Ill Tempered Mutated Sea Bass

Zombie Vampires?

Meh, bit of a genre mashup, could be confusing.

Chainsaw wielding elves?

Well Christmas is coming I guess, but could be pigeon holed as seasonal.

Venomous, angry flowers?

Jumangji already nailed it.

It can be tough thinking up antagonists for horror stories. Now that I have completed the first draft of three horror novellas, it’s time to complete another three. The aim is to be ‘same same, but different’, so simple really.

Monsters are always fun, until you get to the bit about where they came from? How have they not been discovered up until now? What have they been doing on this time? Questions I addressed in one of the stories by just ignoring them.

Ghosts are reliably scary, but need a motive. Otherwise they’re just drifting about the place causing mischief. Like Casper.

Then you get the mentally deranged, unstable psychopaths who may be violently partial to swinging pointy implements about. Again, all good stuff, however people generally require dialogue which can be a bit tricky.

Normally at this point, I would lean on my extensive knowledge of horror movies for inspiration. Unfortunately, as a rule of thumb, I avoid horror, and scary movies in general, as they’re… well, too scary. This leaves me with my imagination. Some may say this is a good thing, not being influenced or jaded by what has been done before. However, when the best you can come up with is ill-tempered, colourful plants, you do start to question whether you’re in the right genre. Maybe I should just bring out an angry gardening book instead… like Day of the Triffids. Damn it!