Acolytes of the macabre!

October is here, and so comes Halloween (the only worthwhile holiday in the States).

Time for another writing contest!

The Pot

I'll put down 10 STEEM worth of SBI shares.

First place: 5 SBI
Second place: 3 SBI
Third place: 2 SBI

The pot may increase in rewards depending on upvote value for posts.

Contest Duration

I'll give you about two weeks. Starting October 1st and running till October 15th.

There will be a roundup post in one week. At the contest end, I'll announce winners as well as offer critique/response to each entry.

The Prompt

I'm looking for horror fiction. Please, no personal anecdotes. Yes, reality is horror, but I want well written fiction.

Not so much a prompt as a theme, your stories must involve Sparagmos in some way.

I've been fixating on the concept of wild women ripping apart men, particularly in these times of rape culture and Kavanaugh. Your story doesn't need to have women ripping apart men, but should involve a kind of a group mutilation and/or cannibalism. Lookup the wikipedia for more examples of what I'm talking about.

You don't need to describe the scene. Maybe it happened in the past. Maybe it's about to happen. Or maybe your story does actually describe a frenzied orgy of blood.

Eitherway, sparagmos & horror are the qualifiers for the contest!

Rules

Additional rules are:

1. upvote this post. This potentially increases the rewards of the winners, and helps pay for the contest (nothing is free). If you have a problem with upvoting (supporting) a writing contest, you probably have unrealistic expectations in life.
2. leave a link to your story in the comment section.
3. please comment/like/upvote other writer's posts.
4. One person, one entry.
5. Word Count: 1000-3000. A little under, a little over, that’s okay. Whatever is necessary to make the story complete.
6. Use #horror as a tag. Currently, there’s not much on Steemit. Let’s change that.
7. Link this post at the end of your story.
8. One picture. If your writing can’t convey images without you depending on pictures, than it’s probably bad writing.
9. If you want me to offer my critique of the post, please put "critique" at the end of your post. This will involve me stating what I thought were the strengths and weaknesses of your work.

CI: Collective Intelligence

Some of you may have seen this post. CI, or Collective Intelligence, is a new platform by a programmer/ discord friend and fellow steemian @anarchyhasnogods.

CI allows you to submit posts for curation. Enough votes garners a vote by the CI account. I recommend you to use it (login requires an active key. no, it isn't saved anywhere except your computer) to promote your post and potentially earn an upvote. Also, the platform can be used to upvote other submitted posts. Upvoting a post earns you a reward in STEEM!

Goodluck to all entries! Thanks in advance for your participation!

Below are writing tips. Pick/choose at your descretion

What Is Horror?

“Origin of the comic. If one considers that for some hundred thousand years man was an animal susceptible to fright in the highest degree, and that anything sudden or unexpected meant that he was ready to do battle, perhaps to die; indeed, that even later in social relations, all security rested on the expected, on tradition in meaning and activity; then one cannot be surprised that at every sudden, unexpected word or deed, if it comes without danger or harm, man is released and experiences instead the opposite of fright. The cringing creature, trembling in fear, springs up, expands wide: man laughs. This transition from momentary fear to short-lived exuberance is called the comic. Conversely, in the phenomenon of the tragic, man quickly goes from great, enduring exuberance to great fear; however, since among mortals great enduring exuberance is much less common than the occasion for fear, there is much more of the comic than of the tragic in the world; man laughs much more often than he is devastated.” -Nietzsche

Horror doesn’t have to be just vampires or ghosts. It doesn’t have to be slaughterpunk or gore or spooky jump-at-you-boo unexpected twists.

Horror, at its base, challenges the reader’s assumptions about the world. It shakes the reader through shaking the character. The ghost or the supernatural entity or the fantastic, these are plot tools. They’re a means of telling the story.

See Ligotti or Borges or Bolagno or Lovecraft for examples of what I mean.

I’m looking for short stories that use the supernatural or horrific in an exciting way to keep the reader engaged, the force the character to make a decision, to push the plot forward.

What is a story?

A story has a beginning, middle and end. A story has characters. A story has conflict, which drives the plot. The character has a to make a decision of some kind, has to put something on the line, to reach a lesson. A story is the unravelling of a truth. By the end of the story, that truth is revealed. When the reader learns the truth (what the story IS), the story is finished.

Writing Tips

1. Use a powerful hook for an opening line. Engage the reader.
2. The reader should know exactly what the story is about by the first few sentences, if not the first sentence.
3. The unexamined life is not worth living. The unexceptional story is not worth reading. Don’t write about mundane things.
4. Adverbs suck. Usually. Use strong verbs instead.
5. Try using http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ This is a free tool. You can see all the adverbs and passive voice in your work, and eliminate them.
6. If the sentence or paragraph doesn’t propel the plot forward, the reader doesn’t need to know it. Remember, you as the writer should know EVERYTHING about the story and characters. But the story itself is just a small window into that world. It doesn’t have to be the entire world itself.
7. Characters should exist in a time and place and perform actions, or have actions performed on them. Point being, stories require movement of events and places. Not just descriptions. Not just flowery language. Not just images.
8. When describing things, try to be as sparse as possible. The reader creates the image in their own heads. “She sat on a bed” vs “she sat on an iron bed” vs “she sulked on an iron bed” vs “she sat on a bed that was made of iron, approximately two meters by four meters in length, covered in red velvet blankets and silk pillows shaped like hearts”
9. Don't start with a person not remembering where they are. Don’t end with ‘it was all a dream’.
10. Or, fuck all these tips and do what you think the story needs.