Imposter Syndrome

Indecisive.

That’s what I am.

What should we have for dinner?

What film should we watch?

Don’t ask me.

It’s not that I don’t have an opinion, especially when it comes to writing a story – In fact, I have so many ideas it's the equivalent of spinning countless metaphorical plates. But choosing one? Well, I might as well be Greek.

If I were a betting woman, I would say I have nothing short of a thousand stories swimming through my head at any given time. But putting them down on paper? A momentous task.

Every horror trope from the bloodthirsty ghost lurking in the shadows to being dragged down to hell by eager, skinless hands lives in my head, rent-free.

My mind is awash with characters of various crimes and perversions. Like a carousel, flashing pictures as they pass, never stopping. Tormenting me with a life I so badly want to live...

You know, the one where you make an actual living writing stories - Make enough money to keep the lights on and all that? That’s the dream. I just need the carousel to stop.

I’ll give you a little example.

Join me whilst I recap my most recent attempt to draft a story.

Let us begin.

This is Bill. Bill isn’t a nice man. Bill has secrets. Deep dark secrets. You see, Bill likes to eat kids.

Okay, cool. So, we have Bill. (We always start with the antagonist – it makes writing the prose more interesting. We are easily distracted, as you are about to see.)

What does Bill look like? Who cares. Next.

Why does Bill eat children? Is he a monster? Well, I mean, he chews on the bones of babies. Of course, he is a monster, but is he an actual mythical being? No, probably not. Much scarier if he’s human.

Okay, soooo, he eats them because?

He has an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can fulfil… But only young flesh…

Wait, does that work?

Define young.

Err… Unaged. Unused. Innocent?

Innocent. I like that. Ah fuck, define innocent.

What if a twelve-year-old kills their parents? Are they then still innocent? No, surely not. What if they kill them because the dad is a sex offender? Does that make it just? What if a four-year-old takes a rolling pin to the top of their newly cherished baby sister’s head because they are jealous of the new family addition, without understanding the consequences of their actions? Are they still innocent? Damn it. It has to be babies.

Does it though…

What if our Bill doesn’t eat children because he is ravenous at all? Perhaps he does it for shock value? See, our Bill grew up a lonely boy. Not the average run-of-the-mill, I don’t have anyone to play with, type lonely. No, no. Our Bill grew up in an orphanage, watching in an abysmal kind of distress as countless sets of want-to-be parents wandered through the crumbling hallways and chose everyone but him.

Even dirty Denis, who stuck his finger up his bum and used it to smear masterpieces on the dorm room walls, got picked. Whilst Bill (no, wait) dear little Billy (that’s better) watched from the sidelines. Spending each Christmas watching as the orphanage grew quieter, more lonesome. Only to be cast out and forgotten about when he came of age.

I kind of like that.

Why was he orphaned? Does it matter? Put a pin in that one; we are on a roll.

So, Billy grows up with a burning resentment in his chest. Every happy family he sees playing in the park together, or picking their kids up from football practice, nurtures a spiteful wickedness that slowly builds until he cannot contain it anymore. He lashes out.

Down goes the neighbour's beautiful little Sally, of only six, with luscious golden locks. Found whimpering in her mother’s Hydrangeas, with a large flesh wound on her rosy left cheek.

He didn’t kill her? Maybe he should?

Perhaps he taunts her instead...

Stalks her, comes back every year or two for another chunk. She becomes a whimpering wreck of a human being. Flinching at every shadow, unable to sleep. Her parents end up putting her in therapy to no avail. She isn’t crazy. There really is someone out there, trying to eat her, bit by bit.

(Liking it.)

It’s undeniable and inescapable. She is forced to grow up in a world unlike her peers – as prey. Other children whisper about her scars, telling tales of how she acquired them. She’s made to relive it every time she looks in the mirror. Until one day, she snaps and bites one of her classmates? AND INTO CARE OUR SWEET SALLY GOES?!

Calm down. On reflection, it isn’t great. Poetic, perhaps. But no best seller. Fuck. Okay. Let’s continue.

Maybe he comes into the story as an adult? Is a detailed backstory necessary? Maybe we don’t know why Billy picks his teeth with the bones of children.

Maybe he is fictitious. I mean, of course, he is fictitious. What I meeean is maybe he is a myth, something parents tell their children about to make them behave. But it turns out, to the horror of… (nothing too cliché) the town of Marrow Wake (nailed it), children are being hacked to death in the dead of night?

That could work.

Their parents end up finding them in bits and pieces.

Ohh, interesting…

When the CSI forensic types put them back together, there’s always a piece missing. They can never construct a full cadaver.

Ohh, imagine that.

I would be tormented knowing they couldn’t find even a toe of my child, forever thinking it was lost somewhere between the floorboards. That I might be hoovering one day and clog the pipe with my dead child’s own decaying eyeball.

Disgraceful.

We are definitely keeping it.

