- Joined
- Feb 17, 2005
- Messages
- 120
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I've just gotten my manuscript back from a really great agent who, although she passed on the book, gave me excellent tips on what I need to do to improve it. While she seemed to have been happy with my writing (Thank God) she just wasn't as scared as she should have been reading a ghost story. Fair enough.
I did as she suggested and reread The Haunting of Hill House which made me realize something: I don't care for hauntings that might just as easily be psychosis. (In fact, being thought crazy is one of the things my character is struggling against.) I want my ghosts to be more real than that, not potentially the jibberings of a mind on the skids. I want my characters to be paragons of strength and sanity (within reason) who are tested, solve the problem of the ghosts (putting it simply) and live to quaff non-alcoholic pina coladas on the front porch when it is all over (this is YA, after all).
But do sane characters undermine the ghost thing? Should I be thinking horror then? Turn my ghosts into zombies (oh, now I'M scared!) and take it from there?
I did as she suggested and reread The Haunting of Hill House which made me realize something: I don't care for hauntings that might just as easily be psychosis. (In fact, being thought crazy is one of the things my character is struggling against.) I want my ghosts to be more real than that, not potentially the jibberings of a mind on the skids. I want my characters to be paragons of strength and sanity (within reason) who are tested, solve the problem of the ghosts (putting it simply) and live to quaff non-alcoholic pina coladas on the front porch when it is all over (this is YA, after all).
But do sane characters undermine the ghost thing? Should I be thinking horror then? Turn my ghosts into zombies (oh, now I'M scared!) and take it from there?