Thank you for joining us in The Writer’s Playground series!
Here we run through writing games to spark imagination and sharpen your craft.
Today’s Exercise is
Horror: Escalate the Mundane
- Objective: To create psychological horror and creeping dread, rather than relying on jump scares.
- How to Play:
- Each writer chooses a completely harmless, everyday object or situation (a dripping faucet, a child’s drawing, a flickering street light, a song stuck in your head).
- They have 15 minutes to write a scene where this mundane thing becomes progressively more strange, unsettling, and eventually, terrifying. The key is in the slow burn and the character’s perception of the object changing.
- Best for: Building suspense, mastering tone, and psychological horror.
Nightmares can be an incredible source of inspiration. Of course, for some, these can inspire the nightmares themselves.
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