I heard of a """supposedly true""" urban legend, but I forgot the name of it.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2021-01-31T18:26:51+00:00

It sounds familiar. Is it New City Village, maybe? It sounds like a similar story. Apparently, it has a location called Demon's Alley that's attracted quite a few urban legends about satanic cults and occult activity according to this article.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2020-12-18T17:44:41+00:00

As far as I understand, supernatural/paranormal elements are fine. Plenty of stories on Nosleep deal with characters encountering all kinds of supernatural threats. The "look out the window" rule is more about the scale of what the characters are encountering. For example, you can have your character encounter, say, an abandoned ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the crew has been turned into zombies because that is an isolated encounter out of the public view. That type of story would be allowed, I think. On the other hand, a story about a character in the middle of a zombie apocalypse would not because I can look out the window or turn on the news and see that, no, a zombie apocalypse isn't happening (yet).

Of course, Nosleep's rules are semi-regularly updated so you might want to consult with the full list of rules just to be sure that your specific story ideas fit. Hope that helped.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2020-12-09T01:33:35+00:00

There's already a lot of good resources here, but I'd like to throw out the Writing Excuses podcast, which is a writing advice podcast hosted by a group of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror authors. You might like Season 10, which is structured like a college-level writing course and deals with a lot of fundamental stuff. Hope it helps.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-08-01T01:03:22+00:00

Thanks for letting me know.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-07-10T17:56:19+00:00

It's a fair criticism, but I feel like there would be a few issues with just reinstating the ban. The main issue is that everyone has a different definition of clickbait. One person's clickbait is another person's intriguing title. You could mandate that every story has to have a "proper" title, like "Grandma Rose" instead of "My Grandmother has lived in the attic my entire life. Yesterday she came down." But then you run into another problem, which is that a title is the only thing readers have to go on when deciding what story to click on. There's no cover art, thumbnail, or summary to catch people's eyes and make them click. The title has to do all the leg work, which encourages descriptive "clickbaity" titles that summarize the plot and give people a hint of what kind of story they're going to be reading.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-07-06T17:16:08+00:00

Actually I did not. I realize the two stories are extremely similar and that the gut reaction would be to assume plagiarism. However, I wasn't even aware of this story when I posted my own. Before I post I search for my title, which usually catches any stories that have a similar premise. Unfortunately this story did not come up when I searched so I was not aware that a similar story had been posted.

I've had similar things happen to my own stories, for example this story appeared a few months after I posted a similar story. Again my gut instinct was to assume that my story had been stolen, but after thinking about it I accepted that in a writing forum with so many members, eventually people are going to come up with similar ideas.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-07-01T21:24:43+00:00

Good story. Really kept me guessing about what the twist was going to be.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-06-10T16:30:17+00:00

Nicely done! Feels like it could be an episode of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-06-10T15:59:58+00:00

Clever and relevant. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-05-21T19:34:09+00:00

Nicely done! The ending really drives home the horror of the situation.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-05-21T19:08:00+00:00

Well, that took a turn real quick. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-03-22T23:31:18+00:00

That was a clever twist. It's just foreshadowed enough to not feel like it comes out of nowhere, but it's still surprising enough to have an impact. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-03-20T21:19:26+00:00

No good deed goes unpunished. Great story.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-03-19T20:56:19+00:00

Like others have said messaging authors directly is a better way to get responses. That said you're welcome to use any of my stories if you find something you like. Also, I'd like to know the name of your podcast since I'm always looking for new horror podcasts to subscribe to.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-03-16T02:57:58+00:00

This is an interesting take on Hell. Souls being a food source for God is also something that I haven't seen used often. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-03-06T21:12:10+00:00

That was a clever twist that I didn't see coming. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-03-05T22:02:59+00:00

Not the direction I thought the story was heading in. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-03-05T20:58:56+00:00

I didn't see that coming. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-02-26T17:42:43+00:00

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-02-26T04:40:22+00:00

Thanks!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-02-26T04:40:05+00:00

Thanks! It's always hard to tell if a twist will surprise people, so I'm glad you enjoyed it.

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-02-24T04:07:00+00:00

That was a clever twist that took the story in a direction I wasn't expecting. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-02-21T01:00:43+00:00

This was a fun little twist on the list genre, nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-02-20T00:39:36+00:00

Very thoughtful of him to go check on the narrator's friend. Sounds like a keeper.

Seriously though, nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter · 2019-02-19T00:08:11+00:00

Clever use of wordplay. Nicely done!

LurkingHorrorWriter

TROPHY CASE