User blog:HumboldtLycanthrope/Writer's Lounge Part 5: An Interview with Mikemacdee

Welcome to the Writer’s Lounge. I am the Humboldt Lycanthrope and it is my immense pleasure and

honor to be interviewing the incredibly talented [http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/User:Mikemacdee

Mikemacdee]. I am sure most of you are familiar with his story Teacher Wanted, Must Love Children which

won the Damn Good Pasta Contest in December. So, Mike, let me just begin by saying that I am

a huge fan. You are one of my favorite writers on this wiki and your story Jozsa’s Grove is one of my

absolute favorite horror stories.

MIKE MACDEE: You flatter me, sir! But really, it's always nice to hear when I manage to scare or

entertain somebody. I greatly appreciate that anyone reads at all.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: So, how did you first become involved in writing, Mike?

MIKE MACDEE: Probably the lack of friends, actually. I didn't have anyone to hang out with as a kid,

outcast that I was, so when I wasn't playing video games, I was indulging my creativity in some project

or another. I've been making comics since I was probably four or five, but my first taste of creative

writing was in Miss Foltz's class in First Grade. She had us write something every week (or every day, I

can't remember) and turn it in to be graded. Everything I wrote was dumb and based on whatever was

on TV at the time, but I was always happy to have more creative outlets. I didn't take it seriously until

high school, when I started taking proper creative writing classes and reading my terrible stories to my

classmates for feedback. Looking back on it, it was pretty embarrassing, but I was clueless at the time.

Oh god, one of them was a Powerpuff Girls fanfic! I had no shame!

As for how I got into horror fiction, chock it up to my recurring nightmares as a kid. I'd have these awful

dreams where I tried and failed to escape from these cackling wights that wanted to do me harm: I

never had the same dream twice, but the creatures were always the same, which is alarmingly bizarre.

That's probably what led me to reading scary fiction in the first place. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

is an obvious one -- all the kids in my generation read those books and loved them -- but my favorite

bar none was the Scary Stories for Sleepovers series: original, pre-creepypasta stories for kids that

could be genuinely horrific, and always ended badly for the protagonists. Few truly scary stories have

happy endings, something that Goosebumps never figured out. SSfSO wasn't afraid to, y'know, SCARE

its young reader base. What's the point of reading scary stories if they're nice and safe and harmless?

Some of those stories kept me up at night for weeks, and I already had a fear of the dark from the

nightmares. Seems only natural that I would start writing horror eventually -- I was pretty bad at it in

the beginning, but it was H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Bram Stoker that eventually taught me how

to scare people (or come close to it, anyway). I could never finish a King novel, but some of his short

fiction was legendary. But it was Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark that enticed me to use various terrible

dialects for any story I wrote with an oral style: I wanted them to sound as much like classic campfire

tales as possible.

And then there was creepypasta. I got fed up with professional publishers rejecting my short stories,

and decided to spite them all by uploading my body of work on the internet for free. At first I only

submitted one: I sent Whispers to the Creepypasta Index for consideration, and never heard back, so

I went back to mailing submissions to magazines. A few years and another dozen rejection letters later,

I learned Creepypasta.com was holding open submissions, and that the Creepypasta Wiki was one of

the few remaining places on the internet where some semblance of quality standards still existed, so I

started mass-submitting my work, not expecting much to come of it.

Well, around that time, I discovered to my everlasting surprise that Whispers had actually been

accepted by the Creepypasta Index, even though they'd never informed me of the fact, and had been

on their site for several years! Not only that, but it had made its way onto the "best of" lists of a few

pasta-loving bloggers, and even been adapted into a radio play by Mr. Creepypasta on Youtube. That

was surreal. It was like the prodigal pasta coming home to be reclaimed by its daddy (I had submitted

Whispers under the narrator's name, and didn't put my own name on it 'til I joined the wiki).

Today I don't do much horror fiction. I guess I'm kinda burned out on it from specializing for so long.

These days I'm writing spy fiction and humorous fantasy. And I'm still doing riffs of bad fanfics and

creepypastas, of course.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Well, I am sure most of the writers out there probably share your

experiences of being an outcast kid, reading Lovecraft and King, remembering that first kindly English

teacher that took an interest in you, the piles of rejection slips, and the joys of finding a warm and

responsive audience in the creepypasta community. I know I do at least.

Now, I noticed that besides Home Improvement none of your stories contain any pictures. Do you feel

that visuals can distract the reader and that pastas are more powerful without artwork?

