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Oh So Squeamish!
What's the new thing to use to make your reader squeamish? With all the reality shows where entrants eat bugs and horror movies of the possessed, is there anything left? Or do we go back to basics...something like slimy worms, or cobwebs in the face? Do you let your readers imagine the fine details or do you show them every minute detail in the scene? While it's fun to make fake snot with borax and glue, what makes for a good 'ick' in writing - the five senses.
Whatever you choose to use to scare, think of turning up the volume with the five senses. Smell - all those cool, putrid gaseous stenches. Touch - texture can be a great stimulant, many of our memories (good or bad) are based on smells and textures. Visual - oh dear heavens, it's dripping. Sound - don't fall back on the creak and scream. Find something new! Taste - well, how did that get in your mouth anyway? Much of what is connected to taste is actually smell, so work those two senses together.
Your character slips into an abandoned warehouse, looking for a lost child. When writing, this is time to go into your "sense-mode". It's dark, so vision is limited. Close your eyes and 'be' there. It's time to heighten the other senses. Small noises become louder. The puddle he just stepped in isn't merely wet, but tacky and slippery, showing your reader that it is definitely NOT water. While you can't sprinkle adjectives and adverbs all over your writing, some specific description can carry your story a long way.
Now - watch your step and Write On!
This month's question: What makes you squeamish?
How do you use that in your writing?
Answer below  Editors love feedback! 
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Excerpt: Quote Prompt for April 2020: "Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light." -- Helen Keller
Excerpt: It was time for the great Accountability and there was a distinct change in the mood as he pulled out the Cat's Book of Life.
Excerpt: Shoddy Powers liked to chew tobacco. He got the idea when he was a kid watching baseball. Back then it was the, “in thing” for baseball players to chew tobacco and to spit. Anyway, Shoddy liked his tobacco, especially when he was working. He was a handyman, all right, always tinkering with this and with that, putting around in his garage or in his basement or wherever else he could wield a hammer or a pair of pliers or a screwdriver. But Shoddy was not averse to big projects, as I now shall relate.
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Excerpt: “This breakthrough is our ticket to Stockholm,” Edna said, putting on the bulky padded mittens before touching the frosty hatch wheel. “We did it, Mabel—you and me. Our patience, our perseverance made it possible, despite scepticism and painful setbacks, continuing on scraps and leftovers from the main experiment.
Excerpt: How many years had he been at this? He thought back to that first time, when a long forgotten girlfriend, who had insisted that he accompany her to dance classes, entered him as her partner in a dance marathon. That must have been in the sixties, he reckoned.
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Excerpt: The midnight sky above Kenya was without a moon and thick clouds stretched from horizon to horizon. Tim, an elephant so immense he became known far and wide as Big Tim, was plodding across the dark plain with purpose.
Excerpt: Flint woke early Friday the 13th, prepared to subvert the cavalcade of doomsday legends by proving everyone wrong. He slipped out before his family woke, hopped on subway thirteen, sat in row thirteen, and rode it to Thirteenth Avenue, where a house erected by Gustov Matheson in the 1800's stood. A museum of sorts.
Excerpt: I woke up in the morning with pain in both knees and in my elbows and I had no doubt it was soon going to rain. I didn't like the idea of getting married in the rain. |
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This month's question: What makes you squeamish?
How do you use that in your writing?
Answer below Editors love feedback!
Last month's question: How far do you inject technology into your stories?
Quick-Quill  : Depending on the story it cam become an intrigual part. DNA testing can be used to make or break an investigation. I had to set my first book before DNA testing was available. I'm using drones etc in my new work in progress.
BIG BAD WOLF is hopping  : Depends on the type of story I'm doing. All settings have Some level of technology - swords don't come out of thin air after all, unless you use some very special summoning magic.
Monty  : In answer to your question, very little.
jdennis  : As far as I can get it without it being noticed.
Writer_Mike  : It really depends on the story. I've had anti-gravity boots as a main element, used text messages to bust some would-be criminals, and had a radar gun interrupt a cop's doughnut break.
graybabe  : I'm injecting some scifi angel characters who 'look into' secret files that are kept from public knowledge. Then the baddies get to see someone's crept into their secret files and get all wigged out, haha. I guess that's as far as I've gone into computer stuff. Haha. If you're interested, my scifi book The Last One has those memes in it.
TheBusmanPoet : I don't. Unless you count using my computer to write my poems in word document.
Tehuti, Lord Of The Eight  : Not very far at all, since I'm pretty tech illiterate and it's hard for me to research when various forms of technology came into common use. Characters dealing with wonky outdated computer tech is about as technological as I get.
Recurring situation from a story of mine set circa late '90s/early 2000: "Hold on about twenty minutes or so while my PC boots up. Just ignore those grinding noises it makes." (Based on personal experience.)
s  : I've deliberately taken to setting stories in the 1980s and 1990s so as to avoid technology. But sometimes with a modern story it is unavoidable. Mobile phones, smartphones, the Internet - it's all a part of our world, but I tend to mention them in passing as just things that happen in our world unless crucial to the plot.
In my sci-fi, though, I like to experiment. See where my imagination can take me in the realms of the tech used...
Chibithulu (Alyssa) : I play too much in fantastical settings to really get into technology. I could go the Onward route, but that just takes too much away from the danger. You always have to put in coincidences to break down cell phones, otherwise Google knows where you are, you're never lost, and you can call for help.
Paul D : For scifi stories, I aim for a futuristic outlook with current technology as well as speculative technology.
Paul  : As far as the story requires.
A lot if it’s a SciFy story taking place in another galaxy a half million years in the future, not so much if it’s just two old farts sitting on a bench in the park watching people and talking.
woolwaulker: I inject only everyday tech that 80% of my readers will be comfortable with, and sort of not notice in the story, but be aware of when a character utilizes the tech in a usual way.
DKJ : Subcutaneously, my stories are mostly sci-fi. Even in some as mundane as to-morrow, I take the view that a knife is a technology a marvel of chemistry and industry.
jolanh : I try to stay close to real life.
Necrofancy : I strive not to inject technology into my stories, and if I do, I inject only older technologies. I have never written a character to use a smart phone or a tablet or what have you, and honestly I don't intend to.
Most of my writing typically takes place decades back, so I write technologies that were privy during those times.
Mistress_Krissy : Most of my stories are themed around apocalyptic/dystopian environments so technology is treated like a luxury instead of an everyday privilege like it is in the real world. When technology is used, it is usually an older technology like landline telephones, ham or AM/FM radios, old camcorders, etc. because the idea is to give off a vibe that the current world would not be able to handle the more advanced things like cell phones, internet or even television. Sometimes I will introduce an entertainment aspect like DVD players built into the television, which at one point, WAS new technology!
Robert J. McReady : I have a book idea where the tech level is between Doom 3 and Halo. The main character created an artificial intelligence, or I might change it to a tulpa, that acts as his personal assistant in a world where rogue governments and groups battle on Earth in spaceships during an alien invasion threat.
Thanks to everyone for sharing your replies! Your responses are much appreciated!
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Action/Adventure: April 08, 2020 Issue [#10115]
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