Horror is my first love. She’s tragic and shocking and allowed to be offensive. You don’t have to get gory to frighten readers; suspense does a better job of that.
I believe the point of horror isn’t to scare your readers, but to make them feel your character’s fright. Well I must have done that well in my latest piece, “Molded to Perfection.”
The editor of the Horror Zine loved it. This isn’t the biggest publication, but it has a lot of heart and I’ve desired to have a piece published by them for some time now. It seems like a right of passage for a lot of horror writers I’ve met along the way.
This particular piece reads like a Twilight Zone episode. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing when I wrote it, and it’s difficult to judge your own work, but I’m pretty pleased with it.
Congrats on the publication! Very interesting point – that the purpose of horror isn’t to scare the reader, but for the reader to feel the character’s fear. I think that being scared as the reader is what makes horror fun – getting your own adrenaline pumping. But I like that your point allows a horror to still be a successful story. And I also agree that suspense is more frightening than gore 🙂
My fav part of story sharing is how we all have our own take on every tale.