This week: It was dark. It was scary. Edited by: Legerdemain  
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It was dark. It was scary.
So many of us love post-apocalypse stories and movies. The Walking Dead show has a huge following. With all of these contest ideas swirling around us this time of year, I'm sure lots of writers are getting inspired to write this genre story. Not all of them are about zombies, but writing about a catastrophic event can be exciting. When sitting down to brainstorm and plot your storyline, keep in mind a few things.
The first thing is "when"...is this story set in the future? Is it the past? Are you changing an event in history and morphing it into your storyline? Make sure the facts you use from the past are reasonably accurate. While I'm not a history buff, I know some people grate their teeth when an author takes too many liberties with the known past.
Next, you're changing the landscape of Earth as we know it. So make sure your story has some description so your reader can see your setting. Destroyed buildings, burned-out cars, or nature reclaiming what the human race has changed. If you're keeping the story short, minute details aren't necessary. Remember, our readers have imaginations and like to use them! But you need to give a framework for your readers to travel in.
Okay, next are your characters. Decide if your characters are survivors, or predators, and who gets to die. A catastrophic event is going to bring out the base strengths and weaknesses in the people that survive. Be sure to take advantage of the extraordinary situation and create stellar characters.
Last, leave an opening somewhere.  If your story becomes popular, it sure would be nice to create side stories for your secondary characters or move forward to a novel. Tie up your loose ends of the main people in your story, but I find it nice to imagine what happens in that "world" with other people and situations.
And as always, Write On!
This month's question: Do you enjoy creating horror stories?
Do you feel it also fits the action/adventure genre?
Answer below  Editors love feedback! 
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Excerpt: Welcome to the 14th Annual NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon, the activity where you can compete in NaNoWriMo and raise GPs for some great Writing.com causes at the same time! This event is my way of showing appreciation to all the wonderful groups and activities on this site that encourage members of this site to read, write, and participate in the community. I hope you'll all join me in showing your support by participating as either a writer or a sponsor (or both)!
Excerpt: I knew from the moment we left the house that something wasn’t right.
Excerpt: Stella transferred to our school mid-term and I saw her for the first time on a Wednesday in October of 1950, we were both eleven and in the 6th grade.
Excerpt: I turned my collar up to stem the shiver that assailed me as I walked along the street.
Excerpt: Ted wondered dimly when he'd get a bite of the corpse.
Excerpt: I hated hunting in the rain. I was drenched, cold, and empty handed. The plan was to sleep in the truck for a few hours and start again. Still, I couldn’t ignore the vibrating phone. The paycheques that came with private callers never disappointed me. “We have an undead issue,” she snapped.
Excerpt: Here Hungerford paused for a moment, surveying his audience for signs of understanding. As usual, several of his students seemed to be asleep or well on the way to such a condition. Others had the familiar blank stare that indicated they heard the words but did not bother assigning meaning to them.
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Excerpt: San Francisco, better known as the city, swirled in a misty shadow as night fell upon the semi-deserted streets. A place known for its homeless, crime, and cold nights is the place of the tale I tell. It was on the city streets at 2 AM that I received the call in the car, an incessant beeping on the radio for the call-up signal, and then the grated voice of dispatch giving out the calls it receives for a city in turmoil. No night is different, just crime, violence, and homeless in a city turned upside down. My name is Murphy and I am a detective for San Francisco Police Department. This is my story.
Excerpt: My eyes snapped awake, and I shoved off the cover of my coffin with a stretch and yawn. Pulling my lower lip back over my closing fangs—it hurt when I opened my mouth this wide and forget to tuck my canines back in—I rose from my bed to open the curtains. Admiring the sunset along the horizon with a sigh, I clomped up the basement stairs and staggered into the kitchen. Looking at the calendar, I noted that today was daylight savings time. Fall back. I frowned. Damn. I’d lose an hour of sleep today, with sunset coming an hour earlier.
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This month's question: Do you enjoy creating horror stories?
Do you feel it also fits the action/adventure genre?
Answer below Editors love feedback!
Last month's "Action/Adventure Newsletter (September 28, 2022)" question: What weather event have you used to move your story arc?
brom21  : In one of my stories there is a thick, veiling mist that requires a character to use a sixth sense of sorts to navigate through the blinding, swirling fog. Weather is an awesome force man has tried to control, believe it or not. One of my favorite powers of nature is the formation of thunder clouds that resonates with lightning. I have always also loved to gaze at those white cumulonimbus clouds that never ceases to dazzle me with dreams of heaven. lol. Thanks for the NL! mul other worldly .
Monty  : I have written a number of Poems about the weather.
Elfin Dragon-finally published : I've used weather in a couple of short stories I wrote for contests. They were both rainstorms, though one had lightning in it. I've also used weather in some poems I've written as well. Funny, I think I've used mostly some type of rainstorm in those as well. I think I like how all the elements can play in them.
BIG BAD WOLF is hopping  : In a couple of stories set in the afterlife, soon after arriving, there's a thunderstorm, with wind, rain, and so on. After encountering those already there, they learn that nice sunny days get boring after a while, and there's nothing like a good storm to clean things up.
Angelica- House Florent B & W  : It was a dark and stormy night. It was a bright and sunny day. Those two weather often gets used in my story. I think weather is vital and reflects moods too.
Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT  : For a while, my fictional world was set in Seattle. I made it rain non-stop. This made it into the story every now and then when characters got soaked during cold weather.
Odessa Molinari : I've used severe snow in one of my novels to create a side story.
s : Because most of my stories are set in Australia, I have been known to use bushfires and floods to get a story moving along. I have a book coming out in 2023 through Little Demon Books (cheap plug!) where heavy flooding is a key plot point.
bryanmchunter: Stormy weather. Ryan McHiggins from Toddlerhood is afraid of lightning but wants to be able to overcome this fear.
Robert Waltz  : It was a dark and stormy night..
TheBusmanPoet  : I wrote a Blitz poem called "Destroying Our Oceans"and a Brevee poem called "Floods" which covers some aspects. The Blitz Poem probably is not 100% percent weather but I think it has a lot of indirect involvement in it.
Damon Nomad  : A killer who uses a lightning rod to direct lightning from a storm into the metallic piping of an old house. Looking for the right moment when the victim is taking a warm salt bath.
Jay O'Toole  : I used an incident of wind shear to create an airplane crash. This was the biggest tragic event in one of my stories.
Paul  : A 300 foot wall of water caused by a massive shift in the mid-Atlantic rift zone that destroys 98% of the world survived by my hero and a woman that decided to accompany him. He has a special trimaran built with two 2,400 HP held on-ter and creates a hydroplane the climbs the wall and saves them. I’m working on what happens next.
elephantsealer : Mostly rain and thunder... however, I have also used floods during a storm...
N.A Miller : dimensional portal to the realm of anti-matter.. far fetched theory but graspable in science fiction.
AmyJo- only 2 steps behind -  : Truthfully, I've used "It was a dark and stormy night" a la Snoopy...LOL
Khola Mousethyme : Of course I used a major storm (with a tornado I think) in "The Darkest Storm" . However I don't think I've used weather in much else (except snow in the Christmas stories I'm playing with) but I think I could use it as a background (at least) more often.
keyisfake : Rain, snow, and icy wind.
dragonwoman : I wrote about a weather dragon.
SherritheWriter : I used a tropical storm on Halloween to show that the setting for Resonance (my Halloween long story) and The Earthside Trilogy were based on the same setting - just a few centuries apart! |
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Action/Adventure: October 26, 2022 Issue [#11637]
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