.

Not officially.

It’s a rusted out corpse of abandoned hardware, a veritable graveyard of fallen soldiers and crumbling structures. Hidden twelve miles deep in the jungles of South America, there’s no reason anybody should be here. None. So why did I find a woman half-dead on the ground?

It’s a question I want answered.

She’s sitting across from me. Her eyes are downcast, her blouse is torn and her copper cheeks are flecked with spots of red. I don’t know if the blood belongs to her or somebody else, but I figure by the end of this, I’ll have a pretty good idea.

writing tip #3133:

can't write a novel?

start with a word.

then add another. and another. keep going like that until sentences start to dance and weave, until they latch onto one another and refuse to let go.

and whatever you do, don't stop.

and whatever you do, don't think.

trust me.

just write.

because this is how it happens.

this is how stories are born: one paragraph at a time. so keep adding lines until those lines start to blur, and then step back, bring them into focus, and add a few more.

and before you know it, something greater will have taken their place.

and before you know it, you'll realize that novels are really just words.

and sure, some of those words might be nicer than most, but at the end of the day, that doesn't change what they are.

words.

and this thing you've written?

this apparatus of sentences, this web of paragraphs that you've ripped free from the storm in your mind?

well--

that's just words too, isn't it?

so stop worrying about the outcome, and start falling in love with the process. writing a novel is tough, maybe even impossible, but words?

those are easy.

so start with one, and see where it takes you.

writing tip #940: stop rewriting your first drafts. they're meant to suck. fling shit at the page like you're a drunk chimpanzee and enjoy the process.