MIKE MACDEE: As far as creepypasta goes, it depends. Some pastas rely on a photo as the centerpiece

of the story, and it's hard to imagine a story like Smile Dog without it. But for fiction in general, I think

the text should mostly speak for itself: it's more rewarding for the reader if they interpret the visuals

on their own the first time through. Adding images to a story can be "too controlling," trying to force

someone else's interpretation onto the reader.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Interesting. I agree. Your story What You Don’t Know Won’t Kill You

involves a pre-Olmec token. The Olmec culture were a pre-Aztec civilization that thrived on Mexico’s

Gulf Coast from roughly 1,200 to 400 B.C. but what surprised me about your story was that you compare

their mythos to the Norse mythology concept of Ragnarok, a series of apocalyptic events that will kill

all life on earth and submerge the world in water. Would you care to elaborate on the thought process

that brought these two diverse cultures together?

MIKE MACDEE: There wasn't much of a process to that, actually. The artifacts in the story were centered

around Mesoamerican cultures, but I think the concept of Ragnarok is a bit more familiar to the general

public, especially with all the fans of Marvel's Thor. The narrator was familiar with both cultures given

her career choice, so she sort of used it the same way I did: an easy one-word reference to the end of

the universe.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: In What You Don’t Know Won’t Kill You the protagonist Erica states she,

“believed knowledge was a ward for fear,” is that true for you as well?

MIKE MACDEE: I think the opposite is true, which Erica eventually discovered the hard way. Ignorance

is bliss, as they say. The more we know, the more reason we have to worry. I could've gone my whole

life not knowing that a black hole could randomly open up in our solar system at any time and gulp

up the earth, or that one well-placed meteor could purge the planet of our presence. Thanks for that,

Astronomy 101!

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Haha, very good. In your work, often people just disappear without a trace

and you don’t often get into bloodshed or violence, one exception that stands out being [[The Darrow

Curse]]. Do you feel that your stories are more haunting and powerful without gore?

MIKE MACDEE: Violence and gore is almost never scary to me. I strongly feel that the purpose of horror

is to frighten people. You probably noticed that many, many bad creepypasta authors rely on a gory

climax as a crutch, probably because they lack the subtlety to scare the reader. So they gross them out

instead, which I find juvenile.

That said, gore can be effectively scary when utilized properly. Killer Klowns from Outer Space, while

basically a self-lampooning comedy (as the title suggests), has a magnificent scene where one of the

clowns uses a police officer as a ventriloquist dummy to communicate with another human. It's the only

really violent scene in the movie, and it scares the hell out of me every time! I think the last image of

The Darrow Curse manages to use gore in a fun and frightening way without just being violent for the

sake of it.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Killer Klowns From Outer Space? I did not expect that as a response. lol. I

love the final image of The Darrow Curse. The Harvest Phantom is a great boogey man. Was there

an inspiration for him or did he just come right from your mind?

MIKE MACDEE: Originally he was every horror movie slasher ever. A lot of the scary stories I wrote were

either reboots of poorly executed ideas, or several potentially good ideas merged into a single project.

If my documents folder were a physical location, it would look like Dr. Frankenstein's lab, bursting with

half-finished experiments whose best parts I chopped off and recycled into a bigger and better creature.

I believe I originally thought up Tommy Darrow as the earth elemental to Jason's water and Freddy's

fire. That made me gravitate toward farming as his general theme. I probably got his sack-mask idea

from the same place the first Jason Voorhees did: the Phantom Killer from The Town That Dreaded

Sundown, based on a real serial killer who also stalked the streets of his city.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: You write in the first person, second person and third person. Which do you

prefer and why?

MIKE MACDEE: It's hard to pick because some stories are best told with one perspective or another. I

suppose third person by a narrow margin. It's a good, universal perspective to write in. When I use third- person, though, I try to stay out of the characters' heads as much as possible, and let the reader infer

what a character is thinking based on their dialogue and actions. "Show, don't tell," and whatnot.

First person is great for horror, especially if you use an epistolary style, where the story is told in a

journal or a series of documents. First person is tough to do effectively, though. You have to remember

that the protagonist is the one narrating: they're not omniscient like a third-person narrator, and

they may misinterpret the events around them based on their own personal experiences. And if

you do epistolary first-person it's even harder, because epistolary stories cannot be told as they are

happening: someone is writing down the story after-the-fact, and only as best they remember it, which

is questionable at best. Epistolary stories also have to be good at delivering information "between the

lines" without spelling everything out, or it's just a lot of exposition, which is boring. And of course the

narrator can't say things like "hang on, there's someone at the door" if they're interrupted while writing

a letter to someone who ISN'T THERE, because that's ridiculous; yet authors who use this perspective do

it constantly! But I wrote a whole essay about epistolary fiction already, and I'm being redundant.