Could you imagine the panic? It’s one thing for your child to die, another for them to be murdered, but to be tortured and eaten (alive? Alive.) in your home, whilst you sleep a few feet away from them would be diabolical. The fear would spread like wildfire.

The police wouldn’t have any leads. Or would they? Saliva? Perhaps our Bill is a dribbler.

What about his teeth? The police can identify people by their teeth.

He doesn’t have any!

Idiot. He isn’t gumming these children to death.

What if he has sharpened his teeth into little points? For puncture purposes? What if they are fake teeth that he takes out to go about his day-to-day business so no one would ever expect him to be the… the… Marrow Muncher – Do we like this? No. No, we do not.

Wait, no – I forget, is he a myth or not? Is he coming into their bedrooms at night through an open window with fake, pointed teeth that he removes in the daytime? Or is he lurking under the bed, in the shadows, in the slightly ajar cupboard door where he materialises without rhyme or reason before dining on their quaking little bodies?

Decide something!

Pin in it? Pin in it.

Okay, so, now what?

PROTAGONIST!

Okay, cool, so we need a hero.

Gotta be a child, right? Why wouldn’t it be? Couldn’t it be?

Oh my god, I think I’ve got it!

Our dearly beloved protagonist is going to be a victim of one of the earliest recorded cases of the Marrow Muncher (growing on me). He/she? She. Lets have her traumatised in childhood and have to grow up and fight her very own Baba Yaga in adulthood.

Ohhh, perhaps SHE has been stalking the news reports, watching as not even a suspect has been considered over the many years, and is now expecting her first child? (Chef’s kiss!)

Oh yes, protag is up the duff.

Perhaps our killer has a wife and 2.4 kids of his own at home, and nobody is the wiser. I do tend to err on the side of the ‘realistic’ type stories more than sci-fi or fantasy. I’m a sucker for the plausible.

Or is it over hundreds of years? A thing of Myth and Legend? Do we even know his name is Billy? Does he even have a name? Does he need one?

Bloody. Decide. Something.

Pin.

So, we have a woman of childbearing age. She is going to have to fight him. Lay down some kind of trap to catch him. What happens if you eat him?

NO. Stay on track.

So, a man-thing with some form of teeth somehow materialises in your home, in the middle of the night, and eats your children for reasons not yet disclosed. A soon-to-be mother, who, by the skin of her teeth (had to do it), survives his attack in childhood and dedicates her life to rid the world of his evil so her child doesn’t suffer the same trauma as her?

Yessss.

Perhaps she could live in the woods because everyone else thinks she is crazy?

Would they think she is crazy?

If it’s all over the news and legendary, people would likely understand her paranoia.

But I really like the idea of a cabin in the woods type horror story. In fact, it’s my favourite.

A woman living alone in a cabin she inherited? Passed down by a long-lost relative she’d never met?

Not feeling it.

She built it with her father over many summers. He has now died, and she has moved there for the nostalgia?

Meh.

We don’t know why she lives there. She just does. Perhaps she doesn’t own it. Let’s have her rent it. More believable in this economy anyway.

Her landlord is useless (relatable). Let’s make him weird.

Not outrageously weird so that the idea of her agreeing to take the rental from him seems preposterous, but understated, unnervingly weird. And it gets worse as time progresses.

Bear with me here. I’m talking; he holds eye contact very intently. Almost as though he might spring into action at any second, attacking her, but never has.

He isn’t a man of many words, yet he drops curveballs into conversation. Not enough that she could tell her friends about it (does she have friends?) without looking crazy, but enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

Like…

“Are you still living here alone? Your tenancy doesn’t allow subletters. Oh, you are? Interesting because I could have sworn I saw two shadows at the window last night.”

When she questions what he was doing on her property in the middle of the night, he shrugs it off as ‘passing.’

Perhaps things start to go missing in the house. Or moved around, even. She starts to suspect him.

Or is she just paranoid? Mental health is always fun to play with. Makes a good twist if it’s done well. And let’s face it – we all want a good twist.

And then there's the neighbours. How many? How far? Sprinting distance if the preverbal shit hits the fan? Every woman worth her salt will have some kind of backup plan if she’s living out in the sticks. Especially if she is expecting.

Oh, God. Who’s the dad?

One-night stand or long-lost love?

Why doesn’t she live with him?

Is he a good man, or a man of questionable morals?

Perhaps he’s dead.

If he is dead, was it suspicious?

DID SHE DO IT?!

Does she even know who it is?

DOES SHE EVEN KNOW SHE KILLED HIM?

EVERYONE’S A SUSPECT...

Calm down - We don’t even have a story yet. We have characters, ish.

Okay, so bring the creepy. Focus on the pacing. Build the tension.

Wait, what if someone knocks on her door in the dead of night? Seemingly innocent…

Let’s say someone claiming to be lost in the woods. Does it have to be in the dead of night? She wouldn’t answer, surely?

Okay, daytime. I like that. It’s creepier because it isn’t. People are most trusting in the daylight. Things seem less macabre. So, when a lone man knocks on her door, injured, naturally, she is less suspicious.

