=h-a-l-l-o-w-e-e-n=

jost

hello.
It's almost Halloween.
And by "Halloween" I mean August.

Every year for Halloween, being one of my favorite times of the year, only being trumped by literally 3 months of heat, my aunt and I write stories for a family fire we have in our back yard.
We're a generally "creepy" family. That being said, we enjoy ghosts, skeletons, things that bump in the night, glowing eyes...etc. But only if we know we're going to live to tell the tale.

Last year, I made an RPG-style story not a lot of people got into. go figure.

So, this year, I made a story about dolls.
They come to life
and must welcome their new sister
they love their pretty sisters
the maid is the one who finds them
and consumes them
to be put on the wall
in the hall of dolls
to be looked at
and gawked at
and enjoyed
by the home owners
who do not exist
but rather
her sick and twisted mind allows her to be trusted
through everything she says
and does
and even through the storm
she is seen as a good person
and when the house no longer exists
the dolls no longer exist
and are set free

As I edit the story more, I notice my mind speech pattern does not match my speaking speech pattern, and that's concerning. Considering I have to read this out loud, that will have to change.

When I was in high school, I took a psychology class.
It got me thinking about the human mind, something I was already interested in.
Particularly the mind of my crush, Elaine.
I wanted her to go to prom with me, but she never went to dances.
So, as we studied brain experiments, I came up with an experiment of my own; every day, at lunch, I would walk past her table and buy a powerade and would one day, ask her to prom. This became a common thing for weeks. I made my friends get used to it, and eventually the whole upper class knew I got blue powerade at 12:30 every day.
Then, the day I planned had come. I buy my blue powerade and fancy my way over to her table and ask her to prom.

she said no.

I go back to my table, devastated, hoping what I had just witnessed was just a nightmare, and that I would wake up in my bed.
It wasn't and I didn't.
It was very real, and I spent the rest of the day basically crying and sulking around, but more than usual.

What I was trying to say with that story was that psychological horror is what I enjoy writing about. I like toying with the brain. I like the creeping suspicion that something is amiss, but you can't quite put your finger on it until it's too late...things move too fast when there's action happening...
scenes
     blur
        as the
     world
                                moves
                                                           around
                  you
                   and it
                           seems
                                                   almost dream
                                                                 like
                                             and      you    can't
                      comprehend
                 what
                      is ha
                         ppen
                              ing
                    unt
                         il i
                                         t's t
                                               oo
late.

She eluded me that day. Like a doll eludes to being sweet and kind, she ripped my heart out, unintentionally.
To this day, I'm not sure she knows I liked her as much as I did.
But, that is far in the past, and if our paths are meant to cross again, then so be it.

I'm honestly not that big a fan of the horror genre. I hate horror games. I hate horror movies. I don't read horror stories.
They disturb me, and I'm already disturbed enough.
However, I like writing horror stories.
Go figure.

Unable to unleash the full potential of my mind's ability, my horror stories end up falling short of what I'd like.

Instead of a room becoming increasingly filled with tiny invisible spiders that crawl INSIDE of minds, I have to change it to very visible spiders that only crawl and hang out on walls, but they have googly eyes and speak with Norwegian accents.

The main genre I write in is comedy, so not having something funny is unexpected. Everyone expects it from me.

Starting off with a joke would ruin the story, and ending with a joke would make the whole story pointless.

So, where do I put a joke?

Just before the climax. Just before everything gets all F͢͝u͡͠͝Ç̀k҉Ȩ͢ḑ́̕͟ ̷̵̢͡͞Ù͟p͏͏̸̵̀P͜͝p̸͠

But, in this story, there is no funny. A slightly silly suggestion, maybe. Something to lull you into a false sense of security. Something to make you chuckle, and give a concerned half-smile afterwards.
But nothing funny.
I strayed away from funny, and even matured.

In the story, the main female character takes a shower before going to bed, and when she goes to bed, she sleeps in her underwear.
I didn't do this to give her sexual appeal. For bathing, I said she washed up. And when I said she went to bed, I didn't say she stripped, but rather "got down to her gutchies"
(If the link doesn't work... http://popularpittsburgh.com/?s=gutchies )

As we approach the spooky tiems, I have a few questions I like to ask myself as I write stories, and I hope they help you as well.
What inspired this? (The really old Cartoon Network movie Scary Godmother inspired me a lot as a kid, as well as Halloweentown on Disney Channel. More recently, I got into Over The Garden Wall and oh my bezeezle is that fantastic)
How can I make this scary, but not too scary?
Should I be submitted to a mental hospital because I wrote about this?
If so, ask if there have ever been hauntings, and if you can get an interview with one of the ghosts.
Is this too gruesome?
Blood or no blood? (Always yes to blood)
Are skeletons still scary?

Only when they T-Pose

I will touch on Halloween later.
Until then, Happy Haunting Writing

Symbols

[All the walls are cameras]

As any English teacher will tell you, symbols are in nearly every book written before 1990. The joke I always refer to is;

Book: The curtains were blue
English teacher: The color blue symbolizes the author's feelings of sadness

The Author: The curtains...were...FUCKING. BLUE.

In some regards, the author is right. There is no reason to point out fake symbols.

In other regards, the teacher is right. Writers tend to hide things in plain sight.

Most people who read don't really care about the small symbols in a novel. Unless they recur over time, they stand to have little significance to the story at hand.
So, the curtains are blue. And the house is blue. And the carpet is blue. And all this shit is blue.
(There's a good possibility that your character is in an Eiffel 65 song)

Add caption

All the blue-ness is well and good, and as they increase, the reader might put 2 and 2 together with the picture you're painting in very blue, soft tones.
"This character is sad" without saying it outright.

