Distraction
Nov. 20th, 2005 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysI did some work tidying up my driveway this morning - helping my neighbour get her place presentable (we share the driveway). I came in for lunch and then did a bit of reading on my current book. But that book is really rather boring, so I thought I'd take a break from it by reading a couple of short stories and then do some more work outside. The stories were to come from Never Seen by Waking Eyes by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stephen_dedman. As a plan this really sucked - I spent the next while reading the whole book, totally engrossed, and never got back outside or back to my boring book.
Reading the whole of Never Seen by Waking Eyes in one hit is not something I'd recommend to those of a nervous disposition. These are genuinely chilling little tales. Even on a bright sunny day they managed to create a shiver. A crew of strange and evil creatures starting with vampires and serial killers and getting odder from there are.
But as always, it is the telling, not the subject which is the core of creating the effect. A couple of things struck me about these tales. The first was they were not predictable. The punchlines often came out of left field and was more unsettling for that fact. Remember that these are very short stories, so there isn't a big lead-in to set the scene, so these twists do the job instead.
Thinking of lead-ins, the other thing I noticed was that a good number of the stories were in the first person in a simple matter of fact tone voice. This is something I noticed Lucy Sussex doing very well in her recent collection. What it does is make the opening of a story mundane and familiar, then when the horror hits, the contrast is heightened and made more effective. Like I said above - chilling (also funny and sexy but the chill is what impacted most).
stephen_dedman. As a plan this really sucked - I spent the next while reading the whole book, totally engrossed, and never got back outside or back to my boring book.Reading the whole of Never Seen by Waking Eyes in one hit is not something I'd recommend to those of a nervous disposition. These are genuinely chilling little tales. Even on a bright sunny day they managed to create a shiver. A crew of strange and evil creatures starting with vampires and serial killers and getting odder from there are.
But as always, it is the telling, not the subject which is the core of creating the effect. A couple of things struck me about these tales. The first was they were not predictable. The punchlines often came out of left field and was more unsettling for that fact. Remember that these are very short stories, so there isn't a big lead-in to set the scene, so these twists do the job instead.
Thinking of lead-ins, the other thing I noticed was that a good number of the stories were in the first person in a simple matter of fact tone voice. This is something I noticed Lucy Sussex doing very well in her recent collection. What it does is make the opening of a story mundane and familiar, then when the horror hits, the contrast is heightened and made more effective. Like I said above - chilling (also funny and sexy but the chill is what impacted most).