If you missed this morning’s prompts post, I am responding to the prompts from What Makes a Villain.
For today’s images I revisited the classic monster transparencies I created at the beginning of the month. Thinking about the difference between monsters and villains, I realized I would only consider some of the monsters villains—the ones who chose to act monstrously.
I tried a couple of things I’ve never tried before: taping the transparency to a clear plastic filter, and taping the transparency directly to the edge of the lens.
Today is also Stream of Consciousness Saturday and the prompt is “oo.” Looking up “oo” words inspired my response to today’s OctPoWriMo prompt. Here’s my stream of consciousness thinking about it:
I could write about oo spooky or oo gooey but I was also thinking of something villainous to use in my compound word poem. crook, took, good, look, taboo, tattoo, hood would probably work well, neighborhood, childhood, knighthood, unlikelihood, likelihood, brotherhood, sisterhood, priesthood, victimhood, parenthood, falsehood, selfhood,
I like those last two but I don’t think there are a lot of compound words to go with them. I’m going to have to spend some time with the dictionary this morning, or I should say, I get to spend time with the dictionary this morning.
The poem could be Hidden Under a Hood I can still use words like taboo and tattoo, I could end each line in an oo, so goo, kangaroo, hullabaloo, too, bugaboo, boogaloo, switcheroo, peekaboo, cockatoo, cockapoo, vindaloo, shampoo, booboo, boohoo, hoodoo, voodoo, kazoo, boo, moo, zoo
The scrabble dictionary online is great for this, and so many great words. Now I’m getting excited for my poem. I need a few more hood words and then I can start playing around with what someone with rose-colored glasses has to say about my villain. Maybe I can explore how the girlfriend/friend character sees my angry spirit out for revenge. I wonder if Kanopy* has the Crow. I bet it does.
*kanopy.com is a site where I can watch five movies per month for free through my library system, and it does have The Crow, so I’m going to (re)watch that later.
OctPoWriMo 2023:Facing Our Fears
Hidden Under a Hood
Though his every act is taboo
this moral game of peekaboo
a falsehood
Complaining like a worn kazoo
He’s tired of their whiny, boohoo
victimhood
Just gossip and hullabaloo
A projectory switcheroo
of selfhood
They accuse him of bad voodoo
but that’s just a boo from this zoo
neighborhood
Once you look past the face tattoo
you’ll see he’s not the bugaboo
in likelihood
Writober 2023
Today’s prompt for 13 Days of Samhain is “If These Bones Could Talk” which sparked an idea to go with the visual prompt.
Here’s the beginning of my story:
The Talking Bones
We’ve been down in this dark cavern for days. I don’t remember how you convinced me this would be a fun afternoon hike, and I should have known better when we packed headlamps and extra flannel shirts. Looking into the dark hole which greeted us with a cold moaning wind might as well have been yelling “run away,” but I took your hand and followed you down the the initial deceptive stone steps into the dark. At first it seemed like it would be crowded and claustrophobic, but almost everyone else stayed in the wide tall cavern. We did not. We veered off to the deeper regions where my headlamp revealed hills of rocks to climb almost to the ceiling and then down again, only to meet another hill of rocks. It didn’t take long before I was sweating and exhausted. You started a mantra of “Not long now” and when we encountered a chasm with a rope, I wanted to give up and die, and tears flowed down my cheeks in frustration.
When I finally made it to the other side, I could see your headlamp ahead of me off to my right. I thought you had strayed from the path to sit and wait for me, and heard another voice. Who could you be talking to?
I had to get down on all fours and crawl under a rock ledge. The voice sounded far away like we were only hearing the echo off the walls. When I touched your shoulder you shuddered then said, “Oh good, you made it,
but then put your finger to your lips, so I wouldn’t talk and pointed at a pile of bones. It was a rather large pile of bones of all shapes and sizes. And somehow I knew that the voice I heard came from the bones.
I sat on my knees and rested my head on your shoulder. The bones were telling the story of their lives in this cavern. The speaker had appeared as a human baby never aging or growing more than three feet tall. It kept a faceless humanoid as a pet and rode it as it crawled through the caverns. The speaker called his kind “Tites” and the pet an “Agmite.” The Tites were an aggressive, warring group, and learning to tame and train the Agmites gave them an advantage over other clans of Tites who they ate, and used their bones as weapons and armor.
I tapped your shoulder. I was feeling uneasy and not enjoying the cannibal bones history lessons, but you wouldn’t move. You just waved me off. My feet were falling asleep and my knees were sore from the cold stone. I switched to my butt and leaned against the camp cave wall. The drone of the bones quickly put me to sleep.
I woke up shivering. At first I didn’t know where I was. When I remembered, I was scared you had left me, but I heard the bones. My headlamp was off, and I feared the batteries were dead, but I hit the button anyway and it came on. I sighed in relief. You must have turned it off for me, or I did in my sleep.
“Oh good. You’re up,” you said. “You may want to save your headlamp battery. Besides it’s easier to visualize the story in the dark.”
“How long was I out?”
“Long enough to miss some important battles, some feasts, some deaths and births. It’s an epic tale.”
“I really want to go now. I’m freezing and sore.”
“And miss the rest of the story? No way. These bones are speaking to us. Telling their story to me. You know? I found them. It’s my responsibility to hear them to the end.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“Not long now.”
I had heard that one before. We could be down here forever. “Do we at least have food and water?”
“I finished it while you were sleeping.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I guess you’ll have to head to the surface and get more and come back.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t expect me to leave and come back. I don’t even know how to get back to the path.”
In my search for resources to help me write my first supernatural horror novel, I found Writing Monsters (assoc. link) by Philip Athans.
Here are the traits that he says define monsters:
- They are unpredictable
- They have a disturbing capacity for violence
- They exhibit an “otherness” = come from the Unknown
- Our imagination makes them scarier
- They are amoral
- They are beyond our control
- They are terrifying in appearance
- They turn us into prey
Today, I’m going to brainstorm scenes that show these traits in my supernatural entity.
Experience Writing 