I find second-person works best if you keep the protagonist as relatable as possible. In Lights Out

I believe I even kept the protagonist's gender vague for that reason, although it's been awhile since I

looked at that one and I might be wrong.

I've also used past- and present-tense narrative, which can be just as important as perspective

depending on the story. Using past-tense can imply that the narrator (or protagonists at least) survived

the story, which is being told after-the-fact. Carbon River uses third-person present-tense, so the

reader really has no idea how it will turn out.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Do you feel that when you write epistolary with the use of chatrooms, e-

mails and texts that you are continuing in the tradition of Stoker and Lovecraft but in a modern sense?

MIKE MACDEE: That's one way to look at it. Their greatest works were written in an epistolary style, but

it's probably more of a tribute to gothic fiction in general (Dracula, Frankenstein, etc) which was often

written that way. I have to give creepypasta and internet horror fiction credit for keeping that narrative

style alive, and bringing it to the modern age. "Ted the Caver" and "Dionaea House" are two really

effective examples of "information age" epistolary fiction, and worth reading at least once.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: You have written from the perspective of a man, a woman, a child, and, in

Cold Metal Coffin, a robot. Do you have a preference or find one perspective to be more powerful

than another?

I usually find writing adults is easier than writing children, because stories centered around children

require more research: a college-age author knows what a college-age person is like, but doesn't

necessarily know the behavioral and mental differences between a kindergartner, a second grader, and

a fourth grader, all drastically different age groups with their own quirks. Research should be part of the

fun of writing though.

But writing from one perspective isn't inherently more powerful than another. There are a lot of authors

who claim "I don't know how to write (author's opposite sex)," or assume that they do and fail without

realizing it. I have little respect for those kinds of authors. Know what the secret to writing the opposite

sex is, ladies and gents? Don't write the opposite sex. Don't write men, don't write women. Write

PEOPLE. Sex is a single pair of chromosomes, not an entire personality. That's how I go about it: I treat

the character's sex as just another trait, like their hair and clothes and whatever's on their ipod. Notice

that I didn't tell you the gender of the narrator in What's the Matter, Jenny?. Half the people who

read it assume it's male, half assume female, and I'm not telling either way!

As for robots and cyborgs, I think there's a certain inherent sympathy for them if they're humanized

well. Data from Star Trek TNG is a great example. I think Cold Metal Coffin was an outlet for my

frustration with my life situation, so it all came out pretty easily. Many times I've had the sense of

feeling like I'm trapped, and not going anywhere, and never will, and there's nothing I can do about

it. Cold Metal Coffin came to me in a bad dream almost scene for scene, so I guess I made it into a

metaphor for that dissatisfaction. I didn't like it much initially because it was one long, endless stream- of-consciousness, but it's sorta grown on me in recent years.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: I never noticed the lack of gender identification in [[What’s the Matter,

Jenny]] and just assumed the narrator to be male. I don’t know why, maybe because it seemed like a

male thing to go and try to retrieve that ring and take that shot of bourbon at the end. But those are

unfair assumptions. Hmm.

Well, Bly Bearheart is an iconic character you created in the novella Carbon River. She is a very

strong willed and tough Native American who wields a bowie knife and takes no shit. When I read the

story I thought for sure she would be the heroine fighting the windingo at the end, but you killed her off

fairly early. Why?

MIKE MACDEE: Ahh, yeah, Bly was sorta my favorite. Madame Macabre did a great job with her voice in

her dramatic reading.

Actually, of all the scary stories I wrote, I'm most fond of Carbon River for a lot of reasons, one of

them being the cast dynamic. I had a pretty typical monster movie scenario in that one, so I wanted

to try and shake things up a bit to keep it from becoming a stale read. By page ten, whatever terrible

things may come, you probably expect Bly or Shawna to be the protagonists: they're the rangers-in- training, they're accustomed to the wilderness, and they appear to be the most headstrong. Yet Shawna

is the first to go, and Bly is the first to lose her marbles; it's the resident douchebag Gretchen who

becomes the protagonist and keeps the gang together, and as the alpha female of the group I think it's

sorta believable, too. You always expect the mean one to be the juiciest kill maybe halfway through the

story, so I thought making her the heroine would be unexpected. In fact, I originally didn't know if it was

going to be an actual monster or not: my first idea was that one of the two ranger girls was killing off

her friends, and the survivors would begin to believe it was a windigo until the very end. I'm glad I went

with the actual monster, because it's a lot scarier that way.

