I ain’t afraid of no ghost
I am, however, afraid of things that go bump in the night. And the monster that lives under my bed. And whatever it is that’s hiding behind the furnace in our dimly-lit basement. You’ll never catch me watching a typical horror flick (at least, not on purpose)—jump scares and grisly murders just aren’t interesting to me, from a story-telling perspective—but I will absolutely watch the kind of slow-creeping psychological horror that hints at evil without actually resorting to violent attacks and gruesome deaths. And then I will follow that up with a nice episode of She-Ra just so I can sleep.
[I always feel like] somebody’s watching me
What makes a story a horror story? Usually we expect blood, violence, and death galore. But you know what? That’s too easy; one could even argue that’s lazy writing. Take a look at Village of the Damned, which is almost violence-free, or The Blair Witch Project, which (for all its faults) I found absolutely terrifying. It doesn’t take excessive gore to raise gooseflesh. (Or, for a more recent example, check out Get Out, which should be required watching anyway.)
This month, in honor of Village of the Damned, which released in 1960, we want you to give us a 60-word horror story without the easy horror elements.
More specifically:
- No blood.
- No gore.
- No dead or undead people or corpses of any sort (that also means no zombies, skeletons, ghouls, ghosts or vampires).
- No killing.
- No violence at all (including sexual violence): monsters yes, attacks no – think of how infrequently H.P. Lovecraft’s monsters actually attacked the narrator.
- Scare us, don’t shock us. We have several collective centuries’ worth of reading among us, and we’ve read it all—you won’t shock us. Make us want to sleep with the lights on.
Think you’ve got what it takes? I’ll be over here with my flashlight and my teddy bear waiting to read.
This is the badge you need:
Below is the YeahWrite badge you need for this month’s microprose challenge. Under the badge is a few lines of code. See that? Copy it and then paste it into the “text” or HTML view of your post editor. If you don’t copy it exactly, the image will not appear correctly in your post, and you will receive an error message when you submit the post to Inlinkz. If you have any questions regarding adding this code to your post or website, please contact us at editors@yeahwrite.me.
Need a hand?
Microprose sounds easy. After all, how hard can it really be to write a story with fewer than 100 words incorporating a prompt or two? But it turns out it’s our hardest challenge to really get right. Whether you’re a seasoned micropro or a brand new microwriter, it’s worth taking a minute to glance through the tips and tricks our editors have put together, like this quick refresher on what makes a micro great, or this one on how to incorporate mandatory prompts into adjudicated challenges. Make sure you make it to the vote this week: check your wordcount (we count those footnotes!) and prompts!
The microprose challenge ends in:
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
How to submit and fully participate in the Microprose Challenge
Basic YeahWrite guidelines: must be in response to the prompt found above; your entry can be dated no earlier than Wednesday, October 2; a horror story without blood, violence, or death told in exactly 60 words. You may enter only one microstory per weekly challenge.
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
- Please grab the code beneath the microprose badge in the body of this week’s post and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
- Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid;
- Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
- Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge; and
- Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog.
Submissions for this week’s challenges will close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.
Thank you for sharing with us your hard work! Good luck in the challenge…
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
Christine Hanolsy is a (primarily) science fiction and fantasy writer who simply cannot resist a love story. She joined the YeahWrite team in 2014 as the microstory editor and stepped into the role of Editor-In-Chief in 2020. Christine was a 2015 BlogHer Voices of the Year award recipient and Community Keynote speaker for her YeahWrite essay, “Rights and Privileges.” Her short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies and periodicals and her creative nonfiction at Dead Housekeeping and in the Timberline Review. Outside of YeahWrite, Christine’s past roles have included Russian language scholar, composer, interpreter, and general cat herder. Find her online at christinehanolsy.com.
