1 / 20

Creepy, Scary Stories

Creepy, Scary Stories. What you need to be effective. CREEPY TALES. Watch this Power Point and learn how to transform your typical scary tale into a believable story that truly gives your readers the creeps, shivers their spines, shakes their souls, and spasms their stomachs. REALITY CHECK.

pink
Download Presentation

Creepy, Scary Stories

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Creepy, Scary Stories What you need to be effective.

  2. CREEPY TALES Watch this Power Point and learn how to transform your typical scary tale into a believable story that truly gives your readers the creeps, shivers their spines, shakes their souls, and spasms their stomachs.

  3. REALITY CHECK It takes a lot of reality to create a story that gives readers the frights they won’t soon forget. Good fiction is a lie that can be believed.

  4. REALITY CHECK: Setting WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW The very ordinariness of such settings works because readers are familiar with the ordinary; they live there, and if you start with a really creepy setting, you’ll be hard pressed to spring a surprise on your readers who anticipate something bad to happen in that type of place.

  5. REALITY CHECK: Setting WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW When the ordinary is invaded by the terrifying, extraordinary horror happens. It’s the intrusion of the extraordinary, the appalling unusual into the lives of ordinary, credible, for-real characters that makes for compelling shock fiction.

  6. REALITY CHECK: Setting Authors, such as Stephen King write about places they know. Stephen King, a Maine native, has lived in Castle Rock and Salem’s Lot. Even though he changed the names of the towns, his writing is realistic and believable, because he knows everything about these places.

  7. REALITY CHECK: Characters A good horror story character is a fictional someone who’s every bit as alive and as much a unique individual as anyone we know really well out here in the real world. He must be for readers to care about him. If readers don’t care, it won’t matter what the character does or what happens to him.

  8. REALITY CHECK: Characters Don’t use stereotypes—write about what you know. You know people and how they think/feel when someone lets them down. You’ve experienced disappointment, joy, hate, love, embarrassment, and pride so you can create credible characters that experience these emotions.

  9. REALITY CHECK: Characters The real characters you create will hold out a welcoming hand and yank readers into your waking nightmare—and keep them there!

  10. REALITY CHECK: Characters EXAMPLE

  11. David Leeder Middle School, Room 304 • Miss Mansbridge, 10 students (mix of male and female)

  12. REALITY CHECK • CHARACTERS • Your cousin • Your teacher • Your uncle • Your school nurse • Your best friend • Brainstorm other familiar characters • SETTING • Your favorite store at the mall • Your grandmother’s house • Your friend’s room • Your locker • Your favorite hometown pizza place • Brainstorm other familiar settings

  13. REALITY CHECK: Shift from Blood and Gore A modern horror story can’t simply rely on pointless violence and shock value to disgust its reader—it must work hard to instill genuine chills. The writer needs to unnerve the reader enough to make her flick on an extra light and lock the back door, just in case.

  14. REALITY CHECK: Find the Fear What does society fear today? What do you fear? Go to the root of these terrors. Are you afraid of the dentist because of the pain or does it go deeper? EXAMPLE: Stephen King’s “Quitters Inc.” is on the subject of giving up smoking—with terrifying consequences.

  15. REALITY CHECK: Find the Fear THEMES such as “Breaking the rules” and “Shortcuts to success” are perfect vehicles for tales of ruin. W.W. Jacobs’ “the Monkey’s Paw,” explores the idea that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In this story, a family is given three wishes, which come at the price of their son’s life.

  16. REALITY CHECK: Find the Fear EXAMPLES: In your own bedroom when the electricity goes out on a stormy night On a dirt road in a car that will not start at twilight Lost in the middle of a cornfield On a boat in the middle of a rushing river with no paddle In an unfamiliar dark alley In an airport in an unfamiliar city

  17. CONCLU-SION Horror stories can lurk anywhere. What makes them truly terrifying isn’t the unknown but the familiar stretched over a very unusual canvas.

  18. Story Diagram • Protagonist - the hero/heroine of the story; the main character • Antagonist – the force working against the protagonist; usually another person; “bad guy” • Action – What happens in the story

  19. Story Diagram • Problem/Conflict – Each protagonist will encounter a problem of some kind; 3 different kinds • Man against man • Man against himself • Man against nature

  20. Story diagram • Setting – where the story takes place • Solution – what solves the problem/conflict that the character has?

More Related