HORROR WRITERS what inspires you to write?

[sarah-crows]

i honestly loove horror, i am a coward who's scared of everything, but i still love the thrill of horror, not blood or gore, but just that silent horror that plays with your mind , the kind that's so subtle , but still there, like our fear of the unknown, or the dark, i love exploring that fear of irrational things
i'm a normal human btw hh

[wekanian]

Ohh nice I start writing a horror fiction to fight something (I just happen to have an idea for horror so I go with that). I’ll stay tuned to read ppl’s answers.

[Lambrose]

When I play a video game (like Outlast or Resident evil) or watch a good movie (like Midsommar or The Ritual) the ideas just start coming in and won't leave me alone. I think of my favorite parts and mash them with some original ideas and just go from there.

[sarah-crows]

did you play resident evil village ? i loved it , i just watched a playthrough, and although i'm not that into resident evil, i really liked it

[foxnflames]

I also like playing on irrational fears as well as the things we like to keep buried and the thought of them coming to light or having to face them being horrifying. I think gore and jump scares are cheap so I shy away from those.

I do like the unnerving and uncanny type of scares, like if you’re reading something and there’s something seemingly mundane happening, and something similar happens in real life, it makes you think of that part in the story. So the things that stay with you after you put the book down.

[lynestjules]

Home inspires me. I'm talking about Atlantic Canada in general. It has so much history, ghost stories and urban legends, it's hard not to be carried away with it. It's a small place with a lot of quirk.
It's very easy to be swept away with all the folklore.

I mean, I watch tons of crime documentaries & horror movies. But, to be honest, just being here does the job.

[Lambrose]

Not yet! I'm waiting to get the ever-elusive PS5! I watched Residence of Evil do a live playthrough of the whole game and it was AMAZING!

[Kuma]

I have written horror once or twice and I always work from things that piss me off in real life. Like Bureaucracy. I had a short story awarded in a local contest describing a nightmarish day of bureaucratic and soul-crushing procedures.

[sarah-crows]

yess i loove to explore those fears

[Legendarylankman13]

Usually the nightmares I have. I wake up and write them down right away for ideas. And also listening to the silent hill soundtrack elevates the creativity.

[An_Alias]

I have enough anxiety, so I like to share!

Plus, I've been in a lot of weird situations.

[GumshoeComix]

I use things I'm afraid of to inspire me cause I'm a big baby that's terrified of everything irl but Horror movies can't even make me flinch
so I use real life as inspiration most of the time since it's often scarier / "truth is stranger than fiction" kinda thing
I Just watch the news for a few minutes and I get anxiety haha
and when it comes to designing monsters I love using Silent Hill as a reference their designs are sick.

[sarah-crows]

i am something of a big baby myself

[Jenny-Toons]

Been a horror fan since I was a wee child: started out with Night of the Living Dead, and it kinda spiraled down from there. A lot of my inspiration comes from 80s media (both direct and inspired). I pull a lot from John Carpenter's movies, especially his cosmic horror/sci-fic horror ones: The Thing (1982) and The Prince of Darkness (1987)

Music also gives me a pretty good inspiration: generally, I go to songs/instrumentals that have a certain mood. Something cross between misty 70s hippie music and mellow 80s love ballads. Those always have lyrics I can easily twist into something darker. Right now, I listen to Men I Trust and The Cars for that nice feeling.

Combined with that, I also peak into a lot of sub-genre horror: folk horror, cosmic horror, and Gothic horror.

They're scary in a different way, really digging into the idea of Romanticism, and how obsession and gaining knowledge can go together if you're not careful. I also like how the danger can either be painted actually scary or "benevolent" -- and the horror is that we can never tell the difference.

That's honestly why I loved The Thing so much: it wasn't the on-sight gore that scared me. It was the idea that I could be in a room with someone, having known them all my life -- and not realize they're no longer human. Or the reverse -- that you've been infected: you're in pain, you're trying to fight while the monster takes over -- and no one even realizes.

Now THAT'S good horror -- and that's kinda what I got for in my stories.

[Caro]

I grew up in a household where horror was the only genre that was playing on tv at all times and as a kid I hated it because I was (and still am) a huge scaredy cat. And then somewhere along in my teens I realized I absorbed a lot more than I thought I did and I had been mainly watching horror movies of my own accord. Its still one of the main things I consume.

I had a lot of failed attempts at horror comics in my teens and early 20s so I made it my mission to track down any interview and writings from any of my favorite horror writers and directors. What I learned was to stop chasing after ideas I thought were purely cool and to embrace the stuff that was actually scary to me. I also learned almost every single person in horror I admire is also a scaredy cat and its actually a huge asset to have when you’re writing something you mean to scare people with.

So a lot of the recurring ideas in my horror comics are people who see something nobody else can, things that don’t seem threatening until they are, people forced into unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people, the realization that you don't know the people closest to you, etc.

A lot of my settings come from spending my childhood in Maine where my best friend growing up was family friends with Stephen King who lived on the same street as them. I’m always a little anxious about people thinking I’m making a specific Stephen King reference every time I set something in Maine and not that I have a very personal connection to the area but OH WELL.