Writing "The Watcher"
Where do story ideas come from? Normally I have no idea. But when I had to come up with a spooky story on a deadline, I didn't have time to wait for the muse. Here's what I did.
About a month ago, I got an unusual request: Could I write a spooky short story to be performed at a cabaret called Sinister Songs & Terrifying Tales?
I’m not really a spooky story writer, even though my first novel was a ghostly supernatural thriller. But the opportunity seemed extremely fun, and I wanted to give it a shot.
Only one problem.
I couldn’t think of a damn thing to write.
One of the most common questions writers get is "where do you get your ideas?"
It's also one of the hardest questions to answer, because after the fact, it's difficult to pin down exactly which two (or dozen) images, phrases, or memories sparked against each other in order to transform from a mess of randomness into an Idea.
Story ideas can take years to percolate, which means that by the time I get around to writing them, I barely remember what sparked them up in the first place!
But when I was asked to submit a short story to the Sinister Songs & Terrifying Tales cabaret, I didn't have a spooky story already in my drafts folder. I didn't have an idea that had been rattling around for years.
I had to start from scratch, and I only had about a week to go from a spark to a finished story.
Fortunately, I’ve spent the past decade+ as a copywriter. I know how to go lasso the muse on a deadline.
What’s scratching at the door? 👀
In her fabulous book, The Creative Habit, choreographer Twyla Tharp talks about "scratching" for ideas. Big idea don't just show up on their own, she writes:
“That is why you scratch for a little ideas. Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas. Scratching is what you do when you can’t wait for the thunderbolt to hit you. As Freud said, “When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.”
Tharp is a choreographer, so she uses a combination of journaling and movement—getting up and dancing—to scratch for tiny ideas. She collects inspiration in the form of music, art, videos of other dance performances, poetry, and other art forms.
I tend to collect inspiration in the form of music, art saved on Pinterest, movies, and snippets from stories I love.
When I'm trying to come up with a new idea, I sift through the things I love and start freewriting.
In this case, I put on some music and started freewriting lists of things I found spooky.
I chose the music deliberately—but I didn't realize until I was deep into my freewriting session how important my music choice would be.
See, I picked Aesop Rock's Spirit World Field Guide (Instrumental Version).
I love this album.
Aesop Rock is a brilliant writer and lyricist, and his beats are rich and interesting. (And make great background music—which is why I love that he's done instrumental versions of many of his albums!)
Spirit World Field Guide is a wonderful sort of weird, with nerdy DnD references, X-Files vibes, and an offbeat sense of humor.
In particular, I love the fourth track, "Dog at the Door." That song perfectly encapsulates the paranoia you feel when you're home alone and there's a strange noise outside.
It starts:
Huh? Who's there?
Dog at the front door barking at the air
Wind all "whsshsh" in the trees
Then, "chk-chk-chk-chk, " feet on leaves
Uh, it's probably a cat
Might be a guy with an ax
Might be a trap, shit, it's probably a trap
Might be a possum in the trash
It's probably a trap
Throughout the song, the narrator ping-pongs between rational explanations "probably the neighbor's kid" and the objectively unhinged idea that someone has set a multidimensional trap to catch him.
So relatable.
I was freewriting my list of spooky ideas when the instrumental version of this song came on—and even though the lyrics were removed, I've heard it enough times to sing it along in my head.
And it occurred to me that no matter what the subject of my story was, the flavor needed to be like "Dog at the Door." In other words, that creepy psychological spookiness where you're sure—absolutely sure—that whatever you're afraid of is just in your head.
(Or is it?)
Once I realized what vibe of story I wanted to write, I knew without a doubt where my next piece of inspiration was going to come from.
I needed to turn to the classic master of spookiness that's all in your head (...or is it?).
I needed to revisit Ray Bradbury.
Something idea-shaped this way comes 🎪
The exercise of freewriting a list of things I found spooky is absolutely something I got from Bradbury's fabulous book, Zen in the Art of Writing.
He kept lists of everything that fascinated him. When it came time to write a new story, he simply went to his lists, picked a topic, and began spinning up a story.
But it wasn't just his writing method that inspired me. I also turned to his fiction for inspiration.
Bradbury's not necessarily known as a horror writer, but one of the most chilling scenes I ever read was in the objectively not-scary book, Dandelion Wine.
