The idea for this story was trivial, really. Most ideas are. They simply happen.
It began with a want to write a horror short story for Halloween and trying to be spooky with the wording and phrasing. From there, it was the tremendous task of deciding what it should actually be.
Thus, Marlow's End.
I have an idea for a horror novel—influenced by "'salem's Lot" by Stephen King and "Old Gods of Appalachia", a horror anthology podcast, by Steve Shell and Cam Collins—that takes place in a fictional town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I'm not going to share any more details, I am planning to WRITE the thing, but there is a character in the idea who is one of only two people to believe the protagonist about the supernatural experiences she encounters in and around the Marlow's End.
This character, John Dunn, is the eccentric owner of the Marlow's End clock tower. So, I asked myself, why does John Dunn believe her? I wrote the first line of "The Clock Tower" in a journal in late September, which turned into those opening paragraphs—albeit less polished.
I vaguely knew where I was going with it. Some planning and research was done. I'm a fan of painting with broad strokes in the planning phase of writing and leaving the details for the actual act of writing. It helps keep me focused and chases away what we usually call "writer's block" (for the most part, anyway.)
With this story, I paid closer attention to the flow of words and the personality of the narration. I knew I had to build suspense and a feeling of unease as the story progressed. I knew I wanted it to sound good whether read in the mind or out loud.
The scare, the horror, THAT was the hardest part to write. I'm no stranger to writing gore and blood and violence (I'm a fantasy writer, after all) but I had to truly try anything purely meant to be horror in the last few years. So I wrote fast—from the moment John hears his father scream all the way until the repeat of the beginning—there wasn't a lot of forethought given to it. I went wherever the writing took me. When I finished, I put it away and went over it the next day a few times.
There are still grammatical errors. There are still sentence fragments, still beats and passages where perfect English are ignored, but that is by design. I needed the pace to continue. I wanted it to sound frantic, I wanted the speed of the words to make the mind and heart race.
Whether or not it was effective, that is up to personal taste.
It was a deliberate choice to put the beginning, word for word, at the very end. The reader has the context now, after all. It it works. I hope it works for the reader.
As a first foray into this practice of writing short stories for an audience—however small—I hope it was at least enjoyable. I enjoyed writing it.
Your author,
Warren Dale Emerson
Comentários