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Guest Author Rebekah Webb on Writing Sympathetic Victims

9/30/2013

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Today, I have Wicked Woman Writer Rebekah Webb here as my guest, who has agreed to offer her thoughts on writing sympathetic victims in horror.  Thanks for stopping by!

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So, imagine you’re a writer (if you already are this won’t be hard and you most likely are since you’re reading this article.) You have a character who is slated to have less than stellar luck in the strife department, in other words a victim. For the sake of argument, let’s say this character lives in the land of short story. Driving through the land of short story is like the land of novel, but with less scenic stops and almost no bathroom breaks.

So, you’re writing a path through the land of short story and you hit upon a problem. How do you make this character impart a feeling of sympathy to the readers who will be heading down the path you’ve started to bushwhack through the jungle (and jumble) of words piled on your paper or computer screen. This is what is called making a sympathetic character.

There are plenty of ways to make a character sympathetic. First, you can give the character an extensive backstory, so that the reader feels like they knows the character and cares about what happens. The problem with this is, when’s the last time you felt you knew someone just because you knew random details about their life? Letting the reader in on every bit of a character’s life can result in an infodump that feels like someone ate a blog and threw up on the page. Readers learn that the character was a dentist, that they loved Sprite but not 7-Up, they have an estranged spouse with kleptomaniac tendencies towards cigarette lighters and all about their secret wish to own a horse mane salon. And they learn all this in a 1,000 word flash fiction piece.

Now the reader doesn’t know the character as much as they have a laundry list of details about them. They in turn get annoyed with the character the same way they’d get annoyed with an irritating relative that tells them all about their gallbladder operation, or the intricate details of porcelain clowns they’ve collected over the years. Then the reader starts counting down until the character and their droning details finally kicks the bucket.

If that doesn’t work out, you can try to make sure the reader knows that the character is one that deserves their sympathy. This is done by making them a saint. If they have so much as a parking ticket, then readers will never feel sad that they were burned to death in a fire or decapitated. And if you don’t give information about their past misdeeds, the reader will forgo having sympathy in case they were a bad person. The problem with this is, when was the last time you drove by multicar accident or read about a plane crash and thought “I can’t feel sorry for that mother who just found out she has cancer because she was rude to a cashier three years ago” or “Gee, I shouldn’t be sad on the off chance that the victims might be secret serial killers.”


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Writing characters by giving the readers another laundry list, this time about their sins gives them the feeling of being a priest doing confession for the kind of person who lists every time they picked up a dollar off the sidewalk without taking it to the police to find out if anyone reported it missing. This leads to the same issue as with the life story spam.

If you go the saint route, you get the self-proclaimed sainted person who always talks about their good deeds and gives out advice like lollypops, whether the advice actually fits or even makes sense. This isn’t the kind, quiet person who earns your respect, since to make sure the reader knows your character is faultless, you end up making them anything but kind and quiet. With the halo on their head and spotless soul wrapped around their shoulders, you’ve created a walking cliché, looking more like a reject from a badly written picture book than an actual human being. Readers will most likely mentally replace your character with annoying neighbor who only ever talks about how many dimes they’ve dropped in plastic bin at the end of a checkout counter rather than the kind teacher who comforted them after their childhood dog died.

If you really want your doomed characters to be sympathetic, treat them like any other character. Let the reader get to know them the way they get to know any other character. Give them a backstory and incorporate the amount that fits the length and style of your story. Give them the same personalities and flaws you’d give your other characters. If you want a kindhearted character craft them to be like the kindhearted people you’d see in real life.

And above all, use language that elicits sympathy. Language is a song, with each word a single note carrying the emotion and image you want to convey, working alone and together to create a chorus and symphony that can say anything you want, with just a few turns of phrase.

“They left him there, on his hands and knees trying to throw up, their deep laughter echoing long after they left room, sealing him once again in darkness. Nothing came out of his mouth, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t come out sooner or later. Travis wrapped his arms around himself and tried to rock the fear away.”


For more information about Rebekah Webb and her writing, visit her website.

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Guest Author Sumiko Saulson on Wicked Women Writers in History

9/23/2013

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Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Wicked Woman Writer Sumiko Saulson, who has agreed to share her thoughts on Wicked Women Writers in History--most notably, Mary Shelley.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

Sumiko: One of the great things about participating in the Wicked Women Writers contest (hosted by HorrorAddicts.net) is being surrounded by other women writers in the genre. This year, there are thirteen women involved in the contest. Thirteen is a number that is strongly associated with horror due to the superstitious belief that it is an unlucky number. That belief was so strong at one time that some buildings older skipped the thirteenth floor (in fact simply calling it the fourteenth floor). Some people fear the number thirteenth, a condition called triskaidekaphobia. For a horror contest, however, it is very simpatico that there should be thirteen contestants in the year 2013.

