 Bearder! Garnham get wrecked dummy first off. No, I am not legendary actor Sam Elliott But thank you the moustache is actually for Movember I do it every year in memory of my dad the raised money for positive men's health this year I'm rocking the top lip people pleaser to help work towards suicide prevention So if you can spare even a couple of dollars I would really appreciate it if you went to the description below and checked out the link there And hey, if you can't afford it, that is completely fine. No worries at all I know it's a hard time of year for a lot of people I know the pandemics really knocked a lot of us on our ass So there's no need to donate if you can't afford it All I would ask is simply that you go down and you have a look at the link It's all about awareness and at the very least I would love it If you could see all of the great work that this foundation is really doing Dark alleys the mariana trench facebook comment sections What do all of these things have in common horror this they're scary. It's hot The theme is horror if you've been around for a while first of all Thanks, but second of all, you may already know this if you're new though Also, thanks, but I have written quite a bit of horror recently especially in the last year in the last year alone I have written a psychological horror novel called welcome descent and have short stories in both local haunts and We're not home both really great anthologies with 100% of profits going to charity Today though, I would like to talk a little bit about how I approached writing the horror short stories for these books I'm no Stephen King or anything. I'm no professor, but hey Maybe it'll help and the story that I'll be using as an example today for how I write a horror short story from scratch Is my new horror short story in a new anthology called served cold launching on December 11th That's right, baby another one served cold is the next anthology in line after local haunts and it is an absolute beast With 22 short stories from a huge list of authors Including yours truly my story and served cold is called red albums and the reason I'm using it as an example today Is because it's a bit different to the stories I've written for the other anthologies My other two short stories were pretty brief and mostly fun I'd probably classify them as like campfire horror my story in served cold However, is much longer and much more or intended to be much more emotional and dark I am super proud of it and if I can be so bold I think it's literally some of the best writing I've done, but you know, that's not for me to say It's for other people to say about me So coming up with an idea for a story is pretty subjective Almost any writer you ask will have a different explanation for how they started It could be a dream. It could be based on something from your own life But for me, the important thing is that I start off with one theme That's all you really need to light the fire So I've described it in this way in videos a few times already But I'm going to do it again because I think it's I think it's a good analogy But the way I would think of it is like a building block Just take one theme. It could be hotels, neighbors, fear of heights In this case, it was cold Just one central point or plot device or it could be a character that you can build your story around And once you have that building block, all you need to do is start piling them up Piece by piece Imagine it's a game of Jenga and you're the sucker that got stuck with the job of setting it up My building block was cold. So I thought cold I could do snow I could set my story in the snow. Maybe a snowy valley. What is scary about a snowy valley? Well, maybe it could be isolated from other people. Just like that. Boom. I have my setting It doesn't have to be a setting that you end up with first. It could be a character or a bad guy slash monster It doesn't matter where you end up first. All that matters is that it came from that one building block Most times for me though, I will start with a setting That's just kind of where my train of thought goes and if I'm starting with a setting I always try to make sure I have something I can add to that that makes it scary or dangerous So again a snowy valley that is far away from anyone that could help if something goes wrong When it comes to settings and horror most of the time it is going to be isolation that makes it scary But maybe it could be that the setting is haunted Maybe it could be that the setting is in a very high up place with danger of falling to your death There are so many different ways you could go literally just right now and I'm not even taking the piss I was thinking to myself in saying to myself high up with risk of falling to your death I thought what about a snowy cliffside and the story is about someone who is stuck there With danger of sliding and falling to their death and the story is about them trying to get to safety That would be a pretty good horror story Maybe they're on the side of a cliff a bit of a snowy slope And the only safety they have is at the top of that slope But at the top of the slope is a pack of hungry wolves I just I literally just came up with a story idea right now. That's how easy it is You know what you guys can have that one Obviously a lot of this will come down to your creative ability as a writer But once I figure out a character that we can experience the story with I'll try to do something that is very tricky But very important So usually I try to make sure that the horror in the story scares the character for a very personal reason Rather than just this thing is scary And the way I think to do this is to give your character a bit of a backstory In horror that will usually take the shape of a past