It ain t easy. But I ve got three tips to offer that will increase your chances of joining the dark pantheon of horror writers who kick major ass. In it, a young punk torments and kills an elderly man whose ghost comes seeking Yuletide revenge. At least I had the good sense never to send this piece of crap out. Revenge stories are one of the biggest clich s in horror fiction, and beside that, there s no tension in them.
Readers know exactly how they re going to turn out every time.
Still, you can make clich s work for you. Only this time I took the clich and gave it a twist. The main character, a young boy who blames himself for the drowning death of a friend, is visited in his dreams by his friend s ghost. I took the notion that vampires don t cast reflections and created a dark mirror which displays only the reflections of vampires. Or flip the clich around.