See, I have this short story... maybe

[EFCollins]

Okay, I've talked about this short a couple of times and I need advice.

The thing is weird. It's not really a story at all, but it kind of is. It's all about this woman who keeps hearing bells at night that cause her insomnia and drive her *completely* insane. Now, it's a weird tale. It's even weirder because

A) First person, internal monologue... yeah
2) she never tells us here name, never speaks out loud, no dialog what-so-ever
Q) She talks incessantly about these bells, Jesus Christ and all that is holy, it's always the god godforsaken bells
6) It read more like diary entries than anything else.

Now, I'm considering taking these "diary-like" pieces and putting them into a bigger story. The story would be something along the lines of someone else moving into the same house the woman from the short story lived in, after her death, of course, and finding the diary. The MC would also suffer insomnia and would also start hearing the bells, after reading the crazy-talk journal. The entries would be spread out through several chapters, with the MC going progressively insane, as the woman in the diary appears to.

My problem...

The diary/short story/hack work is weird and to be honest, I don't know how to set it up as a diary. In the entries, the woman in question has no concept of time, so there would be no way to date them so they might make sense. But, do they really need to make sense, since the author of the diary is crazy anyway? Any suggestions? HELP ME HORROR HOUNDS!

P&L
~Ellen

[Kmcelhinny]

Well!

I have read this story and it has the potential to be truly amazing. Ef has great imagery and it is a crazy, twisted, and truly grotesque idea.

Effy, I don't think you should do the diary idea. I think that you should do it from her perspective. Have it ramble but in a controlled way.

BONG...new thought/paragraph
BONG...new thought/paragraph
BONG...new thought/paragraph

Each time the bell digs change it up entirely, that way at least the reader can keep track of what's really going on. I loved the piece. Stay away from the diary...ooh, unless you can her seeing her blood drip on the paper or something...that might be a good idea, OR her skin flaking off, any kind of gross or disturbing body fluid, liquid, AND incorporate that with the bells gonging in her head...Hmmm...

Okay. Enough of my input. Someone elses turn. I know you can do it and make the story great!

Zombie pony out...:)

[EFCollins]

LOL... I'm trying to keep the short piece intact, with revisions of course. :D I like it, but I don't think it could be a novel in its self, especially the way it is written. (Another friend on another writing forum said it reminded her very much of Poe, if that helps anyone) No dialog at all? That would get pretty boring. The woman in the short piece lives entirely alone... and what I'm wanting to do with it is have another character move in her house after she dies, because the short piece ends with her welcoming death and all that. The MC of the novel's experiences would mimic the diary writers stuff... and I could do the whole BONG-even crazier, BONG-even crazier thing with her. (Of course, Bala is a woman too, you see.) The whole idea is for her to not know what's going on, the bells are torturing her, making her slip even further into the madness of them, joining with the one gone before her... the bells taking a "toll" on their victims... yeah, I know, more bad humor on my part, sorry. I'm thinking, since the woman in the short piece does do some self mutilation stuff, of having old dry blood drips spattered across the pages and when Bala (MC of the novel)starts doing her own going crazy thing, she starts dripping blood on other pages as she starts adding to it... if that makes sense. I don't know. I'm torturing myself over it because I love, love, LOVE my bell story... I just don't know what to do with it. It's very... original. ;) Hinny mentioned it would make a good poem... but, it's 5000 words long, so I'm hoping to keep it a story and incorporate it into something that is more modern, while mimicking what happens in the shorter piece... if that makes sense. I'm soooo stuck!

ETA: I could, since the woman in the short piece paints her living room with her blood, have these pieces of paper with her account on them stuck to a wall somewhere in the attic or basement somewhere. It wouldn't be a bound diary, but I could mix them up so that they make NO sense what-so-ever and add to the confusion until Bala figures them out. I dunno. It's killing me!

[EFCollins]

Okay, I'll put up a paragraph here of the short piece so you'll have an example of what it's like. Keep in mind that she is talking to the bells throughout the whole thing and this is in the middle. She has an obsession with mosquitoes... which is hard to explain, but you know. Like I said, it's a weird, weird piece.

My bed has lain unused for months now. Perhaps I should rent it, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Bed for rent, bed for sale, all you have to do is ignore the bells! What a hoot, what a scream, it was all just a dream. A dream of a bug you can crush, you can smoosh. After all, a cock in the hand is worth a mouthful of bush. Do you like that? You do, don’t you? I’m a poet and a cretin all at the same time. Time? What time? I’ve lost all sense of time. Years pass, grey pops out in my hair until it is now nearly white. White, trite, fight, flight and there goes a mosquito.

[Kmcelhinny]

...and I could do the whole BONG-even crazier, BONG-even crazier thing with her. (Of course, Bala is a woman too, you see.) The whole idea is for her to not know what's going on, the bells are torturing her, making her slip even further into the madness of them, joining with the one gone before her... the bells taking a "toll" on their victims... yeah, I know, more bad humor on my part, sorry.

What if she didn't realize what the noise was? And the reader knew what the bong bong bonging, was...?

[EFCollins]

Yep, exactly. See, the house is situated right next door to the bell tower of the church, so she'd know it was the bells, but she would also know the bells don't keep ringing incessantly all night long, as the short story character claims. They chime only twice a day, at both twelves. And if she looks outside, she can see the bell is not moving, not gonging at all. So, what makes the sound? That's where i'm kind of going with it, because in the short story, the woman doesn't care. She's crazy anyway, the bells just make her crazier from lack of sleep and what-not.

[dgrintalis]

Ghost bells that drive a woman insane? I love it. You know, if the woman was mad, maybe she wrote her diary entries on loose paper and hid them throughout the house. Maybe put them under a drop ceiling, behind the medicine cabinet, underneath the shelf paper in the bathroom closet...

[EFCollins]

Oooh. Now that could go somewhere. Have one.. the last one, stuck on the wall beside the place where she died... and the rest hidden in very strange places, like you said. DG... I could kiss you. :)

You guys are great. Keep it coming. This might be a back project, but it's slowly making it's way to the front, methinks. Y'all have me thinking, now.

P&L
~E.

[dgrintalis]

One more idea. Why do the phantom bells ring? Does the church have some dark secret?

:)

[EFCollins]

No, the bells rang on the day her family was killed, like they used to do in old towns when there was an emergency. A "few" small towns still do it, and it tortures her because she wasn't with them. However, that's just what she thinks. In the novel, the bells are going to be haunted by each person it tolled for during an emergency that subsequently died. I'm not sure how I'm going to work that yet, but I'll figure it out. ;)

[DeeCaudill]

I've not read it, but I understand that House of Leaves by Danielewski (http://www.librarything.com/work/1488) is at least partly epistolary (told through letters).

So I'm not going to say it can't be done. When done well, I think reading journals and letters strips away a narrative layer that could otherwise distract a reader and interfere with the process of building dread.

[ichMael]

The diary/short story/hack work is weird and to be honest, I don't know how to set it up as a diary. In the entries, the woman in question has no concept of time, so there would be no way to date them so they might make sense.

You could tie the woman's entries to a progressive event. It could be anything, real or imaginary--like the sound of someone walking up a staircase. One entry when the foot falls on the first step, another entry at the creaky step a quarter of the way up, and so on. Time the last entry for what we all know is coming (whatever that may be). By doing that, each entry, no matter where it's placed in your story, would have a fixed chronology. Just a thought.