Young Writers Society

Do you ever wonder what the world would look like if " Don't kill has never been in the bible"? Christians would be diffrent, they would kill anyone who oposses their beliefs, I think. The problem is, I have never read a horror story, and I know 0%. Tell me if my idea sucks or not and SEND HELP!

It would make a good idea but of course, have a main antagonist for being the murder. Maybe, to make it different, tell the story from the murders side of view, tell us why he is doing it and so on.

Thanks EE, I'll keep that in mind.

Well @wordwing, you've got a lot going on here. And it isn't as simple as me saying whether or not your idea is any good, mostly because I haven't heard much of it yet. There are some things that concern me about this though.

Christians would be diffrent, they would kill anyone who oposses their beliefs, I think.

You may not realize this but the Crusades were holy wars funded by the Church, were basically the Christians killing anyone who opposed their beliefs. At that time in history it was Muslims, and before and after that point they witch and pagan hunts.
So I assume by this wording, you are trying to refer to the modern stance of "Oh Christians aren't like that". And if this portion of the Ten Commandments had never been written, it would be affecting the Jewish population as well.

But that doesn't even start to bring in the consequences of that never being written. Like you would be writing a complete alternate reality to what took place thousands of years ago, if that's what you're really saying. But if you're saying something more like a revised version of the big 10 in modern times, it would lead into apocalypse territory.

From the bit of the idea that you've presented to us, it doesn't sound like you really know what you're stepping into, mostly because you don't even have a bare bones plot. You need to recognize if you have a character first and foremost.

If you haven't read any horror, then you should probably start your research there. the best way to be able to write a certain type of story, is reading as much from that genre as possible. I may be biased but I'd say start with Poe.

This is something that could be good but you need to define it more before I can give you any feedback beyond this current point.

YES! And I definitely need to read horror! Thanks, you are right .

Silly me! *Facepalms himself*

Here's a little thing about culture: basically every single culture promotes "do not kill." Every single culture has murders.

Buddhists in Burma have killed over 100 Rohingya Muslims. India and Pakistan relations— often fuelled by how India is Hindu and Pakistan is Muslim— are bloody. There's the Crusades, as Lizz mentioned.

Even outside of the major religions, hunter-gatherer groups promote not killing because it's plain old not a good idea to kill within a small interdependent population. You ever wonder why some of the longest surviving cultures promote humility? Because humility keeps murders down. But even those cultures can and are empires— think of China and Japan, two cultures that promote a lot of humility and group loyalty above individual accomplishment.

Murder, believe it or not, goes against human biology. We're pack animals. We are wired to take care of our own. That's how we survived for as long as we have. If you go off and kill everyone you dislike, then there'd be nobody left to help you when you need more than a single person to take down ice age megafauna. Or when you were face to face with a wolf. Or when you need somebody to watch your kids as you go out hunting and your wife goes out gathering and you both have your backs turned half the time. It's much, much "cheaper" to work through a disagreement, when you look at a sociological perspective.

That's why murder is horrific. It goes against what humans are wired to do. In the same breath, that's why empires expand and why genocide happens— humans are also wired to stick with "like" people, and we're prone to devaluing those who we can't see are "like us."

Horror basically preys on human psychology and biology. We are, at our basics, interdependent pack animals. Even people with antisocial personality disorder or people who generally don't like human companionship still go out and make bonds because they're nice to have. They're useful to have. Because while we might not be facing down ice age megafauna anymore, we're facing moving house, or getting a job, or needing a couch to crash on for a weekend. All of those things are much easier to do if you know people.

So if you want to write horror, learn what makes people tick. Learn how humans are wired. There's a reason Christianity and Judaism have "thou shalt not kill" in the commandments, and it has everything to do with biology.

It's plain old a bad idea to murder others, and it takes a fairly extreme situation for it to happen. People murder for dominance (things like involuntary manslaughter, where a fight just reaches boiling point) or to dispose of an inconvenience/unequal individual (planned/calculated murder) or to save themselves (fight or flight instincts, in which case they are often murdering somebody with more power in the dynamic and it's their literal last resort).

The best horror goes with human psychology, not against it. That's what makes it creepy. There's an inherent, visceral wrongness with the monster, and most people couldn't name it if they tried, but it all boils down to a few millennia of human evolution. Learn it, then start to think of horror ideas.

Thanks!