Journal: A bunch of bad ideas. Or evil ones.

Today’s blog post is brought to you by…

Cheesy horror tropes. I was coming up with title ideas for cheesy horror stories…at one point I caught myself going, “Why am I writing this? Who’s gonna read these anyway? Who cares?” See if you can spot it 🙂

1. Don’t Go into the Basement. 2. Let’s Split up. 3. The Final Girl. 4. (He Had a) Bad Childhood. 5. The Monster in the Mirror. 6. Don’t Look Behind You. 7. Push the Bell & Run Away. 8. Double Dog Dare You. 9. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? 10. Why’s Calling? 11. People Suit 12. Rubber Mask. 13. Things That Go Bump in the Night. 14. Don’t Go to Sleep. 15. A Knock at the Door. 16. Don’t Touch That. 17. The Forbidden Room. 18. Don’t Do That One Thing (I Told You Not to Do). 19. Who’s That at the Door? 20. The Thing in the Basement. 21. The Skeleton in the Closet. 22. Scream and Run. 23. What Happened to Your Face? 24. Night of [All] the Monsters. 25. Good Friends Help You Move. 26. A Dish Best Served Cold. 27. Red of Tooth and Claw. 28. Bad Choices. 29. Don’t Leave the Garbage Out at Night. 30. Taking Out the Garbage. 31. Don’t Make a Face (Or It Will Stick That Way). 32. The Guy on the Other Side of the Street. 33. The House Next Door. 34. The Cabin in the Woods. 35. What’s in the Attic? 36. You’re It. 37. Bad Luck. 38. It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. 39. Good Neighbors. 40. The Accident. 41. Born This Way. 42. The Rats/Spiders/Birds/Bats/Ants, Etc. 43. Unquiet Ghosts. 44. The Town Where All the @#$% Happens. 45. Suburbia. 46. Quaint Little Tourist Trap. 47. Tourist Trap. 48. Homeschool. 49. Unsupervised. 50. The Babysitter. 51. Nightmares. 52. Don’t Step on a Crack. 53. Girls Always Go to the Bathroom Together. 54. Split Personalities. 55. The Devil You Know. 56. Things That Go Bump in the Night [this is apparently the sequel, since I already listed it]. 57. Loose Ends. 58. Don’t Throw the First Stone. 59. What’s in the Sewers. 60. Best Friends. 61. The Chosen One. 62. The Devil’s Daughter. 63. Back from the Dead. 64. The Haunting. 65. ESP. 66. Telekinesis. [Note: someone wanted to know the first Stephen King book one had ever read; mine was Firestarter.] 67. Poltergeist. 68. The Little Old Lady (Who Has Like 50 Cats). 69. The Cathouse. 70. The Thieves who Broke into the Wrong Damn House. 71. On More Monster Just Trying to Make It. 72. Cubeville. 73. Guilty Conscience. 74. But I’m Not Wrong. 75. Expect the Unexpected. 76. The (Werewolf) Pet Sitter. 77. Now You Know. 78. The Divorce (Splitting up Secrets). 79. The Squirrels in the Attic.

I didn’t run out of ideas, just out of page. One of the things that was interesting was that changing the phrasing slightly caused a completely different idea to come into my head, for example, “Don’t Leave the Garbage Out at Night” vs. “Taking out the Garbage.” One is more “If you go outside, the monsters will get you or do SOMETHING to your garbage,” and the other is, “We killed a guy and now we have to get rid of the body.”

If you liked today’s journal, check out Chris Fox’s Write to Market, which is what started this train of thought.

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