I haven’t gotten around to writing creepy characters yet.
I keep meaning to. Creepy sells. Creepy thrills. Creepy makes your spine feel all tingly and weird.
It’s not like I haven’t had a chance yet. I’ve written about vampires and werewolves, critters lurking in the night. I even wrote about an invisible dog once, well, a ghost, but he was invisible most of the time. He even had a starring role in my second book from my Adventures of guy series. Still though, no creepiness.
The vampires in Fang Face have a taste for Type A blood, but they aren’t creepy. The werewolves might be creeps in the ‘jerk’ sense, but not creeps in the ‘euu’ sort of way. The unknown in my books is suspenseful, but you just don’t get the Pet Cemetery feeling of your skin crawling around untethered from your skeleton.
What is it that separates the Stephen King from the John Grisham? The Stephen Coonts from the Dean Koontz? Something dark and sinister in the soul? I don’t know. I know that Dean Koontz has an affinity for dogs, particularly golden retrievers, and they regularly star in his books … sometimes as invisible friends … so there’s the creepy thing again. He can’t even write a book with a nice normal dog without making the dog all weird and mysterious.
Do you have to sit in a dark room to write dark stuff? Write during a thunder storm? Or write when your mother-in-law is visiting? Do you need that kind of muse to craft the invisible friend?
I don’t know. You can flip this over. Do you think Stephen King wonders if you have to sit on a Whoopie Cushion to write funny stuff? Or put jello in your underwear, so you ‘feel’ funny?
Inspiration, funny stuff … except when it’s creepy stuff.
Norm
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