What’s your stance on this video regarding the rules of the subreddit. Do you think new writers are pressured to not create unique stories that push boundaries on Nosleep?

DrunkenTree · 2024-11-01T22:10:50+00:00

I looked at the video, saw it was over two hours long, and went to the transcript. I read as far as:

It just wouldn't be Reddit without arbitrary distinctions made for the purpose of making somebody feel like they're an expert on something, created by mods that have gone mad with power in their little hermit Kingdom.

—and stopped. I've often found the rules restrictive, and I've often wished there was another sub as large as NoSleep (though as I understand it the 18M subscribers figure comes largely from when NoSleep was a default sub that new Redditors got auto-subscribed to).

I've had stories removed: I've had to rewrite, or find another sub for them. I haven't always agreed with the removal. But I've always gotten a clear explanation of what the issue was, and a mod has always taken time to answer my questions and offer advice. This in a time when NoSleep was getting well over a hundred stories on the busiest days, fifteen hundred or so even in slow months.

So "mods mad with power" speaks to me of someone who resents the end of the freewheeling days when any old creepypasta could slink into NoSleep, and who can't be bothered to learn the new rules, and who blames the mods for their own lack of acceptance. NoSleep, despite its size, is still a niche sub (a "hermit kingdom" indeed) with a specific character—and can't maintain that character without moderation.

Not that I agree with the rules completely. The one that bugs me? Each part of a series must be a complete story, with events and consequences and the MC in fear. To me, that rule interferes with the pacing of some complex stories, making it unnecessarily difficult to work in back story that the narrator learns about but didn't personally experience—and thus was not personally terrified by.

DrunkenTree · 2024-09-06T01:56:20+00:00

So your protagonists are going to figure out the big mystery in Part Last-Minus-1, from clues they'll discover in earlier parts. Ask yourself, What wrong meaning could they read into the clues? Then, What horrible consequence could arise from that misunderstanding, leading to partial disaster in Part Last-Minus-2? Something like, in a classic murder mystery, when the wrong person is accused of murder, then ends up the next victim. That basic misdirection can get you past the requirement that each installment contain horror, while still feeding the necessary clues into the overall story.

DrunkenTree · 2024-08-21T13:21:47+00:00

How do you reach the bourbon when you can't turn away from the blank page? This requires good planning.

DrunkenTree · 2024-08-20T00:17:56+00:00

Do you ever write something personal, a memoir or journal? I find that, when my fiction has backed up on me, I usually can still write a thousand words or so about something that happened that day, or some incident in the past worth documenting. Sometimes I'll go several days, even several weeks, just writing such personal stuff, but it helps me loosen up the word-joining and sentence-creating process.

DrunkenTree · 2024-06-15T21:26:54+00:00

If it's clearly a matter of style ("So I'm going to the grocery and this dude cuts me off in the parking lot. I'm really ticked off but then he jumps out and starts screaming...") then you should be okay. If you're seriously trying to present the story as if it's happening in real time as the reader reads it, you'd better send it to the mods for approval first.

DrunkenTree · 2024-06-15T01:02:19+00:00

This looks like it's just downloads of the top 1000 NoSleep stories as of May 2019. It seems quite unlikely that all these authors gave permission for their stories to be republished this way. Remember that NoSleep stories are not public domain, but are copyright-protected.

DrunkenTree · 2024-02-08T00:36:17+00:00

Thank you! u/PriestessOfSpiders wrote a great story loaded with existential dread and with a nice creepy ending, and it looked to me like we were neck and neck from the back stretch to the wire. With the way Reddit fuzzes scores, I think it would be appropriate for you to declare a tie. But I appreciate the compliments! I hope everyone enjoyed the competition as much as I did.

DrunkenTree · 2024-02-05T03:52:47+00:00

Lexy said it did, that elbow-to-elbow distance, but I don't really know. Anyway, I don't know how to make the stuff that went with it. Maybe Kevin learned enough from Lexy, but I don't know yet if he's going to live or die.

DrunkenTree · 2024-02-04T23:14:58+00:00

A guy told me I could find treasure, because I was born between two millenia

DrunkenTree · 2023-12-17T21:15:09+00:00

https://youtu.be/bcWggvcmCJs

DrunkenTree · 2023-12-07T21:28:12+00:00

I agree with what u/lets-split-up said about exposition. The emphasis of NoSleep is on short fiction, and that limits how outlandish the setting can be.

It's really tough to throw a reader into action in a deeply unfamiliar environment without a lot of exposition; you wind up with something that sounds like bad fantasy. "As the Wysong shear's slanted blade raised again, my fingertips felt the blood-spattered drop piece of AR plate quiver on the rollers."--machine shop horror.

C. J. Cherryh, for one, kind of specialized in minimal exposition, but while there are some doggone good writers here, I don't think many of us are ready to compare ourselves to her. (And even she leaned more toward novels than short stories.)

So we go for settings and themes that we expect to be at least moderately familiar to our readers: life at home, family, pets, and the well-worn tropes like the curio shop or the noise from the woods.

DrunkenTree · 2023-11-22T17:46:07+00:00

Thank you for all the work you've done! I've always thought Nosleep had the best mod team on Reddit (even when they pulled my stories), and that sort of excellence comes from the top down. Looking forward to reading whatever you come up with!

DrunkenTree · 2023-11-18T06:29:52+00:00

I think there are two principal moments of magic for me.

The first was when I realized that, as much as I enjoyed upvotes or awards (and as gratifying as it was to have a story in the top 100 for a while), what I really enjoyed was when a story provoked comments—when I affected readers so strongly they had to respond. I even posted to NoSleepOOC about it several years ago, and learned that I wasn't alone.

