Horror Writer’s Block

You hold the pen over the page and open your mind, creating a channel from your thoughts to your fingers. Then the words flow onto page, and the story is constructed piece by piece.

Beginning.

Middle.

End.

You write a horror story, or at least you try to. Setting up a situation, letting it progress and develop with each new word added.

Then something changes.

You begin to think too hard about how terrifying your story is:

Is your monster too cliché?

Is your protagonist likable?

Is your atmosphere built to it's peak?

Sometimes you stop in the middle of a tense scene, with your character in the throes of pain or fear or despair with no visible escape in sight. And you might carry on from there, perhaps make notes on how to improve what you have written thus far.

Or... you might strike your pen through those words to try try again.

And through this decision you lock your character in that horrific situation, freezing your own creation in a state of perpetual torture. Whether torn by sharp talons, abandoned in isolation, forced to see the carcass of their loved ones... whatever you can imagine.

Speaking of which, here's something else to imagine as you strike through those words:

Imagine the tip of your pen tearing into the skin of your protagonist.

Imagine the dark, inky blood spilling out from their white papery skin.

And imagine they feel this as well as the horror your scenario already inflicts.

Perhaps it helps, and your new story becomes a masterpiece that terrifies many readers with a single sentence, breaking their minds before stitching them together again with a thread of nightmares. And your protagonist will surely suffer either way.

But as an author the most sadistic thing you can inflict on your characters is writers block.

I should know.

I do it all the time.