What scares you in a horror book/Do you have any horror plot ideas?

I think the setting means the most. I'm setting mine in a scientific hospital/lab, but I find schools just as scary. Actually, I've just had the most freaking awesome idea just now for a school plot...
You can have it though.
I love the idea of a weird school cult, gradually taking over the students, maybe the teachers, or maybe they kill off the teachers. I don't know. Ones who won't submit are also killed, or 'dissapear'.
A main character could be struggling to find out more about this cult, or trying to survive the pull of the cult.

Hey, I'm proud of myself here. Pretty rad for a 30 second plot, ehy?

Awesome idea Jashin =D. I will hopefully be able to use that somewhere, maybe even as a main plot ^.^

Thanks XD
I love horror, I could sit all day and write short stories. I suck at the whole novel thing though ^^;; I hope I can finish in time.

I'm pretty jaded on horror stories, even though that's what I'm writing. When I was a kid, my mother told me horror stories instead of fairy tales as bedtime stories so I grew up with them. Hence, it's hard for me to be 'scared'. Gross-out things aren't scary. I'm a nurse so I see body parts and think: "Body parts." I don't get scared. I'm a real downer for people at Halloween 'haunted houses'.

The best horro stories I've read involve creepiness, not 'scare tactics'. The fear should come from something totally ordinary and the situation should be just ... off a little. Big, obvious scares may startle, but it doesn't last. You want your reader to be afraid to read without the doors being locked and lights on in the house. Preferably with someone else around. Someone they trust. Someone they know won't look up from their own book with totally black eyes ...

Jodi Locuta Est; Causa Finita Est.

Actually, in the old days before people forgot what they really meant, fairy tales were horror stories for children. You’ll find that most fairy tales involve death, disease and monsters.

Currently I am working up my outline for possibly my next NaNo (if I can wait that long) and it’s horror of the creepy kind. There are no visible monsters (unexplained sounds), no dialog (or thoughts), just a person in a bad place with their imagination. I have been working out the plot for two months now and it gives me the creeps. I think that the things you can’t see can cause more terror than the slasher dude chasing after you. With a killer, you at least know what you’re running from, but when you can’t see the thing in the shadows stalking you…well it makes your mind go to very odd places.

~ I tried to wrestle my inner demons once... but they used too many illegal holds.

I have to wonder what you've read that scares you, if anything. What gives you the creeps?

Maybe I'm a big baby but I scared myself writing my latest chapter. I have a house where all the mirrors are replaying the same... well, massacre of a family from fifty years before the novel is set. It's... creepy but then, I don't usually write/read/watch horror.

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Oh my... I actually think I can do this. Of course I may go crazy in the process...

I prefer more realistic horror myself, with things a little out of the ordinary. I mean, yeah vampires and zombies are fun, but the best horror involes people and ghosts of dead people, human sacrifice, and that nine yards. Think Fatal Frame.
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Dreamer of Inescapable Nightmares

Aiming for 80k or higher!

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Dreamer of Inescapable Nightmares
ぜつぼした！
And I will look at these scars and shove my despair aside, and forthwidth shall come a grand total of 100,000 words!

There's an internet writer named Soren Narnia who is absolutely fabulous at creating a creeping mood. Reading him, I learned that mood is more important than anything. He has a short story that creates a feeling of dread that just keeps on building.

Okay, here is one of my five that I will share, the others I plan to write later. I put this on Adopt a Plot awhile back, but no one has shown interest. With a little work, it could turn into a complete novel if someone is willing to play with it. Also, I have added more information to make it easier to expand on.

Mother (working title)

Henry cannot get away from his mother and has spent his whole life alone with her in their decaying old house at the end of the street. They have no electricity, no phone and no open windows – they are either painted or covered in heavy drapes. They never go out and no one comes to visit except the delivery boy who brings food once a week and leaves it on the step outside the door, where mother picks it up after the boy leaves. Henry knows that father left enough money to take care of them, but he has never seen his father.

Why?

Because thirty years later he’s still attached to the umbilical cord and dear old evil mom feeds off Henry’s life force. Henry wants to get out, but the sixty foot cord refuses to let go and he has only bathroom time to himself. You see, Henry is thirty and looks fifty, but his mother only looks twenty because she’s sucking the youth out of him to keep herself immortal.

He has to find a way to cut the cord and escape before he dies of old age. While she’s sleeping one afternoon, he discovers that he was not her only child, in fact, there were many others. Even worse, mother wants another child and she wants Henry to help her have one – she wants him to be the father before he’s too old to be useful to her.

