Fiction writers: does this ever happen to you?

[ZenLefty]

So I was writing a part of this story that's particularly creepy and spooky. Naturally it's creepier to me than anyone else because I decide to throw in things that creep me out, hoping they creep everyone else out too. And I build up the suspense carefully, setting up this really macabre vignette of the supernatural, something to truly be afeard of. It would be the kind of scene in a movie where everyone screams "DON'T GO DOWN THE DAMN STAIRS YOU IDIOT!!" but they can't because the characters have to go down there, bathed in this eerie aphotic light that seems to drain the color out of everything, dim but intense all at once, and getting more intense with every step of the stairs...

And now I can't fucking sleep. :grr:

All I can think about is this ghastly apparition floating in the air, that can be seen only in this eerie aphotic light, with one piercing eye that would be serpentine yellow if only the light was normal, with maggots for teeth (and all that other gross stuff us amateur writers use) and fingernails like talons that can claw into a person's belly without even touching them. And all the while, a second image is superimposed, the feeble light of a lamp on its last drip of oil, which attempts to cast the cellar in its true colors, where a hanged man can be seen in place of the floating apparition. And once the lamp goes out (and it's going out faster than it should, of course) then nothing will stop the apparition from feasting on the flayed tissue of those who disturbed him. Oh, and they must ask questions of this apparition. And everything they say has to rhyme. And if they don't skeedaddle before their lamp runs out, they're just effing doomed.

Part of the reason I'm awake at 2:41 am when I'm usually snoring at midnight is that it's just so damn spooky (to me, at least). Also because I didn't finish the chapter, and I'm thinking of rhymes and things that will happen and things that will happen after and what kind of cryptic things the bastard ghost will say and how it will be interpreted. Trust me, you can't get milk warm enough to make me nod off tonight. Nope, not all the sheep in Wales can help me now, no matter how many fences they jump over.

Can't sleep. Don't care if the clown'll eat me.

[Crazy8s]

Characters can come to life

and write themselves, but the only horror I've written has been the humorous (Ghostbuster type) kind. A scene can disturb me if something nasty or horrifying is happening to a character or in a scene, but I've never been creeped out enough to lose sleep over it. I'm more likely to wake up in the middle of the night with scene ideas and have to get up to write them down!

[Crazy8s]

1. Characters can come to life

and write themselves, but the only horror I've written has been the humorous (Ghostbuster type) kind. A scene can disturb me if something nasty or horrifying is happening to a character or in a scene, but I've never been creeped out enough to lose sleep over it. I'm more likely to wake up in the middle of the night with scene ideas and have to get up to write them down!

[sybylla]

2. Happens to me

Usually when I get to a point of action. I try to go to bed and my brain just keeps trying to write, plan, scheme, create. I just can't shut it off. So I do the next best thing and get up and write some more. Since I work out of my home, I can do that and take a nap in the afternoon if I need to. It's tough if you have a day job.