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Wrote a story from my toddler's perspective and it turned into horror
I was stuck on a prompt about family dynamics so I tried writing a short scene from my 3-year-old's point of view. She sees the refrigerator as a giant growling monster and my morning coffee as a magic potion that makes me act weird. After 500 words I realized I had accidentally written a creepy thriller about a kid trapped in a house with unpredictable giants. Has anyone else had a writing exercise veer completely off course like that?
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max_cooper212d ago
Isn't part of the reason it turned creepy because kids actually see the world that way though? I mean they don't have the context we do, so a blender is basically a demon machine and stairs are a death trap. We're just used to it all being normal but to a little kid everything is kinda terrifying until they learn otherwise. That's probably why horror writers steal that perspective so much, it's free uncanny valley material.
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wendy_lee481d ago
Is it weird that I've started noticing this same pattern everywhere now? Like I was at a friend's house and their kid started screaming at a Roomba and all the adults are just standing there like "oh it's just cleaning the floor sweetie" but to that kid it's basically a UFO that invaded their home. It's honestly kind of funny how we all just accept that we spent our early years terrified of vacuum cleaners and toilet sounds and then one day we just wake up and decide they're fine. But here's the thing that gets me - I think grownups do the same thing with other stuff too, just with bigger words. Like we get scared of bills or new jobs or whatever and everyone else acts like it's normal so we just go along with it. So yeah your toddler story is really about how we're all just faking it until things stop being scary.
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