You call it ‘disturbing,’ I call it…

This recent comic from Dan Piraro's bizarrocomics.com made me laugh. And as a "horror writer" and also a writing teacher, I can also identify with both the analyst and the analysand in many ways. But there's a lesson for the writer in this. My analysis here is that it is neither the axe, nor the obsessive gaze of the man on the couch, but the bow tie that makes this comic work so well. All good stories have conflicts that generate tension and here the tension is apparent, between the man with a weapon -- held in a way that…

Dark Promptings: Personal Horrors with Tim Waggoner

"Dark Promptings" is a special series of guest-written creative writing prompts, aimed at sparking the imagination's gasoline for writers from any genre...but with a dark or devious discoloration, just like the Instigation department at Gorelets.com. The guest contributors are folks who wrote articles appearing in my fat new non-fiction book for fiction writers of all kinds, Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction, making a stop here at gorelets.com as part of their Virtual Book Tour across the web. (You can find my own VBT essays elsewhere). Writers and creative people: drop on by our book's meaty weblog…

Dark Promptings: Love Wrestling with Matt Duvall

"Dark Promptings" is a special series of guest-written creative writing prompts, aimed at sparking the imagination's gasoline for writers from any genre...but with a dark or devious discoloration, just like the Instigation department at Gorelets.com. The guest contributors are folks who wrote articles appearing in my fat new non-fiction book for fiction writers of all kinds, Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction, making a stop here at gorelets.com as part of their Virtual Book Tour across the web. (You can find my own VBT essays elsewhere). Writers and creative people: drop on by our book's meaty weblog…

Dark Promptings: For the Bible Tells Me So with Lee Allen Howard

"Dark Promptings" is a special series of guest-written creative writing prompts, aimed at sparking the imagination's gasoline for writers from any genre...but with a dark or devious discoloration, just like the Instigation department at Gorelets.com. The guest contributors are folks who wrote articles appearing in my fat new non-fiction book for fiction writers of all kinds, Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction, making a stop here at gorelets.com as part of their Virtual Book Tour across the web. (You can find my own VBT essays elsewhere). Writers and creative people: drop on by our book's meaty weblog…