Symbolism in dreams

Some people believe their dreams are a prediction to how their day will go. But actually, dreams tell you what's on your subconscious mind in the vaguest way possible because why make it easy to figure out?

To better understand my dreams (as well as myself) I found a site that interprets dreams. You type in what you want to understand, and connect whatever you can from it. It sort of makes it fun figuring out your brain conspiracies.
Let's say I had a dream about a blue zippo lighter while in the parking lot at a local Denny's.
By being vague, such as looking up "Lighter" instead of "Blue Zippo", I can find my results faster and start connecting my dream world to the real world. As you go from there, a lighter representing the spark of a new idea, I can look up smaller details, the word "blue." Blue represents wisdom, so this idea may be a smart idea (Hence why I don't have this dream this often)
What would I do for the last part of the dream? Denny's seems too...specific and modern. Start small; Parking lot.
A Parking lot represents the need to slow down. By slowing down and thinking about this new idea, I can make it work.
From here, point out smaller details you remember, such as the color of the cars and their colors, if there even were cars, the time of day, the time of year, etc.
Doing things like this can help you understand symbolism, and wrap your head around exactly what a symbol is.

The adage of growing up

A lot of coming of age stories have the main character learning a lesson about growing up. Such as Scott Pilgrim, one of my most favorite franchises of all time. Scott Pilgrim shows he's immature by dating a high schooler, being unemployed, and complaining constantly.

Opens 13 job searching tabs, applies to nothing, complains about being sad

He finds out by the end that he needs to respect himself before dealing with love or music. If you haven't read the manga, I highly recommend it. It's 8 volumes and so worth it. It made me feel really sad.
When I was in high school, and forgive me but I forget the name of the story, my English teacher had us read a story about a guy who was visiting his hometown, except now, he was freakishly tall. He couldn't fit through doorways, or even sit down without his hat falling off. She told us that the reason he was so tall was because he had outgrown his hometown. He outgrew their ways, traditions, and general way of life, for bigger things.
This made me rethink many things about writing. It was a whole new dimension.
The author could have made this character sick when he was growing up, almost with an everlasting cold. Then, when he left town, grew up, and then came back, he'd be healthy, symbolizing that he was sick of the town.
Or he could have been sleepy all the time. Leaving and coming back, he would have been alert and awake, showing he was tired of the town.

Things like that really get the creative juices flowing! They scream the most silently.
This method is one of my favorites to dissect because it's so vague, but also so meaningful.

Unlike something else that's vague.

I'm going to come back to this topic eventually, because it's so large and I have so much to say about it, especially for music.

What about you? What are some of your favorite stories to dissect? What symbols have you found in your reading? 

DnD and how it helps creatively

"Don't nerds play that?" -my dad

About a year ago, I got into Dungeons and Dragons. I had played years before, but didn't look too hard into playing again, because 1) I didn't have a license, 2) I didn't have a car or friends with a car and 3) I didn't have friends. You're going to hear me talk a lot about this game and the like.

I never understood how expansive and open the world of D&D is. I thought it all came from a book, or it was improvised with no script and no real objective. But, that was a few years ago, when v. 3.5 was the most recent edition.
Fast forward to December of 2016. I go to my first card shop and find the Player's Guide and the Dungeon Master's (DM) Guide for $50 each.
With $100 to my name, I buy them.

As I read through the DM guide, I found myself getting more and more inspired to write. "An asteroid will destroy the map in x amount of days unless the heros find person and defeat them"
"A fountain fairy has a quest for the nobelist of hearts"
"The stream runs dry and people suspect it to be a large sleeping dragon at the top of a treacherous mountain"

More recently, I've gotten my ideas together and made a map.

Those volcanoes are one large volcano, not a bunch

The goal of this one is to help maintain peace among the land while the Coutal that visits monthly finds a mate, for he is getting old.
There are 6 distinct sections; Forest, Desert, Rock, Volcano, Badlands, and Swamp. Each one of the sections surrounds a large lake in the center of the map. Underneath that lake is the City of the Divines, the city in a large pool where the Coutal visits for a week in a large, heavenly spire, surrounded by six houses, each one bunking and representing a kingdom.
If order is not restored within the week, the Coutal must stay until peace has been achieved by all kingdoms. His, and his lineage's, goal is to keep peace among these once brutally warring nations.

Basic and simple concept; maintaining peace. It may be a boring idea, but it's my first real campaign, so it's gonna have fawn legs.

City of the Divines

I've talked with a few of my high school friends about it, because some of them play too. My best friend, who runs a blog called Throne of Salt, told me to take things slow. Do one kingdom at a time.
Another friend of mine helped write for the desert kingdom. He introduced creatures and NPC's I would have never thought to include.
With that being said, I have two areas nearly completed: the forest and the desert.
I've written it so that the players start in the forest. But, because there are 6 kingdoms, when all of their stories are written, the DM will roll 1d6 to determine where the players start.
That's the plan, anyway.

All of this stemmed from simply reading a book. I now have all of the core books. I was just missing the Monster Manual.
I feel like I've sidetracked too much. I do that a lot, especially when I talk about something I'm so excited to play, or write.
In this case, it's both.

Anyway, there will be more Dungens and Dargun stories in the future.

If you really wanna get inspired to write, I suggest picking up the DM guide. Skim though it at your local card shop, or find it online. Amazon has them cheaper than the card shop I bought it from. But I'm all about supporting local businesses, so I don't regret buying them considering how much use I'm getting out of them.

[This post doesn't seem to be my best, since I'm not used to writing in a 'blog' style. Most of the stuff I write is short stories or comics, so please bear with me for these first few posts. Thank you~~]