Henry is running out of time and options, but there are answers somewhere in the house – he knows there has to be - if only he can sneak around and find them when mother is not looking and save himself. Can Henry escape and stop his evil mother from doing this again? And how long has she been doing this? What dark secrets are hiding in the old house and in mother’s mind?

~Hermits have no peer pressure.

~ I tried to wrestle my inner demons once... but they used too many illegal holds.

Nice Mistress Sekhmet...

Wow... that actually sounds pretty neat... -this coming from a person whom laughs in the face of horror films-

NaNo 08 - Heirlooms

Gun Shots - 23
Kisses - 14
Times I've wanted to see my MC naked - Priceless

~bows~

Thank you.

It took me a whole five minutes to come up with that. I can come up with creepy stuff and have an entire notepad dedicated to weird and horror ideas. Some will make the cut, others will not.

~If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a picture of a thousand words worth?

~ I tried to wrestle my inner demons once... but they used too many illegal holds.

I think for me, the idea that death does not end suffering. The Hellraiser movies dealt with that a bit. Endless suffering, physical and mental, over and over, without release.

I'm facinated by hungry ghosts for similar reasons.

Fundamentally normal people getting broken down and teetering over the brink into madness, going off the rails. That's what scares me the most. Maybe because I've teetered a little bit myself :D

Faces in windows.

Enough said.

Especially in movies, the shadowy face in the mirror just scares the baloney out of me. I dunno why--perhaps it's fed by some deep, physological inner fear that had something to do with my childhood?

Probably not.

Aside from that, I'm probably with clarbri on the whole "madness" thing. I usually don't like people gone off their rocker, probably 'cause I'm scared of 'em meself.

Have I helped?

--Luna

Also posted in "Adopt a Plot" because I keep forgetting to post horror ideas here... (so far, unclaimed)

Here is one for the horror fans out there. . .

When they arrived in the small mountain town, they looked like ordinary clowns who said they were looking for temporary work – claiming to be travelling child entertainers. The clowns said that they would work at festivals, birthday parties, and perform on the streets to raise enough money to continue their pilgrimage. These were outwardly harmless looking clowns and the parents of the town quickly grew to love them and the clowns seemed to love the children most of all.

None of the clowns are never seen out of makeup in public or in private and the townsfolk didn’t seem to think it odd as many people believed it was just part of their act. Another peculiar thing that only a few people without children noticed, the clowns did not seem to eat or drink and they only entertained during the day.

A hunter accidently discovers their secret when he’s looking for his dog late one night. The man finds the clowns gathered in a cave around a fire feasting on some sort of strange looking meat. Being a hunter, by occupation he knows most animals and curious that he cannot identify the meat, he investigates further. Breaking into one of their campers while their out performing, he finds many freshly gnawed small bones and he takes a few to the local doctor to be examined. Much to his and the doctor’s horror, they realize that these are the bones of children. Who could have known that the one thing that amused the people and their children could be so malevolent?

He must now convince the police chief of the gruesome evil before the clowns find out and capture him. However, no one is willing to believe him away because apparently, the parents are under some sort of control by the clowns and the police chief has two children. As more children begin to turn up missing, some people start to become alarmed and with the doctor’s help, they believe the man and his uncanny story. Now it is a race against time as the doctor, one police detective and a handful of people race against time to save the remaining town children from a terrible fate.

~ I tried to wrestle my inner demons once... but they used too many illegal holds.

For me, nothing can be scarier than what people do to each other. Given that I'm pretty much spending all my writing time on a thriller novel project of mine I feel okay giving this idea away, as I probably won't have time to write it any time soon.

A talented method actor who is known for getting into his characters scores a great part as a psychotic killer in a big budget movie. He spends all his time getting into the killer's mindset. Too much time. The killer character's thoughts begin to take over his own in a twisted Jekyll/Hyde story. Eventually he performs a murder that mimics the character's first kill in the movie. Can he retrieve his sanity before he kills again?

^ in accordance with the prophecy.

If anyone here has seen the film [REC], or the film Quarantine then you will know sheer terror. I definetly used some of the scares used in that film.

Main charactor dying due to falling down a high stairwell much to the surprize and horror of the other MC's.
Child zombie.
Girl who was tested to extremes witht he virus and has become like insane, but still has the brain power of a normal human.
ect.

I find animal zombies to be kind of creepy, which is why I'm writing a short about them. Imagine a world where some virus awakens dead animals and not people... weird.

Hmmm... that could make for some strange pets.. I have to give this idea more thought.

~ I tried to wrestle my inner demons once... but they used too many illegal holds.