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Although women have played an important role in both modern and historical horror writing, it is a role that is not consistently acknowledged. A search on the “top 10” or “top 20” or “top 100” horror writers of all times will bring up a variety of lists,  many of which are exclusively male, or male dominated. Some (like this one) use genre labeling to purposely exclude female writers from the lists by categorizing as dark fantasy or romance. The few lists that do include women writers often have only a few, whose names we see repeatedly, such as Poppy Z. Brite and Anne Rice. The appearances of other names are few and far between, and early women genre pioneers are notably absent.

This bit about genre placement is interesting. The Gothic era of writing is widely considered to be the beginning of modern horror fiction, as epitomized by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe.  However, many female horror writers from the 1800s who were long considered horror writers have been erased from that history in popular (if not academic) culture by simply assigning them to a different genre.

The literary tendency to categorize women writers in any genre but horror is perhaps most conspicuous in the case of Mary Shelley, who was not only one of the most influential women in the history of horror writing, but is considered by many to be the author of the first novel in the modern genre science-fiction with her “Frankenstein,” published in 1818. Jane C. Loudon, author of “The Mummy,” published in 1827, was also later assigned to the science-fiction genre. Mary Shelley’s 1826 work “The Last Man” is also considered science fiction, and apocalyptic fiction.

In fact, these women are considered pioneers of the genre, having written in it before such a genre existed under that name. However, something interesting happened to them that did not happen to male horror writers whose works could also be considered part of another genre: in an act of revisionist history, they were gradually removed from the horror genre.
This seems particularly bizarre when watching horror films: if cinematic interpretations of “The Mummy” and “Frankenstein” are almost universally considered horror, then why wouldn’t the sci-fi classics remain in the horror wheelhouse in literature? If Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend” and Stephen King’s “The Stand” are both able to occupy a spot in the horror genre while also standing in their primary (and obvious) genre slot as apocalyptic fiction, who can’t Mary Shelley’s “The Last Man” perform the same trick?

A lot of this has to do with the sometimes random or unclear nature of genre labeling, and the often political nature of genre label selection. Once a horror label has become attached to a writer (like Stephen King) then his writings, even if they are another genre (like apocalyptic fiction) take on the horror label associated with their author. The same is true in reverse: if an author is known as a science fiction writer, like Octavia Butler, if she writes a work such as “Fledgling” which could also be considered as a work in the gothic horror or gothic romance tradition, it will still be most likely shelved under the science-fiction genre associated with its author.  There are plenty of talented female horror writers, but they are often found under different genre label identities within the speculative fiction wheelhouse of science-fiction, horror, and fantasy.

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About the author:

Sumiko Saulson’s blog “Things That Go Bump In My Head” (www.SumikoSaulson.com) focuses on horror fiction writing and features author interviews, writing advice, short stories and editorial pieces. She is the author of three novels in the science fiction, horror and dark fantasy genres, “Solitude,” “Warmth”, and “The Moon Cried Blood”. She is also the author of a short story anthology by the same name as her blog. A published poet and writer of short stories and editorials, she was once profiled in a San Francisco Chronicle article about up-and-coming poets in the beatnik tradition. The child of African American and Russian-Jewish American parents, she is a native Californian, and was born and spent her early childhood in Los Angeles, moving to Hawaii, where she spent her teen years, at the age of 12. She has spent most of her adult life living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Guest Author Shauna Klein on Inspiration

9/16/2013

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Today, Wicked Woman Writer Shauna Klein has stopped by to share the inspiration behind her writing.  Thanks for stopping by!
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My inspiration for my short stories come from my "what if" imagination. I think of scenarios out of the clear blue sky (or in the middle of the night) and wonder, "what if?" One of my favorites of mine is about a woman who hears the emergency broadcast system on her TV and what happens afterwards. My husband and I were having an ice cream sundae at the bay and some people were next to us just hanging out and listening to the radio when the test of the emergency broadcast system came on. I was thinking to myself, "What if it were really an emergency? Would they come over to us to talk about it? Would we rush home or call our family first?"  A million things went through my mind and it made for my story, We Interrupt This Program. In fact, that one had to be one of the easiest to write and the fastest because I had the entire scenario in my head. That's not always the case and especially not with the Wicked Women Writer Challenge. With that one, I was given a scenario or tools if you will, to work with and making everything fit was exactly fitting for the name, a challenge. 

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About the author:

Shauna Klein is a freelance writer, website designer, photographer and overall Jill of all trades who lives in sunny and stormy Florida. She's married with children that have fins, feathers and fur.

She is a member of the Horror Writers Association.  She has a short story in the Cemetery Dance book In Laymon’s Terms, a blurb in the book The Ice Limit by Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child, and a few short stories that can be found at Amazon.  She was published in Death Head Grin in March, 2012, and there is a review of her contribution, “Peaceable Kingdom,” in Schlock Magazine.


