Today we welcomed back Julia P, and actually got to talk about horror writing. Some general tips were researched and delivered by Julia and if I get my hands on them I will post them here. They included staying scared as a writer, creating new monsters, using urban legend, let likeable characters make bad decisions, and bringing the ending as the final blow to the torture of your reader.

This week's writing prompt: Take a childhood fear and turn that into a mature short horror story.

aaaaand NOW it's time for more SPOooO0o00oooOoOoKY  stuff

Today I will use the tool of mystery to enhance fear, by posting 2 unlabled links. One will be to the first episode of an anime based on the scariest video game to ever exist. Actually, it's still the most haunting thing I have ever seen. It is called Corpse Party. All the trigger warnings on that one. The anime is a dumbed down version that is only 4 episodes, so if you want the actual full gut-wrenching experience look up a playthrough of the game. The other link will be a video about a celebrity cannibal, and I won't spoil anything but it's way less scarring. More like life changing.

                                                                       Link 1 Link 2 

So due to the earthquake drill today we did not have a club meeting. But that won't stop writing club! Not today!
If we had had a meeting the topic would have been horror. We would have started with this quote from Stephen King:

“The three types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there …” — Stephen King

Then we would have looked at some writing tips for horror, via this tumblr post. I found this article to be interesting but also debatable. Tell me what you think in the comments! That's what they're there for!

Finally, I would have revealed our first picture writing prompt! The prompt for this week is:

As Halloween approaches, we must sustain the skeleton warlords with more spooky stuff.

The scariest thing I read in the last 7 days was actually from a Wikipedia article. I saw the trailer for "In the Heart of the Sea," a movie Chris Hemsworth is starring in. I heard that it was based on a true story that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. The Wikipedia article tells the story of the Whaleship Essex here. 
This is a true story, so here are some trigger warnings (that are kind of spoilers):
whales, stranded at sea, death, drinking pee, starvation, cannibalism
This was horrifying to me even without the flair of descriptive writing. And I mean, 2 first-hand accounts were written. I cannot imagine reading them. This is a really good example of something to inspire realistic horror writing.

So today we talked about science fiction again, and when I say talked about I mean we read an article by Max Barry that was amazing and can be found here. It was awesome, but there weren't many thoughts from the group, so we moved on. We discussed how we would talk about horror, because I'll probably just want to discuss American Horror Story the whole time. We also discussed having more inspirational prompts, because as Max Barry pointed out that not feeling inspired to write is to the fault of bad ideas, not bad writers. With that in mind, I came to the conclusion that written prompts were not inspiring enough, and I decided that starting next club meeting we will have picture prompts for a change instead of writing prompts. I forgot to put the prompt on the blog last week as well, so for this week we will use up the last 3 prompts on the list:
  “I didn’t walk all the way here just so you could yell at me”  “She’s gone mad.”  “I just wish there was another option.”

TIME FOR MORE SPOOKY

Today's horror sample will be a creepy pasta,  The Russian Sleep Experiment . As of writing this post I have yet to read it but to make sure that you would not be scarred for life I found this article  proving that it is not true nor based on a true story.

Today we talked about science fiction: both what to do and what not to do.
Our most discussed tip was to know what you're talking about. Seriously. Don't play around with vacuum properties guys.
Now it's time for more spooky stuff!!

Today's story is I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

There is also a video game that goes with this, but it is definitely scary enough on its own.

Due to that story's very dark nature I will recommend something a little bit more "jump-scary" in the form of PewDiePie playing my favorite horror game. It's called Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, and it is kind of steampunk and not as scary as the first Amnesia game but I love the story and it's historical nature, as it is inspired by the horrors revealed by muckraker journalists in the early 20th century and the events leading up to WWI.

I'm a huge nerd.

Sorry for the late update guys!
On Tuesday we talked about mystery again. Julia gave tips for outlining a mystery plot.
I can't remember any of the tips at the moment because I apparently can't remember things after 24 hours.
Next week we will be talking about sci-fi dos and don'ts. We might use your favorite or least favorite sci-fi books/movies/shows/what have you.
IN OTHER NEWS IT'S OCTOBER. I'M GOING TO RECOMMEND SO MUCH SCARY STUFF FOR YOU.

Today's selection is the short horror manga: Enigma of Amigara Fault This messed me up and it will mess you up.
In response to the prompt James once again wrote something awesome that will take me a while to type so be patient. I also wrote a very short dumb thing, because you guys deserve something less intimidating to look to when answering these prompts. Look for them on the Club Works page!
This week's prompt is: "...And if he says no?"