First, pick your genre. What, you thought you already had? Oh, no. There are four major types of horror movie:

1. The Psycho. A killer hunts and slaughters people -- usually attractive teens, although some killers have been known to branch out along other specialized lines. Usually difficult or impossible to kill, sometimes ironic in method of death, prone to sequels.
2. The Creature. This genre divides into 'big' and 'lots': either your creature is ginormous for some reason, or there's a swarm. Sometimes, the over-ambitious combine the two, and have a swarm of giant whatever-it-is trying to eat mankind. This is generally a winning approach.
3. The Supernatural. Ghosts, witches, warlocks, a killer Santa Claus taking back all the toys he's distributed over the generations, it all gets filed under the generic catch-all of 'supernatural'. Sometimes, your psycho or your creature is supernatural, too.
4. The Outsider. Aliens and extra-dimensional entities go here. Sometimes, your psycho or your creature is from outside, in addition to being, y'know, bad for your health. Mostly, though, aliens get their own designation.

Now, pick your setting. Your options are:

1. Rural. Small towns are great for zombie invasions, crash landings of carnivorous alien lifeforms, and anything involving a meteorite.
2. Urban. The big city is good if your zombies are viral, or if you want a serial killer. No cornfields, though, which kinda sucks.
3. Wilderness. If it makes you happy to have crazed killers chasing co-eds through the woods, this is the place for you.
4. Transit vehicle of some sort. Big boats, RVs, trains, spaceships, and orbiting space stations, those get filed here.

Every category contains a multitude of options, from 'houseboat' to 'swamp', but these are the basics. And, of course, you're going to need a hero:

1. Teenager. Cheerleader, jock, geek, hacker, whatever.
2. Authority figure. Local sheriff, local cop, President of the United States. However, don't cross into...
3. Military dude. This covers male and female members of all branches of the military.
4. That guy from 'Clerks'. There's a good chance your hero wasn't even supposed to be here today.

( Let's make a horror movie!Collapse )

Current stats:

Words: 543.
Total words: 24,011.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter seven.
Music: lots of things on random shuffle.
Lilly: dead to the world.

Five hundred words feels a bit, well, anti-climactic, but since it brings me to the end of chapter seven, I figure I won't complain too hard. This book is currently spec-ed out as coming in somewhere in the 80,000 to 100,000 word range, so I'm very close to being a quarter of the way there no matter what yardstick I'm using. Yippee!

Writing a book is a lot like riding a roller coaster. Sometimes it goes so fast that you're barely aware of what's happening until you're going 'wait, did we just...?', and other times, you're trundling slowly up the track, totally in the moment, just waiting for the plummeting to start. Right now, I'm about two-thirds of the way up the first of the book's really high hills, and I think there's probably a corkscrew waiting at the bottom.

I can hardly wait.