trauma I know what you're thinking already that sounds like a lot for a short story But trust me you can give a character a backstory even in the really short short stories For example for my story in local haunts. It was called alone among the gum trees, which was a bit of a If you're Australian, you'll you'll know that story is a really quick and simple campfire story about a group of tourists in the Australian woods Quite literally sitting around a campfire But the main character is a young woman who is still dealing with the paranoia from leaving an abusive and predatory ex-boyfriend. You don't learn that from an info dump You quite literally learn it just from a few sentences of dialogue from another character and the way that she acts Around other people ultimately that abusive past does play a part in her experience in this horror short story Spoiler alert. It's not that her ex-boyfriend comes back or anything like that. It's not directly relevant But the feeling of being preyed on it all comes back to that her backstory is barely mentioned But it's relevant to what is happening now the point here is and this is gonna sound a bit weird So bear with me, but you don't actually need to tell us the story of their backstory You can allude to it. In fact, I think it's better if you leave most of it unspoken Let the reader fill in the gaps and they will so in my story red albums for served cold Our character is a young man who must go back to his childhood home in a snowy valley He's going there to care for his sick father, but he hoped to never see this home again It is a constant reminder to his time as a drug addict and the guilt from him being an addict Because of the strain that it put on his father at the time I obviously won't spoil anything, but his past plays a part in the horror of the story His past as an addict is relevant to his decision making in caring for his sick Father and it all starts coming together when he starts seeing the sickness for what it truly is I hope all of that made sense Obviously, I have to be kind of cryptic when I'm referring to my own stuff to avoid spoilers But the main takeaway here should be that you can say a lot about a character's past without saying too much at all And personally, I think the less you say the better hint to their past Tell us about that past in the way they act around other people It makes the characters more relatable and it makes the reader care more about their well-being And if the reader cares more about their well-being if the character is scared the reader probably will be too Now as far as outlining goes what I normally do when I write like a novel Is I'll do a small paragraph outline for each chapter that I intend to be in the book What happens in those chapters obviously can and often do change But the point is that it helps me to know whereabouts in the book the story should rise and fall In regards to like tension and conflict and exciting moments It just helps with the structure as for short stories though You usually won't have chapters I'll often still create like little character profiles listing their physical attributes Like eye color and physical quirks For example, if they clench their jaw when they're angry But I don't really do much more outlining when it comes to short stories I will have maybe a few paragraphs giving a small description of what happens and the order I would like those things to happen in but really that's about it One of my favorite things about horror is that the ending really can go anyway There's no shame in killing off the protagonist in a horror story Especially a horror short story or in giving them a happily ever after I've done both But what it usually comes down to is this the feeling that I want the reader to be left with In almost all cases the last page of the story is what the reader is going to be thinking about for a fair while after they finish Do you want the reader to be happy and have some catharsis in this character Rising above their fear and winning or do you want to leave the reader scared or maybe even sad with an ending where the protagonist Loses both is fine. In fact, I think happy endings are super underrated in horror But that's a big discussion for another day The thing you need to keep in mind though is that the ending of the story should have the character In some kind of different place than where they started or in a different state of mind to where they started The one thing you don't want is an ending where nothing truly important happened or changed Anyway, like I said, I'm not a professor. I'm not an expert I really wouldn't want you to think that I'm claiming to be this video is more just me talking Kind of at myself telling myself what my thought process is when I'm writing a horror short story And if it happens to help you great And if it doesn't You know what go ahead dislike the video load the video on your phone put the phone on the ground and fart on it I don't I don't care. Actually, don't do that. I just made it sound like I have some kind of weird like fart That should do it. But here's what I want you to do I want you to go down to the comments and let me know what your thought process is when you're writing horror Namely, what's important to you as always? Thanks for watching especially for watching through the whole video You are objectively the best You're the best out of all of the people who've watched this video if you watch the whole thing through You're the best. That's it for now though. So Go right. Don't think I forgot. Nanorima isn't over yet Get to work. Oh, and hey, if you could spare a couple of dollars again The move ember link is in the description below you would be helping out a really great course, but that's it See you in the next one. Catch you