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Specified Chapter: Ch. 1 : The Barn
Summary Thus Far in Book: At a remote, pig farm deep in the Northern wilderness of Maine, Arkin O'Brien's blindfold comes off and he comes face-to-face with his captor. A man who looks normal. A man who calls himself a "brother." A man who has done this five times before.
The other boys were never heard from again, but Arkin won't go down easy. That's when he must decide just how far he'll go in order to survive. ( #tnthorrorcontest )
Author's Note: Hello, fellow writers, I'm back with another horror genre story, but don't worry! It's not as gory as last time—I swear—the gory stuff is only hinted at to appear in future chapters. This is my 10,000 word entry for the #tnthorrorcontest and your reviews for this chapter are so so important to me. Now questions :
One: There are three goals—The gross-out. The terror. The horror. When you read this first chapter does it give off a sense of; tension, dread, creepiness, suspense, disgust—did you feel any of those 'three goals?'
Two: Description. I only have 10,000 words to make this story work and in my head I have a lot to meet within that 10k. I'm limited. I feel I can't add too much detail / description, but then again did I write too little?
In-line Comment Preference: Yes, comment away!
Genre: Horror
Rating: PG-13
Winning Comment: Whoa this is such a disturbing chapter! I'm glad I'm not reading it at night and also glad that there aren't pig farms around here so something like this is not very likely to happen to me. Compared to paranormal things (which are also scary because I'm scared by everything) this insane-kidnapper type of story always frightens me the most (because you can communicate with some ghosts but not insane people I guess?). The part about the other men with thick tubes in their noses stuck in my mind especially; it reminds me of some creepy mangas I've read.
The setting was very well-described throughout and I can picture it clearly. It really helps in enhancing the discomfort and grossed-out-ness as well with the manure and such. Also I loved how you only described certain things and not the big picture since that emphasized how Arkin is kind of not in a position to move and therefore unable to see/feel/hear everything.
On to the questions:
1. Gross-out/terror/horror: As an ESL student I actually had to look up the difference between terror and horror haha because the translation for both is the same in my language. Now that I finally know the difference I think you've got all three down pretty well. The overall helplessness and vulnerability of Arkin's situation was what made me really creeped out, especially how he could think and taste and smell (tobacco isn't that bad but the fact that he cans smell his captor is already a bit disgusting) but all the while isn't able to move in anyway to stop himself from smelling things/tasting the diesel rag etc. He's like on the receiving end of everything and able to sense it all very clearly and that's super horrifying.
