Madison

hi, i’m madison 👻

horror writer, autumn groupie, born on halloween (yes, really—i’m basically contractually obligated to be like this).

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i craft spine-tingling stories between sneezing fits (allergic to everything but vibes). i also think watching horror movies in broad daylight is completely normal and not at all a personality red flag.

this blog is part writing grimoire, part cursed diary:

✦ sometimes i’ll drop tips on how to make your monsters scarier, your endings itchier, and your readers check under their beds.

✦ sometimes i’ll just scream into the void about books, movies, or why silence is the scariest character in any story.

✦ sometimes you’ll get snippets of my own nightmares dressed up as short fiction. (free haunted house tour, no waiver required.)

i’ve got a degree in english, which means i paid a lot of money to be told i overanalyze everything. so now i’m here, turning that overthinking into writing advice—for you, for me, for anyone dumb enough to want to finish a book.

if you’re into horror, weird writing tips, autumn aesthetics, or just want a friend who won’t shame you for drinking pumpkin spice in july: you’re in the right crypt.

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find me on wattpad @madisonissneezing 🎃

✦ skyscraper beasts? impressive. cinematic. they look cool on posters and sell the action figures. but scary? not really. you can look up at godzilla and go “wow.” awe isn’t horror. awe is just… tall.

✦ true fear is small. intimate. invasive. the kind of horror that doesn’t stand on the skyline but curls up in your lungs. a cockroach under your skin. a spider in your ear. something buzzing in your teeth that wasn’t buzzing yesterday.

✦ scale is intimacy. the smaller the monster, the closer it has to get to you. skyscraper monsters crush cities. insect-sized monsters crawl into your bed, into your mouth, into your life. no escape, no safe distance—you carry it with you.

✦ also: big = escapable. if it’s huge, you can run. you can hide. you can watch from afar. small = no boundaries. you can’t run from something that fits in your pocket. you can’t escape something already inside you.

✦ don’t mistake “small” for weak. swarms are worse than titans. one moth in your room is annoying. a thousand, fluttering in patterns that spell your name? revolting.

✦ here’s the thing: a monster that just slashes everything in sight is basically a malfunctioning blender with legs. noise, gore, done. that kind of randomness doesn’t haunt—it just exhausts.

✦ horror thrives on obsession. when your monster has a purpose, even a twisted one, it stops feeling like chaos and starts feeling inevitable. inevitability is scarier than randomness, because you can’t outsmart it—you can only wait until it wants you.

✦ think of jobs as rituals. a monster that only kills liars. a monster that steals left shoes. a monster that waits until you sing in the shower, then hums the harmony. these patterns make it feel alive, like it’s following some horrible logic we’ll never understand.

✦ specificity is sticky. “monster that eats people” slides right off the brain. “monster that collects teeth from children who never lose theirs naturally” gets under the skin and stays there. readers remember quirks, not body counts.

✦ obsession also builds dread. if your character figures out the monster’s “job,” suddenly every knock, every shadow, every mundane habit feels loaded. are they next in line? did they trigger the ritual? the fear shifts from “what will it do?” to “when will it come for me?”

how to actually finish writing (without crying in the bathtub)

✦ here’s the truth: you don’t start with a 600-page gothic opus. you’ll drown. you’ll become a skeleton at your desk. people will find your unfinished manuscript and mock your dramatic chapter titles. start smaller.

✦ short stories are like cursed test tubes. you can play, experiment, blow something up, and it’s fine because it’s only 5 pages long. better to set fire to one short story than burn down an entire trilogy.

✦ finishing anything gives you momentum. it doesn’t matter if it’s a three-page story about a haunted stapler—your brain gets that sweet “i did it” chemical hit. books are mountains, short stories are hills, and you need to learn to climb hills before you freeze to death on everest.

✦ the other secret: every “big” book is actually just a bunch of small stories holding hands in the dark. once you’ve written a handful of short ones, you’ll notice they can click together like bones in a skeleton. congratulations, you’re building a novel.

✦ also, don’t be precious. a finished “meh” story is stronger than the perfect unwritten one rotting in your head. perfectionism is basically writer-speak for procrastination. bleed onto the page, bandage later.

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✦ killing everyone is lazy. corpses are boring. the real cruelty is survival—but the kind of survival where the character will never sleep right again. give them trauma, paranoia, scars that don’t heal. it’s way worse than a clean death.

✦ horror endings should feel unfinished. neat bows are for romance novels. if your reader closes the book thinking “oh good, it’s over,” you’ve failed. the best endings itch. they should feel like there’s still something lurking just off the page.

✦ leave something unresolved. don’t describe the monster’s body—describe the mug it left behind. the voicemail still playing. the dog still waiting at the door. absence is scarier than closure.

✦ the last line is everything. it should feel like a splinter under the skin. short, sharp, unforgettable.

examples:

“she turned off the light. something else turned it back on.”

“the baby monitor crackled: don’t forget to feed me.”

“his reflection waved first.”

“she tucked herself into bed. then felt the blanket tuck tighter from the other side.”

✦ first rule: don’t over-explain. once you give me the monster’s exact height, weight, claw count, and dental record, it’s not scary anymore. it’s a pokémon. mystery is the muscle. a shadow that almost looks human will always hit harder than a full description of a swamp beast. leave gaps. let the reader’s brain fill them in with their own worst fear.

✦ physics should not apply. horror monsters are terrifying when they break the rules of the world we think we understand. a body folding in ways it shouldn’t. joints bending the wrong direction. silence in a place that should echo. footsteps that sound like they’re coming from the ceiling instead of the floor. once you warp reality, the reader doesn’t feel safe in their own.

✦ chasing is fine. but waiting is worse. scarier than claws, scarier than snarling—try a monster that just stands in the corner and watches. even scarier? it smiles. because predators don’t smile unless they know something you don’t.

✦ let it act like it knows you. a growl is scary, sure, but a whisper of your name in the dark is worse. a hiss of your birthday. a laugh in your mother’s voice. monsters are no longer “other” once they feel personal. they’re invasive. they’re inside your head.

✦ first rule: don’t show me the monster’s teeth. teeth are biology. boooring. show me the sound it makes when it chews even though it hasn’t swallowed anything yet.

✦ doors. everyone writes locked doors. no. the scary ones are cracked open. like someone was in a hurry. like they’re still in there.

✦ gore is fine, i guess. but dread? dread is sexy. dread is when the protagonist sees a shadow… and it waves back.

✦ if you want to be mean (and you do), give the characters joy. a laugh. a plan. maybe even a future. then set it on fire. horror is basically hope with its spine snapped.