One night before bed, I was reading Dandelion Wine on recommendation from my old roommate, and absolutely loving it. I can't remember the plot, only that reading the book felt like eating a sun-baked peach right off the tree—it was sumptuous and nostalgic and gently glowing golden.
Right until the serial killer shows up.
There's a scene in the second half of Dandelion Wine where one of the protagonists, a young woman, is walking through a dark section of wooded ravine on her way home.
Murmurs have been rattling around town about a serial killer in their midst (though I don't remember bodies showing up at all before this), and the young woman is spooked.
Suddenly, because of her overactive imagination, the otherwise gorgeous evening turns sinister.
She sees shadows everywhere, feels breath on the back of her neck as she hurries along the path. (And so does the reader, so perfectly does Bradbury pull you into the scene.)
The young woman walks faster, even while telling herself it's all in her head. And just when she thinks she's safe...
Well. I won't spoil Bradbury for you.
Once I realized I wanted to write a short story about paranoia (thanks to the Aesop Rock song), I immediately remembered how terrifying this scene was.
Nothing actually happened to the woman on her walk home, just as nothing actually happened to the protagonist in Aesop Rock's "Dog at the Door."
But my heart was racing by the end of the scene—which I read right before bed.
You better believe I woke my husband up screaming because of the dreams I had!
Along with being a master at putting the reader inside a character's paranoias, Bradbury writes absolutely stunning prose. Here are a few snippets I pulled out of Something Wicked This Way Comes when I reread it last month:
"Along the street below fled two shadows, two boys above them matching shadow stride for stride."
"They both looked to the carnival where dusk colored the canvas billows. Shadows ran coolly out to engulf them. People in cars honked home in tired commotions. Boys on skeleton bikes whistled dogs after. Soon night would own the midway, while shadows rode the ferris wheel up to cloud the stars."
"But it was only his laughter walking back through the deep stacks on panther feet."
And, of course, this absolutely horrifying description of the merry-go-round in the evil circus.
"They peered in at the merry-go-round which lay under a dry rattle and roar of wind-tumbled oak trees. Its horses, goats, antelopes, zebras, speared through their spines with brass javelins, hung contorted as in a death rictus, asking mercy with their fright-colored eyes, seeking revenge with their panic-colored teeth."
I mean.
Merry-go-rounds are objectively horrifying, and Ray Bradbury is 100% correct.
The final spark: It’s aliiiiive! 🧟♀️
For the next phase of my idea-gathering, I grabbed Something Wicked from the library for a reread, then picked up a copy of Bradbury's short story collection, The Toynbee Convector, and went to a coffee shop to read some of the spookier stories.
(The reason I picked up The Toynbee Convector in particular was because I wanted to read "The Thing at the Top of the Stairs." And... yikes!)
I had an inkling of what I wanted to write, inspired by my own particular "it's all in my head... or is it??" childhood paranoia. I’d grown up in a farmhouse with too many windows and no curtains, and the Unsolved Mysteries shows my dad and I watched before bed on Friday nights did a number on my overactive imagination.
But as I sat there sipping my americano, the blank page was taunting me.
The coffee shop I landed at was new to me. (It's located near the eye clinic I've been going to, which houses all the brilliant people who are managing the care of my Weird Eye.)
Because of this, I'd never seen the mural in the dining area before: a lovely peacock with its tail in full display.
Staring at that mural, the spark of idea I had transformed into a full-blown fire.
The story began pouring out of me, longhand in my notebook.
I'd unlocked the floodgates!
An hour later, I had the first draft of "The Watcher."
(You can read the finished story here.)
It took me a few days to polish, and a sharp editing knife to pare it down to a reading time of ~5 minutes—but I got the story in under the deadline.
This past weekend, I got to sit in the audience while the talented performers of Torchsong Entertainment read “The Watcher,” alongside stories like Poe’s “The Telltale Heart,” and Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
I’ve read my own work in front of audiences before, but it’s another experience entirely to hear someone else do so.
I tend to inject a bit of humor into whatever I’m writing, so the audience started out giggling at the laugh lines. Because I don’t write much horror, I started to worry that maybe I’d made it too funny. Maybe I hadn’t hit the mark.
But as the story continued, the giggles became more nervous, and finally petered out into a tense silence.
And the gasp at the end?
Friends, that made my night.