Lore of the Corn

A look at the process and inspiration behind my first short horror story.

I realized in the years building up to my degree in Creative Writing, I had never fully written a short story, let alone one of the horror genre. In college, I studied everything under the sun - poetry, personal essays, screenwriting, reviewing, even comic book scripting. Yet, I don’t once remember ever touching on how to build a short story or novel. It seems I missed a class or two. 

Either way, I decided to go about it the way I do when trying anything new. I dip my toe in. I play it a little safe. A bit chicken, you might say? Maybe! But testing the waters has yet to fail me. I get to test building a foundation of knowledge and experience that I can use later. Plus, let's be real for a second. One of the top reasons people don't complete things is because they get overwhelmed by the task. It feels impossible. Imposter syndrome wins, and the dream withers before ever sprouting. In this way, by playing it small, I come out with a completed project in hand. Is it perfect? Absolutely not!! But I’ve now done it once, so doing it again doesn’t feel so impossible. 

So after I permitted myself to play in the kiddie pool, I needed to decide what that looked like for me. 

I’ve been on a creepypasta kick. I fucking love them! I always enjoyed reading one or two in the past years, but recently I fell down the rabbit hole. I binged all the readings from Watcher’s ‘Are You Scared’ series and have now been slowly moving through The Dark Somnium - I’ll link their channels below. 

* I recommend starting with Watcher’s channel if you get a little nervous easily. The banter between Ryan and Shane helps to relieve some of the creepiness *

Are You Scared of Waterslides? 

https://www.youtube.com/@Darksomnium 

I looked up a few articles on ‘how to write a creepypasta’. Nothing exciting. Just a quick Google search to help me pick up a few nuggets of advice and give me some guidance. The two main things I pulled from my scouring were -

1. Pull From Experience - basing a tale around a real event makes things feel more believable and like it COULD have happened. 

2. Make the Monster Ambiguous - many times, the creepiness of a horror story loses its spark the moment the monster is revealed. The reader has built up this anticipation of the creature, and if it doesn’t meet their expectations, this can leave them disappointed and kill the rest of the story for them. So it's better to use their anticipation against them - use the tension of the situation to build up the fear around the monster without fully revealing it. The mystery is most of the time far scarier.

I spent a few days digging into my mind's inventory of memories after my bit of research, making notes of experiences that I deemed particularly scary or unnerving.

I kept coming back to a time after high school when I got my first job at the snack stand at a late-night drive-in movie. I lived about a fifteen-minute drive out of town.  A world of farm land and soooo many cornfields. They are absolutely nightmare fuel when driving through them in the dead of night. I can’t tell you the number of times I scared the shit out of myself while on my trips home - especially on nights with a full moon. And as the story goes, one night in particular, a deer decided to test its own courage by jumping in front of my truck. Of course, I was going 35, and its butt barely clipped my headlight. The most damage to both the deer and I was our souls temporarily leaving our bodies from the jump scare. Being 19, I still called my grandfather, and he drove two minutes down the road to check the car and console me. Yep.. I was literally almost home when this happened. 

You can see the real story isn't really exciting when you examine the pieces. I was unhurt and in no danger. But it certainly was the perfect foundation for something terrifying. I considered digging into folklore for some monster inspiration, but decided the less even I knew about the monster, the easier it might be for me to leave it a mystery. And then, I just wrote. 

It was easy to recount the situation. Acting as if I was just describing the real event to someone. The beginning is true in its entirety. Only finally deviating at the point where the deer and the truck make contact, which is where I needed to start being more creative and careful in my story weaving. Making sure to stretch the truth in - what I hope -  is a believable way. You know, for what it is. 

For my first go at a short story, I’m pretty happy with myself. Moving forward now, it's important to me to start pushing limits. I know in my next story, I want to explore the main character more. They need to have some backstory and some basic motivation at least. It’s also super important to me to start playing with weaving in some folklore. 

If you like to check out What Lies in the Corn, it's available to read here on my blog. And if you're interested in keeping up with my writing journey or even my exploration into horror and lore in books and games, sign up to get notifications! 

Thanks for the read, stay safe, and always question the whistle coming from the woods. 

Lys