{"id":109,"date":"2001-10-21T00:04:15","date_gmt":"2001-10-21T07:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2001\/10\/21\/109.html"},"modified":"2001-10-21T00:04:15","modified_gmt":"2001-10-21T07:04:15","slug":"plotz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2001\/10\/21\/plotz\/","title":{"rendered":"Plotz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Here's a start at a list of the Standard Horror Plots that we receive frequently (and wish we didn't).  Main plot types get numbers; subspecies and variants are in bulleted lists under each main type.  Maybe at some point I'll turn this into another guidelines page.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Serial killer stalks and slays victim.\n<ul>\n<li>The tables are turned at the end.\n<li>The serial killer is insane.\n<li>The serial killer is under supernatural influence.\n<\/ul>\n<li>Person is insane, and kills a lot of people because of it.\n<ul>\n<li>The insanity is due to supernatural influence.\n<li>The insane person does property damage instead of killing people.\n<\/ul>\n<li>The protagonist sits around for a while; in the end, it turns out the protagonist is dead.\n<li>Evil creature kills lots of people\n<ul>\n<li>In the end the creature escapes to kill again.\n<li>The creature is disguised as something cute.\n<\/ul>\n<li>Person sees mysterious things that nobody else can see.\n<ul>\n<li>Person has unreasonable dread of Thing that nobody else can see; in the end the Thing gets the person after all.\n<li>Person has bad dreams; they turn out to be real.\n<li>In the end, it turns out the person is crazy.\n<li>In the end, it turns out someone is drugging the person.\n<\/ul>\n<li>Person is warned to Always Do something; fails to do it; thereby sets Nameless Evil free.\n<ul>\n<li>Person is warned to Never Do something; does it anyway; thereby sets Nameless Evil free.\n<\/ul>\n<li>A place is haunted or scary.  [No, this isn't a plot, but we do receive plotless place descriptions in which this is the only point.]\n<li>Child is abused.\n<ul>\n<li>The tables are turned at the end.\n<li>The abuser is under supernatural influence.\n<\/ul>\n<li>Person is targeted by Evil Thing; in the end, Evil Thing kills person.\n<li>Person is a bad person; in the end, they get their comeuppance when unspeakably horrible things happen to them.  (A.k.a. the <cite>Twilight Zone<\/cite> plot.)\n<ul>\n<li>Person attempts to kill or dispose of spouse; in the end, the tables are turned.\n<li>Person isn't such a bad person; but in the end, unspeakably horrible things happen to them anyway.\n<\/ul>\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a start at a list of the Standard Horror Plots that we receive frequently (and wish we didn&#8217;t). Main&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}