Horrible Writing

As a writer of horror (and the greatest horror is in trying to get published) I watch horror movies. Part of the fun is that some poorly made movies can be quite good while some studio productions can be awful. The difference is in the writing.

I’m sure we’ve all seen horror films that are dashed together startle scenes and gory with no plot or storyline. Good escapism they may be, but they leave you hungry. The mind craves a story to follow, even in horror. Especially in horror.

I’ve recently entered the market for buying a house. I’m a first time buyer. Probably it wasn’t a good idea to binge watch the Amityville trilogy. The first film is okay, being loosely based on the book. The second film is more disturbing than scary and that’s because of an evil father. The third is pure tripe.

Amityville 3-D has plot lines raised and dropped like fire bombs over Dresden. So spare in its writing that actors are frequently given no lines, they stand stupidly watching things that’d make a warrior scream. No wonder the screenwriter was billed under a pseudonym.

I’m not picking on this film alone. The point is that what makes a film good is the writing. Of course, if you’re reading this blog you probably know that few people like to pay for writing. Literary magazines sometimes try, book publishers actively try to avoid, and some movie producers abhor paying writers. They are, however, the ones who spin and weave the threads that make whole cloth.

It’s a curious state of affairs that those who come up with the ideas, the story line, the narrative arc, are devalued in the process. Perhaps its because we struggling writers yearn for whatever we can get. Society prefers cheap entertainment. When it gets what it pays for, as in some horror movies, it will complain. After all, it’s less costly than paying a writer.

Comments

Maybe Okay

A couple pieces of encouraging news, perhaps, dear struggling writers. I had a couple short stories accepted for publication in recent weeks. As a fellow writer recently said, “You've got to keep trying. Somebody will like what you wrote.” That’s a bit of sunshine. And it’s likely true. But the stories: “The Crossing,” about two men in a boat trying to cross the Atlantic, was accepted by JayHenge Publishing. JayHenge is a small, but paying publisher. I was flattered when they wanted it for their Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe anthology. Being associated with Poe in any way feels good. The second story, “St. Spiders’ Day,” had been brewing in my mind for years—yes, this is a long game! A friend pointed me to The Creepy podcast. Since the story hadn’t been written, I followed their guidelines of what they wanted. It worked. I recently heard a successful wri...

Working Through It

The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time. Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot. Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group. Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday. I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare. I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run. And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined. One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful. They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only. Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away. They also met on Saturdays. Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...

Creative Righting

Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world. That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week. That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press. The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor. She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher. I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions. I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor. That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it? You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify. It’s got speculative elements to it. ...

K. Marvin Bruce

Search This Blog