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- Award-winning author KC Grifant shares how short horror fiction can be an incredibly effective way to enhance your writing and share meaningful messages in a powerful package.
- Discount code for our next live workshop with KC Grifant
- Submissions open
- Save the date: Writing The Short Story - From Conception To Sale
- Read this week's community drabbles—the theme is "reinvention"
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Think horror stories are just campy gore-fests? Think again: short horror fiction can be an incredibly effective way to enhance your writing and share meaningful messages in a powerful package. Writers often sideline short stories in favor of novels, but short stories offer many benefits. They can help writers bolster creativity, hone razor-sharp crafting skills, build your network, and open new paths on your writing journey, to name just a few.
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Whether you’re just starting out or have several novels published, there is one tool you should add to your arsenal: short stories. Short stories are more than just a few pages of scene setting or vignettes. When done well, they offer compelling tales in concentrated form that deliver an emotional punch. These tales typically range from 100 words to 8,000 words (with 2,000-5,000 words as a general sweet spot). The limited space forces writers to be especially thoughtful in their descriptions and to choose each word as carefully as a poet.
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Just a few of the benefits include:
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- Efficiency
While novels require months or years to write, a short story can be finished and polished for submission in mere days or weeks—ideal for keeping your writing momentum going in between juggling other commitments.
- Motivation
If you ever experience writer’s block, taking a break from your current project and writing a short story offers a creative reset and quick win. That satisfying reward of finishing a story can yield a renewed sense of accomplishment to help propel your other writing forward.
- Practice and Play
Short stories let you experiment with new genres, POVs and structures without the long-term time and mental commitment of a novel. Want to try telling a story from an unusual character? Remix subgenres in an interesting way? Test out an unexpected narrative structure? Short stories are an expansive creative playground for trying out unconventional approaches.
- A Gateway to More
For many authors, short stories can lay the groundwork for novellas and novels. My debut, award-winning western supernatural novel Melinda West: Monster Gunslinger began as a series of short stories that helped me flesh out the characters and shape the world, while also attracting readers. These short stories eventually fueled what is now the Monster Gunslinger series.
- Connecting With Community
One of the often-unrealized perks of writing and publishing short stories is that you will get to know magazines, publishers and editors faster than when querying a novel. And once you share a table of contents with other authors in anthologies or magazines that publish short stories, you begin to connect and grow your professional circle, while also finding new readers along the way.
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Horror thrives in the compact space of a short story, allowing writers to create a tight web of suspense, fear and intrigue. When done well, short horror tales effectively build tension and have a lingering impact. These are also an ideal training ground for mastering emotionally charged storytelling.
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Regardless of your preferred genre, learning how to infuse a bit of horror elements into your stories can be an effective way to raise the stakes and evoke visceral reactions from your readers. Horror is also a prime genre to explore societal stresses and fears in ways that resonate deeply with readers. Like an unexpected whisper in the dark, short horror stories can leave a chill long after the last sentence.
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Horror has been growing in popularity, so now is an excellent time for your stories to gain traction and open the door to future opportunities. Plus, many short story markets pay for original stories and reprints, so you can put your tales to work for you.
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By focusing on short horror stories, you can:
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- Practice getting to an intense, emotional impact quickly and hooking the reader.
- Experiment with various subgenres, from the gothic and supernatural, to body horror and cosmic terrors.
- Learn how to deliver a satisfying, well-earned ending that resonates.
- Keep your readers on edge through timing and tension.
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Tips To Writing Horror That Haunts
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Here are a few tips to get started crafting your spine-chilling tale to captivate readers:
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- Start with a gripping hook
Even more so than other genres, the opening of a short horror story is critical: sink your claws into the readers with that first line so they can’t look away.
This doesn’t mean relying on graphic gore or shock value necessarily. Rather, start with a character, event, image or atmosphere that immediately signals that something isn’t right and unsettles the reader from the get-go.
