I finished writing that horror story last night, although I ought to put horror into quotes because it's not actually scary. I'm not even sure it's finished. The ending sucks so much I know I'll have to rewrite it, and I reread the whole thing at lunch today and some character stuff I introduced at the beginning isn't addressed during the story so that needs to change too. I'm hoping to pummel the story into some sort of shape this weekend, and I'll give myself the rest of the week to polish it before even thinking of sending it out.
This is the story I'm working on for the Harvest Hill anthology, and it kind of actually doesn't really fit the guidelines. They say, "Do not reference other years unless it is directly relevant to your story. Confine stories to their particular year/Halloween." Well, dammit, the meat of my story is a timeslip that takes the main character back in time an unspecified number of years. I don't know if they'd consider that relevant or not. I suspect that my inexperience in reading and writing within the horror genre means that I've hit on every cliche and obvious plot point out there, all while thinking I invented them myself.
Still, at least the story's finished. Sort of.
2 comments:
Ooh, good luck with polishing your story. In the thread on the Graveside Tales website (or perhaps Perumted - as there is a H.HIll thread running there too) the editor said he doesn't mind if the story covers other years but it must be set on one hallowe'en - or something like that. Basically, I think it's a case off 'if you have a really good story, he's interested'... My story references a year other than 1977.
Okay, I don't feel so bad now. The year I picked is 1981--I hope no one else gets that one first. :)
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