[278] Down in the Pit
A group of amateur ghost hunters must survive a cat and mouse chase with hardened killers after they discover a horrifying secret in an abandoned crematorium.
This is the opening to a ~6k word horror story. Naturally, the idea is to hook a reader while introducing them to the main characters and the setting.
A major issue I'm working through here is that this opening buries the lede. While I incorporate ghosts and supernatural into the overall themes and the ending, the plot itself is about humans running away from killers. I'd like to avoid a generic "out of context killing" type of hook that many horror stories (especially slasher films) utilize to avoid this issue, but I'm struggling somewhat to include the idea of cartel killers into this opening while keeping it in Chris's POV, since at this point he knows nothing about the killings.
One idea I have is to simply add a sentence mentioning disappearances in the area (i.e. people who've been kidnapped and killed by the cartel), but I'm not sure if that's still too vague to be helpful in guiding story expectations.
Banked critiques:
Posted Feb 15, 2024, 11:43 PM UTC