- Pay attention to tension
Horror is all about building tension. Infuse your tale with dread through atmosphere, setting and character psychology. Remember that horror evokes primal emotions: use sensory details to convey that something isn’t right. The suspense of something terrible about to happen is often even more unsettling than the event itself.
- Land the ending
An effective short horror story doesn’t just unnerve—it can also reward the reader with a shock ending that reveals not all is what it seems. A well-earned twist will elevate your story, but make sure the ending surprises, rather than confuses, the reader. There should be hints—however subtle or subliminal—of the story’s end well before the conclusion.
Short fiction and horror are both thriving, so now is the perfect time to dive in. If you’re looking for the next steps to hone your skills and unleash your scary stories, join this upcoming workshop for practical writing exercises, expert feedback and the tools to take your horror short story writing to the next level.
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Submissions open
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Many thanks to Scribophile for sponsoring this week's open submissions. Scribophile is a free welcoming community of writers where you're guaranteed to get solid critiques on your work. You can also get 20% off your first purchase using coupon code APEX20.
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- Winter Lore Book 3: Aurora – Tales of Winter Dreams
A project of Speculation Publications: “a collection of fantasy, folklore, and magic. It can be dark or light, but try to keep it within the bounds of fantasy. Stories of how winter relates to rest and rejuvenation and refinement of dreams. Stories will be about astral projection and lucid dreaming, dream spells, dream rituals, the magic of dreams, and subconscious desires and manifestations.”
Deadline: 13 May 2025
Length: 2,000-6,000 words
Pay: $20 for original fiction, $10 for poetry, $5 for reprints, $5 for short articles, poems and spells on winter rites, traditions and rituals
Details here.
- Archive of the Odd
Speculative fiction magazine of found fiction. Described as “a home for the strange, the uncanny, and the odd.” Stories told in the style of found footage, also known epistolary, neo-epistolary, found file, or found document fiction. Essentially, stories told in the form of other documents. All submissions must be found fiction.
Deadline: 15 May 2025 for short fiction
Length: 500-8,000
Pay: 1.5c/word
Details here.
- Graveside Press: Monster Anthology
Looking for stories of “Monsters! Specifically…people who love monsters.
Like…a lot. Give us your spicy monster stories, but keep in mind this is still horror; we aren’t looking for sweet urban fantasy tales. Your submission should still have a heavy horror factor.” Stories must contain some kind of monster, creature, or cryptid from folklore, mythology, or your imagination, and also contain some level of spice (all heat ranges accepted).
Deadline: 15 May 2025 (extended)
Length: 2,000-6,000 words
Pay: $0.02/word
Details here .
- Conquest Publishing: Monstrous Angels – An Anthology of Religious Horror
“Monstrous Angels is an anthology that will explore one of the most enduring questions of religious horror–why are angels so compelling as anti-heroes and/or villains? Looking for stories of the morally gray. Of angels and humans trying their best and failing.
Deadline: 25 May 2025
Length: Up to 8,000 words
Pay: $20
Details here.
- Cast of Wonders: Banned Books Week – Joy that Sustains
YA speculative fiction podcast and magazine, opening soon for submissions. Theme is Joy that Sustains. From the guidelines: "For Banned Books Week 2025, we want to see stories of irrepressible joy. Show us the sparks that cannot be extinguished, the many facets of humanity in all its splendour. We are looking for stories that showcase the hopefulness and power of diverse voices, stories of music in dark times, stories that are unapologetic and inspiring.” Stories of up to 5,000 words, though up to 6,000 words accepted.
Reading period: 15-31 May 2025 (see schedule)
Length: Up to 5,000 words
Pay: $0.08/word for originals, $20-100 for reprints
Details here .
- Killer Verse: Nostalgic Halloween
Project of the Canada-based Delta Literary Arts Society (DALS). “Killer Verse is DLAS’s Halloween-themed show of dramatized narrations produced every October at the North Delta Centre for the Arts.” Calling for short stories or other works that can be read and performed live on stage, with a run time of no more than five minutes (2-3 pages), and which fit the theme of Nostalgic Halloween.