What injury should we give him?

Something bloody, needing immediate medical attention… That’ll get him through the door.

What about a bear trap? Always a good ‘en... but what country are we setting this in?

Stick to home? No real predators in the British countryside. Maybe that's what gives her the creeps. He claims it was a bear trap, but there are no bears in the UK? Perhaps they are people out there hunting something else… like other people.

Perhaps that wound he is sporting was self-inflicted.

Maybe he isn’t even injured. Maybe he is lost and separated from his wife. Which would, in turn, draw her out into the open, in attempt to help him locate her.

Hm… not loving it. We want the cabin to be centre stage, ideally.

Okay, so he’s injured on a hunting trip? She invites him in. He says he was caught in a trap, but she has her suspicions he isn’t telling the truth. Doesn’t matter though because she has … a long history of self-defence classes?

Yeah, no.

She has… a gun hidden somewhere in the cabin.

Okay, so we are in America.

Our protagonist is locked, loaded, and ready to blow holes in strangers.

So, when a storm starts rolling in, she has no choice but to let the injured newcomer shelter in her home 'till it passes. Only, in the dead of night, as the rain pelts the windows, there is another knock at the door.

It’s his friend, someone he was separated from when he was hunting, but not previously aforementioned.

I like it.

Now she HAS to let him in with his friend already inside.

And although nothing outright threatening has happened, she is now acutely aware something isn’t right, and she is most likely in danger.

Could there be others outside, watching, surrounding the exits?

Leading to the two inside to do something that sparks the unavoidably necessary fight to the death.

But wait, perhaps it’s the atmosphere, the storm outside and the low rumble of thunder giving her the heebie-jeebies? Is she just being paranoid? I mean, it makes sense he wouldn't have been hunting alone, right?

Make some room. Excuse me. Coming through. Watch your knees. If you could just… yep. Thank you. I’ll just squeeze myself down right here – a new idea has entered the chat.

Maybe we only write it to cast suspicion on them, but in reality, they really are hunters, maybe even teachers, who were leading a group of kids on a hunting expedition, and it has all gone horribly wrong.

And our presumed heroine, in her paranoia-induced, hypervigilant, heavily pregnant state, begins to convince herself that the only way to protect her baby is to take an axe and drive it through the back of their skulls whilst they sleep? Painting the walls with chunks of grey matter and mangled flesh.

It could drip, all gloopy like, to the floor as she feels her first contraction? Leaving the kids, scattered across the forest, fending for themselves with no rescue coming?

Hmm… Cliffhanger, twist ending? Interesting.

ORRRRRR

Maybe they are EXACTLY what they seem. She gets up to pee in the middle of the night and finds neither of them in their makeshift beds on the sofa.

A floorboard creaks behind her.

She makes a dive for it.

Thus beginning a sadistic game of hide and seek around the barely lit cabin as the storm roars overhead.

Maybe that was the idea to begin with. They were never hunting deer.

She was always the prey.

It could end with her getting scalped, her tangled, matted hair a trophy for the hunters…

Too much?

Probably.

Besides, everyone wants a happy ending, don’t they?

She has to win.

The gun is too easy. Maybe it jams? Nope, we don’t know enough about guns to make that convincing. Okay, think, Sian, think.

It goes missing. She realises they aren’t asleep in her living room where she left them, so she goes to her knicker drawer and bam! It’s gone.

Did she not put it back? Or did they take it?

Who knows?

Us. We need to know that shit.

But she doesn’t...

Let’s just say, for survival's sake, she assumes they did.

Now she needs a weapon.

Kitchen knife. Close quarters, bloody, fear-inducing. Gotta love a kitchen knife.

She heads to the kitchen, grabs the largest, gnarliest knife she owns and...

Hides in the cupboard?

Runs out into the storm, barefoot and blind?

Sets her own traps?

Perhaps she has secretly called for help?

The cupboard could work, adding more tension if she stays in the cabin. More believable, I think, than setting traps. Could she wait till a shadow approaching gets closer and stab them in the chest…

Could be fun? It has potential.

She could end up plunging the knife into someone completely innocent. Well, maybe not completely, but it could be the weird landlord that overstays his welcome.

Traps could also be fun… any manner of injury is possible if we go that route.

A little slice to the ankle… a snare to the throat.

Axes swinging down from above doorframes.

Staggering into a woodchipper.

But she has to get injured herself, too. It must look like she might lose - make it stressful.

How quickly do pregnant women bleed out?

Can’t be a gut wound, though. Must protect said baby.

Maybe the intruders manage to nick her neck. That would bleed. Things would get messy quick. Adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the scene.

The fight needs to be violent, savage. Leave readers with shell shock.

Amputate a limb?

Pull teeth?

Splinter bone, have it catch the light?

It all equals a bloody mess.

All possibilities certainly fit the bill.

Bill…

Wait, who the hell is Billy again?

Fuck it; start over.