She is currently working on two stories and brainstorming for a few more.  For additional information on Shauna Klein and her writing, visit her website.

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Wicked Woman Writer Chantal Boudreau on Disasters in Horror

9/13/2013

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Happy Friday the 13th!  Today, I have fellow Wicked Woman Writer Chantal Boudreau, who has an impressive portfolio of horror stories, as my guest.  Be sure to check out her story at HorrorAddicts.net, as well as her numerous works available through Amazon.
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It’s a Calamity: Disasters in Speculative Fiction

Apocalypses are popular nowadays – mainstream popular.  You look at the success of shows like The Walking Dead and responses to offerings like Under the Dome and it’s clear that people aren’t necessarily clamoring for utopian escapism.  They are quite willing to venture down darker pathways.

The same applies to written fiction. Post apocalyptic and dystopian stories, like The Hunger Games, are all the rage.  Readers don’t necessarily shy from gut-wrenching tales, ones that often contain grim material and even scenes of horror.  And the disasters aren’t only natural events.  They are just as likely to be man-made, the result of tinkering with science for the sake of profit and/or warfare or the result of socio-political upheaval.


PictureGet Darlings of Decay
for free on Amazon.
Writing along these themes can be rewarding for the writer too.  Exploring human nature in the face of calamity provides fodder to delve deep into characters psyches, even if you are working with a limited word count.  It can prove cathartic as well, allowing the creator to shed some of their own anxieties in the process.

When I write anything speculative involving a disaster, I try to include three key elements: enigma, drama and trauma.  The enigma is part and parcel with the speculative aspect.  Typically, you won’t be dealing with an ordinary earthquake, tornado or similar event.  Either it will be something of monstrous proportions or originate from a less natural source.  With that comes the question why?  What caused this?  How did it happen?  Who is involved?  The stories don’t always provide all of the answers but they usually pose the questions.

The drama often comes in the form of facing peril. The disaster puts the main character and any loved ones at risk.  Action is often required on their part to salvage something or someone they care about – possibly themselves.  There are time constraints and a sense of urgency there that accentuates the story, the pacing of the tale reflecting this at critical points.  This drama is the instigator of heightened emotion and excitement, something speculative fiction readers tend to demand.


And the trauma?  Typically, you don’t encounter a disaster without someone getting hurt or killed, possibly even the protagonist, despite heroic efforts.  Even if the victims remain faceless during the story, it’s difficult to dismiss the fact they are there. Tragedy is inherent to this type of fiction and sacrifice or loss of some kind quite common.

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With this in mind, I was pleased to see the organizers of this year’s Wicked Women Writers competition from Horror Addicts had selected “disasters” as a theme.  The locations, objects and situations involved served up a serious challenge – but the competitors bravely confronted that challenge with those key elements I mentioned above, all within a notably restrictive word count limit.  The results are fun and at times breathtaking. 

I think you’ll really enjoy the disaster tales they came up with, well polished bites of enigma, drama and trauma.  I encourage you to follow the link, listen to all of these stories and vote for your favourite – a great opportunity for free thrills and chills.

Listen to this year’s Wicked Women Writers stories here 
and vote for your favourite.

You can learn more about Chantal and her work at her website
, Facebook page, Amazon Author Page, Twitter, Scribd.com, and her Goodreads Author Page.

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2013 Wicked Women Writers' Challenge!

9/7/2013

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This year, the WWW Challenge theme is How Will You Survive? Each of our WWW was assigned an apocalyptic disaster, a location, a helpful object, and an untimely disability. Voting starts September 7th and ends October 7th. Stories will air on podcast #95 September 7th on the http://www.horroraddicts.net show. To vote, email horroraddicts@gmail.com. Put “vote” in the subject line.

***CAUTION*** We Strongly encourage you to listen to ALL the stories. Just when you think you have chosen your most wicked story, there’s another story ready to slap you into the face of fear once again. You can also read along with the stories and catch words you might have missed on horroraddicts.net. Be sure and listen to all 13 stories before casting your vote!

About my entry, "Enter the Corruption":

Disaster: Nano-invasion
Location: Bullet Train
Helpful Item: Hand Sanitizer
Untimely Disability: Extreme Itchiness

The Corruption begins when the nanotech implants go from just downright creepy to contagious.  Will the human spirit survive when the mind becomes nothing but another piece of computer hardware?  Read along with my story here.

Here's a list of links to the other contestants' stories:
2. Shauna Klein - 
3. DM Slate - 4. Chantal Boudreau - 5. Chantal Noordeloos - 6. Rebekah Webb -
7. Marie Robinson - 8. Rebecca Snow - 9. Julianne Snow - 10. RL Weston - 11. Maggie Fiske -
12. Sumiko Saulson - 13. Amy K Marshall 
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