Deadline: 31 May 2025
Length: Up to 1,800 words
Pay: CAD50 for stories, CAD50 for poems
Details here .
- Book Worms Horror Zine: Cryptid Horror
Accepts mailed submissions only; submissions must be received by the deadline. Looking for submissions on the Cryptid Horror theme for their 8th issue. “Whether it’s beasts from local legend or psychological horrors born from the depths of your own personal wilderness, we want your weirdest, wildest, and most chilling creations.”
Deadline: 31 May 2025
Length: Up to 1,500 words for prose
Pay: $0.08/word for stories and essays, $25-50 for poetry
Details here .
- Heartlines Spec
Canadian magazine of speculative fiction and poetry, focused on long-term relationships; publishes at least 50% work from Canadian writers for each issue. “We’re looking for short fiction and poetry focused on long-term relationships: platonic, romantic, or familial. We don’t want the blaze of new love or the obsession of a new friend. We want pieces that show that comfort that develops when people know each other for years.
Deadline: 31 May 2025
Length: 1,000-3,500 words for fiction; up to 5 poems
Pay: CAD0.08/word for fiction; CAD60/poem
Details here .
- Bag of Bones Press: Patterns
Seeking "dark stories (2-4k words) on the theme of patterns. Please interpret this theme however you like. Write us a quiet mood piece or an action-packed powerful, character-driven story. Make it humorous or as dark as the night.” Looking for want speculative, horror, dark fantasy or dark sci-fi stories.
Deadline: 31 May 2025
Length: 2,000-4,000 words
Pay: $0.01/word
Details here .
- Bona Books: Wrath Month Anthology
Seeking "fantasy, science-fiction, and horror short stories that embrace punk and queer rage. There’s a glass ceiling in SFF representation, and we want you to throw a brick through it... Wrath lies at the heart of queer liberation—it can be a spur to action and the only righteous response to a world that would prefer we didn’t exist. So crash mainframes, collapse empires, and break normativity. Pride month is over. It’s time for — Wrath Month.”
Deadline: 31 May 2025
Length: Up to 6,000 words
Pay: $0.08/word
Details here.
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Save The Date - Saturday, May 31, 2025
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This Week's Community Drabbles
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For your reading pleasure, here are this week's awesome drabbles. The week's theme was "reinvention." If you'd like to join the fun, sign up here https://reachyourapex.com/drbl
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(Presented in the order they were received.)
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New planet, new species, new middle school. It was meant to be a new life.
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Marcus tapped his wrist and Ectron flickered to life. His holo-pet’s soft glow lit up the inside of the locker they’d stuffed him into. Toilet water trickled down his neck from the latest swirlie.
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“This time it was meant to be different,” Marcus whispered. Ectron glowed a comforting green. “Self-reinvention is hard. You can’t escape your true core self.”
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“So life is not…” Marcus gestured. “This!”
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Ectron’s holo-gears whirrred. “Maybe, it’s not you that must change. Maybe it’s the world.”
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I bared my heart on stage and it was never enough. Those dead eyes in the big money booths don’t want the truth, they want reassurance; that what they believe is true, that the actors they’ve paid for will bring them more money.
No more.
New agent, new name, new face—I’ve changed it all. None of it’s mine, of course—I found a picture in a magazine and got handy, with some help: back alley surgeons are masters of their crafts, and they love new trainees.
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I’ll never bare my own heart on stage again—I’ll show them someone else’s.
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Public Transport Strategy
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We sculpted and extracted, bent the stuff of the world to our will. We explored beyond our bodies’ capacity, taking more and more to sustain ourselves. Our imagination knew no restraint. Balance was a nice idea. Limits we did away with. But we could not unclog our living places. Snarled in traffic, our work impeded, progress delayed.
We made a map of the city out of sugar, laid it out in a glass dish. We dropped in fungal spores. We can no longer be trusted, we said. We must let the mould decide. Let it find us the best path.
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