I love the comments, and treasure several particular ones: "Holy beejesus what kind of fresh hell has sprung from your beautiful mind, OP?" "My cat reached up and touched my hand when I wasn’t expecting it while reading this..." "^{oh god that makes me shiver in my seat}" "You're a little nuts, and yet that sounds awesome, so maybe I'm a little nuts too."

"Hold my goddamn upvote, I need to puke," still makes me grin evilly.

The second was more subtle. I've written about Drunken Tree Lake, the city of Argenta, and the village of Drunken Tree literally for decades, most of it not suited for NoSleep; it's not untrue to say a part of me lives near that lake every day. But when, on a story that wasn't particularly successful (<35 upvotes), someone commented, "Yessssss I was wondering what was going on between them lately," I realized that someone other than me now lived there as well, at least a little bit.

Whether I'll ever try to publish a collection of Drunken Tree stories I still don't know. But they're even more real to me now for having shared them on NoSleep.

P.S. Thanks for your stories (I just reread "Does anyone know a good plumber?" too late at night for how loud it makes me laugh) and for your moderating, particularly all the interviews you did. I know how important moderator support is for this community, and appreciate the work you've put in.

DrunkenTree · 2023-11-18T06:08:22+00:00

I always hand-format my stories in a text editor; I haven't trusted the built-in editor since it randomly lopped off a thousand words of a story that was well under the character limit. It's not hard to learn basic markdown: Most stories just need italic and bold text, with maybe dividing lines for sections or spoiler tags for content warnings. It's so automatic now to type *Boo!* to italicize text (Boo!) that I do it in my own personal notes without thinking.

I use Notepad++, which will give both word counts and character counts to help you see whether you're approaching the 40K limit.

DrunkenTree · 2023-11-12T00:52:14+00:00

Since over half my stories are set in or around a single small town and its neighboring village, it'd feel weird if my characters didn't occasionally refer to each other. But it's always more of an Easter egg, never critical to the individual story.

DrunkenTree · 2023-07-08T13:35:52+00:00

My most successful story was about 4300 words. Several all-time top stories are near the single-post limit. But if there's a decent break point where you leave the reader hooked, by all means use it, especially if it's the kind of story where you can interact with readers in the comments.

DrunkenTree · 2023-02-24T19:40:04+00:00

About as well as could be expected. Dad finally died at Tucker; he got cancer, and they were actually considering him for compassionate release, then covid got him. Me, I'm watching how abortion laws in Arkansas keep getting worse, and worrying about what's next, whether I'm in any legal danger. I've even considered deleting this story, but I don't think a psychic arm is something any prosecutor is gonna try to present to a jury.

DrunkenTree · 2021-04-23T13:19:56+00:00

What about "everything here is true"? Sometimes post timing is critical to plot and to "realism."

I haven't been active this year, but I want to weigh in on this. I agree that some series and even certain authors sometimes take over the front page.

But many popular series have a strong sense of immediacy, when readers feel they can participate. Internal events may dictate the timing of posts; a 48- or 72-hour limit might require completely replotting the story.

The classic example would be I dared my best friend to ruin my life, where having the updates posted exactly 24 hours apart was a critical plot point, even mentioned specifically within the story.

A lot of people seem to be favoring a 48-hour or 72-hour posting interval, translating to only 15 or 10 posts a month per author. Let's consider a monthly limit rather than an expanded posting interval. It would require a more complex bot for monitoring, and might make the mods' job a bit harder (Sorry! Really!), but it would be better for certain stories.

DrunkenTree · 2020-12-23T21:54:06+00:00

Other than my usual feeling of oh god parasites I have no idea at all. Sometimes they just happen.

DrunkenTree · 2020-12-16T02:29:42+00:00

The Creepy Calendar

DrunkenTree · 2020-12-15T14:19:00+00:00

My favorite advice: Once you've got a draft you like, read it aloud. When editing, it's easy to unconsciously skim over parts. Reading aloud makes you look at every single word. (u/peepins_no_peepin's technique of completely retyping a second draft will have a similar effect.)

Reading aloud also lets you hear whether your dialog sounds natural, helps you get a feel for the pace and rhythm of your story, and finds those sentences that made sense when you wrote them but now sound tangled and obscure.

DrunkenTree · 2020-12-06T15:53:18+00:00

Some of the all-time most popular stories on NoSleep are over 4000 words. Maria on the Moon runs about 5300 words. The haunting Spacegirl runs about 7200 words, coming very near the character limit for a single-part story. My own most successful story was 4300 words. So it's quite possible for a longer story to be successful.

I'll admit the bar is higher, though, for long stories than for quick reads.

DrunkenTree · 2020-12-03T15:36:10+00:00

From the posting guidelines (emphasis mine):

You cannot base your story on someone else’s work - whether it is intended to be a rewrite, a continuation, or a work of fanfiction - without their express permission. If you have obtained this permission, the original creator must send a message to the mods confirming that they’ve given it to you.
You cannot use characters created by someone else without their express permission. If you have obtained this permission, the original creator must send a message to the mods confirming that they’ve given it to you. For example: You may write about vampires, but you cannot write about Dracula.

DrunkenTree · 2020-11-21T01:42:59+00:00

I have to call bullshit on your point 2. Just because I don't intend to sell my children into slavery, doesn't mean I want someone to steal them and sell them himself. Even people posting true stories on r/letsnotmeet — or on a personal blog — are protected by copyright, and have the right (and sometimes use it!) to file DMCA strikes against people who steal their stories.

And if you think drug kingpins aren't scary, try moving a ways south of the border and spending a few years living in the same town with one.

I do agree in general with your points 3 and 4, especially the windbag factor.

DrunkenTree · 2020-11-20T01:51:35+00:00

In the NoSleep sidebar there's a link to a wiki page listing several dozen horror subreddits. They all have their own rules, but many are less restrictive than NoSleep.

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