All five of us are prowling the house in darkness, tiptoeing from room to room, silently opening cupboards and blindly feeling inside them. I look up, eyes straining to count the shadowy figures. I can only see four.
"Andrew? Has anyone seen Andrew?"
"What room was he in last?"
"He's gone!"
And then a few minutes later...
"Troye, is that you?"
"No, it's Dyl, I haven't seen him."
"He was here just a minute ago!"
Welcome to Squashed Sardines, deliciously creepy game of my childhood and the basis of a lovely new Writing Skill for you. This is the second of the two free Writing Skills, as the GHOSTLY + GOTHIC workshop creeps nearer, to whet your appetite for all things uncanny.
A quick aside for definitions. Gothic and horror are closely related, but they're not the same. The Gothic can be mysterious, eerie, uncanny, even creepy, but it doesn't use the shock, gore, or violence of horror. The Gothic is spine-tingles land; horror is scream land. The October workshop is 100% firmly about the Gothic, not horror, but you can use this writing skill for either: you choose whatever appeals to you.
So, back to the Squashed Sardines! This is one we played as kids, when there were a bunch of us about. For the game, it has to be nighttime. All the lights in the house must be off. The adults are confined to a single lit room, or outside if it's a summer night. (In South Africa, they'd generally be outside around the remnants of a fire, with candles, while us kids took over the house.) One person hides first, while everyone else waits in one place – usually the bathroom, which didn't have anywhere decent to hide. We all count to 100. Then we all split up to find the person who's hidden...
But when you find them, you don't say. You just hide with them. You're all friends, while you're looking together. As soon as you find the hiding place, you switch sides.
For those who're roaming the darkness, looking, it's absolutely chilling. The steady disappearances of your friends are unnerving. For those who've found the person hiding and are all squashed in the same place hiding together (hence Squashed Sardines), it's increasingly hilarious. And generally, the last person finds everyone else by tracking down the uncontrollable giggles. Last person to find the rest gets a dot of shoe polish on their face and the game starts again. As one of the youngest, I generally finished the night looking like a victim of the Black Plague, with all my shoe-polish dots!
The same principle is used in a lot of Gothic and horror stories. You start with a group of people, all distinct and friendly, and then... one by one... you lose them. In the Gothic, they likely just vanish. In horror, you might find their bodies. In either, you might lose them metaphorically instead of literally, as they switch to the other side, whatever the other side is. They start humming the same mindless tune as the ghost, or they stop being able to answer questions, or their eyes turn completely black, or you see streaks of stone starting to creep up their arms... whatever it is that signifies they've switched sides.
So, you're going to play a story game of Squashed Sardines, in writing.
If you prefer to plan before you write, spend 5 mins swiftly mapping it out first:
- five characters
- what's distinct about each
- where they are
- if they vanish or if they switch sides in some other way
- if the latter, what signifies that someone's "switched"
Then dash off 5 mins of writing (or more, if you fancy).
If you prefer writing to discover, start off just with where they are (that all-important sense of place), and then discover the characters, what's creepy about the place, and what happens as you write.
Either way, if you want some inspiration for where they are, have a look at my Writers' Links for Place. And have fun with it! Creepy, sinister fun...
Why this skill?
This skill plays with two crucial aspects of the Gothic and of horror, both equally useful to any story where you want an unsettling or scary part. The first is slow-rising tension. Emotions need to build in stories, layer by layer: we can't just leap to "It was terrifying!" The unease and trepidation that goes before is what creates the impact. To make that work, we need a series of things: having one character in a constant state of unease, without fresh cause for alarm, won't create those layers. Using the one-by-one disappearance of the characters gives you in-built layers and development. Once you've played around with that, you can take it further, finding other ways to build in layers, development, and fresh causes of alarm.
The second aspect is using a sense of place to set the mood. In Gothic stories, place is absolutely crucial – an ominous setting is one of the defining features of the genre. They offer us a wonderful repertoire of ways to use description for atmosphere, whether that's the classic castle on a stormy night, a haunted house, or an abandoned store in a desert with its slowly creaking sign. Using description to create a creepy mood shows you just how powerful description can be – and that you can use it to create any mood you want.
The GHOSTLY+GOTHIC workshop is on 28–29 October, live, online, and open to bookings from anywhere in the world. Through games, discussion, and quick-fire writing, you'll explore the dark and misty genre of the Gothic, and create your own Gothic story. All in fabulous company with a lovely bunch of story-loving people. Click here for more details and to book. Bookings close on Thursday 26 October.