I also like the fact that it only took a couple weeks to write (not including editing time). It's my most

recent scary tale and didn't require months or years of revisions before it was readable.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: And I see a fan has created a Bly Bearheart fashion ensemble. That must

have given you a nice feeling, huh?

MIKE MACDEE: I thought that was cute as hell. I made a Polyvore account to tell her thanks, and now I

have followers on Polyvore for no reason!

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Both the stories Bathroom Anxiety and [[Teacher Wanted, Must Love

Children]] have very detailed accounts of daily life in an Elementary School. Do you or did you ever work

in an elementary school?

MIKE MACDEE: I did work as a substitute teacher briefly, but most of my knowledge of elementary

schools comes from my parents, who are both teachers. I learned all the ins and outs of running a

classroom, dealing with other faculty members, dealing with parents, lesson plans, what happens if a

teacher or student dies, even what to do if a student feels like he/she is gonna barf. And you can bet if

anything was wrong with how the school district was run, I'd hear about it. Part of the reason for the

school settings was to lampoon the general incompetence of administrators.

I should point out that teacher-student touching of any kind is forbidden for safety's sake, and in a real

school even patting a kid on the shoulder (like the teachers sometimes do in one or both stories) could

get the teacher in trouble. I made them do it anyway for dramatic effect, to show that the afflicted boys

were afraid of being touched by adults.

I loved Sideways Stories from Wayside School as a kid, and thought it'd be neat to do a horror equivalent

to that book, but nothing ever came of it. I only had so many ideas that worked. I did at least try to

keep a sense of continuity, setting many stories in Aspenvale, and making references to characters

from other stories: the protagonist of Bathroom Anxiety, Miss Hanson, is referred to at least once in

Teacher Wanted, Must Love Children, and I think they both feature Miss Wiley the art teacher and

the stammering Principal Sinclair. The same student names keep popping up, too.

I heard a rumor that the big names in creepypasta youtube readings won't do a reading of [[Teacher

Wanted, Must Love Children]] because of the molestation subject matter. I don't think it's true, though:

it's more likely that the email/text message format is difficult to work with.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: I couldn’t help but notice a similarity in Whispers to the classic HBO Tales

from the Crypt episode Television Terror. Of course these are based on the old EC Comics. Do you read

EC Comics and are they an influence on your work?

MIKE MACDEE: EC Comics were never an influence on my work, but I did read them from time to time

as a kid. They were among the very few horror outlets for young readers that were actually scary, right

down to the grotesque art (which was added to the panels AFTER the lettering, if you ever wondered

why the art felt so cramped -- they had to squeeze it into each frame!). Reading those as a kid sorta

made you feel like you were getting away with something, although my brother and I were bright kids

and our parents knew what we could handle...most of the time. Back to Sleepovers scaring me awake

every night.

For some reason there's this strict guideline for young horror fiction that requires the protagonists

always be in control of their situation, and the ending always be pleasant, so as not to scare the poor

widdle tykes. I can't remember where I read that, but apparently it's an actual guideline for young

horror, and it makes me want to drop-kick a kitten. What's the point? "How about we make an action

movie with no peril? Can't have people getting thrilled. They might sue!" But I digress.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: In Home Improvement, the dead wife buried in the basement seemed a

bit reminiscent of Poe’s The Black Cat. Is Poe an influence?

MIKE MACDEE: He probably is. I used to read his stuff when I was a kid, but I haven't revisited him in

ages. I used to have a bunch of Classics Illustrated based on his work; I might still have The Fall of the

House of Usher.

Poe sorta influences all horror authors one way or another, either directly or through other horror

authors like Lovecraft and King. Lovecraft even referred to himself as a mere Poe copycat, and didn't see

the originality of his own work while he was alive. Just goes to show you, just because someone inspires

you, doesn't make you a ripoff artist. All you do is take one brick from their literary house and add it to

your own unique house.

Dammit, I think I'm quoting Twain again. I guess that's another of my influences.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Your horror stories have a very classic and old school feel to them and I feel

like the stories you list as your "oddities" have more of a pasta vibe to them, in that they are shorter and

more bizarre. Could you tell us how you would define this strange new form of horror literature we call

creepypasta and which of your stories best exemplify it?

MIKE MACDEE: I'm afraid my definition of creepypasta is far less flattering than yours. It originated as

a form of flash fiction: short-short stories that could be easily shared via email or blog. To that end, I

suppose Food for the Children is the best example because it's very short and easily digestible.

