PrLosash-Seminars sandbox
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Introduction

  • Scary monsters are the backbone of the site and a great introduction to the wiki and its contents. However, most authors writing them focus too much on the monsters themselves and not the terror they wreck.
  • That is why the goal of today's seminar is to discuss ways to construct a compelling murder-monster story.
    • Lessons of the seminar could be applied to living, dead, and undead things that kill and/or eat people.
  • There are five basic principles to writing a scary monster.
    • First three principles are enough and necessary for creating a successful article. Almost all deleted monster stories violate some of them.

Principle I. Death does not carry an article by itself

  • Death is a punchline from which to build up a character or a monster. It is a way to relieve tension that is built up before.
    • Horror films work by building up tension, leading to the emotional catharsis - death. But death doesn't work if there is no tension to relieve.
  • Death can be interesting not because it happened, but because of how it happened.
    • Even in slasher films it is not the deaths that are interesting, but the different inventive, over-the-top ways people are killed.
    • There are well-known articles with different methods of killing people - SCP-096, SCP-106, SCP-173.
      • Story in SCP-096 takes place after a reader learns that it kills and [DATA EXPUNGES] people. The death itself is not interesting, but what is interesting and scary is the length 096 is willing to go for a kill.

Principle II. The scariest fear is the fear of the unknown

  • People misunderstand SCP format in characterizing monsters - Dissecting a monster kills the horror.
    • Which is why common praise for Parawatch is not breaking suspension of disbelief and focusing on the ways monster affecting people, not describing it.
    • Which is why popular monsters (for instance, vampires) are never dissected - they are only described in the relation with interacting with them. And even then, some established rules are often broken in various stories.
    • Which is also why redactions are such an important stylistic tool on the wiki.
      • You must always know what you are redacting and why. Otherwise the redaction would be weak and would look like a lazy excuse rather than a writing tool.
  • Subverting trope and breaking rules is a great way to add tension and fear - it throws the reader off, makes the story less predictable.
    • When creating a monster come up with 3-4 implicit behaviour rules for it. Let the reader figure them out and then break them.
      • SCP-1155 does that. Violation of implicit rules of the monster causes it to react. It is stopped while killing a person - the monster chooses a new location for itself, one that is not usual for it. Foundation tries to cover the monster - it teleports to a playground forcing Foundation to compromise.

Principle III. A monster is only as scary as you care about its victims

  • A monster becomes scarier as its victims become more relatable. There are three methods to make the reader care for people in danger.
    • Making the kids the victim. People automatically empathize with kids.
      • Example - SCP-4310 - basically a big bug that eats people. It becomes scaries because it eats children luring them into its mouth.
    • Characterizing the victims. Basically giving the victim an identity through interviews, logs, etc.
      • Example - SCP-096. There are several such characters in that story - Dr Dan, the D-class in the submarine, or any of the surviving MTF members.
    • Making the reader imagine themselves becoming the reader.
      • Achieved through creating an image of the monster with providing sensory details. If a reader can draw a detailed mental image of a monster, they'll inevitably draw one of the monster eating them.
      • Example - SCP-106. The article describes the monster, its looks, how it hunts, how it hurts and kills people.

Principle IV. Imitation is the scariest form of flattery

  • There are a lot of souces of inspiration for scary monsters in nature, literature, folklore.
    • Nature has three billion years headstart in developing scary ways to kill stuff. Do not reinvent the wheel, remix it.
      • For examle, there's a species of fungus that parasitizes insects by mind-controlling them to climb up grass and then explodes out of them to reproduce. It's a real-life Alien except it only attacks bugs. Now what if it attacked people?
    • SCP-4975 is a scary monster that invents its own German nursery rhyme to up the horror by implying that this thing has haunted the country for centuries.

Principle V. When you write about a scary monster you’re still writing a story

  • When wtiring a scary monster, you still have to create a story, create tension, atmosphere, give the monster depth.
    • You cannot get away with just describing the monster and thinking it is scary.
  • The part of the story when a monster eats people should feel EARNED.

Conclusion

  • Scary monsters are a great way to get introduced to the site and they're an even better way to acclimate yourself to the unique challenges and constraints posed by the SCP format.
  • Murder monsters still make viable SCP articles, one just needs to spend some time characterizing them.
    • Death is not a goal, it is a way of relieving built-up tension.
    • Do not tell the reader everything about your monster. Only provide the minimal number of 'rules' that could be broken for added tension.
    • Make the reader care about the victims.
    • Folklore, literature and nature are great sources of inspiration.
    • Writing a scary monster is still writing a story.
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Footnotes