Somewhere along the way, creepypasta turned into the slush pile of every publishing house: piles of

bad manuscripts submitted by amateur authors, who didn't pay any more attention in English class than

they did to the publisher's submission guidelines. Generally if I find a creepypasta that's well-written

and actually scary, it's horror fiction, not creepypasta. Until people start raising their standards higher,

and stop heaping so much praise on poor efforts, creepypasta has a well-deserved stigma as sputum

from the toxic colon of the internet. In that regard, I'd probably vote for Cacodemon or [[Breaking the

Mold]]: both rely on shock-imagery and don't go anywhere in particular.

The main reason I host all my scary stories on the Creepypasta Wiki is they don't accept any pile of

literary trash that comes their way: they at least try to have quality standards, and as a result they get

far fewer idiotic comments, too, apart from the occasional blog post from the Land of Author Butthurt.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Hey! I loved Breaking The Mold, you are one of the only authors out

there who can effectively use second person.

MIKE MACDEE: I do still think it's kinda funny, to be honest. But it could be better.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Well, then, what do you consider your three best stories on the wiki and

why?

MIKE MACDEE: It's hard to judge my own work objectively, but I'll do my best.

Carbon River didn't take a lifetime to write; the girls are all distinct and memorable (if not likable);

it's paced well enough to produce a lot of tension and dread; and I think it's a good example of subtlety

in horror fiction. Until the very last page, you're not even sure if there really IS a monster. All the

real action happens "off camera" and somehow that makes it scarier than if I'd shown everything

in gruesome detail. It seems to utilize "fear of the unknown" pretty well. I'm always fond of snowy

imagery, too: it can be serene, depressing, or menacing in a very quiet way.

Jozsa's Grove turned out nicely, and I think it effectively uses an oral narrative style that helps

suspend disbelief. The scary elements are placed in all the right spots, too, and get progressively more

horrific the further you go: each section of the story is like a small chapter with its own rising action and

climax. I also think the image of Jozsa singing to her "baby" is a haunting image that sticks with you. I

think it's the most likely to find its way into a print anthology by Penguin Horror or something, so I guess

overall I'd rank it as my #1.

Teacher Wanted, Must Love Children must be one of my best, because everyone really seemed to dig

it when it was on the front page. While it can be tough to take internet praise seriously for the reasons I

stated earlier, the fact that a wiki admin thought it deserved first place tells me something. Apparently

I did a good job misleading the readers, even though I thought the "twist" was the most obvious thing

ever.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Do you have any favorite creepypastas on or off the wiki?

MIKE MACDEE: Anything by Slimebeast. He's an island of relief in an ocean of diarrhea, and many of his

stories genuinely creeped me out. He's the only pasta author who has consistently done so.

"The Disappearance of Ashley, Kansas" is a brilliant piece of work that I would expect to find in a

professional anthology. It's written like investigative journalism, and invokes some terrifying images.

I didn't care for "Psychosis" when I first started reading it, because I felt the narrative was clumsy, even

for a narrator who isn't necessarily Shakespeare; but a few chapters in, it put ideas in my head that were

utterly chilling, and I was hooked. Sometimes a really great idea can save a story, as was the case with

most of Lovecraft's work.

"Pale Luna" is a really interesting and spooky one that I could see happening in real life, and leaving

hundreds of unanswered questions in its wake.

And of course, the neurotic panic-fest "On the Bus," which was robbed of a Pasta of the Month by some

dubious voting.

I have a bunch more recommendations on my profile somewhere, if my opinion on the subject is worth

anything.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: So, Mike, what is your creative process like when writing a story and how

do you get around writer's block?

MIKE MACDEE: God, I hope this doesn't make me sound too pretentious. I'm prone to do that, but

metaphors are the most useful language tool in and out of writing fiction.

I fight writer's block by treating the narrative like a maze that I'm simultaneously building and exploring.

When I come to a dead end, it's usually too much work to break down the wall blocking my path: it

can probably be done, but it's much easier to backtrack and take a different route. Often writer's block

comes from committing too much to one specific path for the story: sometimes plotting a new course

opens amazing new doors. "I can't figure out how to get the knight to fight the dragon...so maybe I'll

have them become friends and go on adventures instead!"

My creative process tends to be like cooking ramen on a cheap, shoddy stove: it has to come to a

boil for a while, and then the ingredients have to stew for a long time before anything's finally ready

to be eaten (read as: put to paper). Hence why it takes me forever to finish anything (and why my

kitchen is such a mess)! For scary fiction, I usually start with the plot's major centerpiece -- the zenith

of the story's horror. When I think of one that truly gives me the creeps, I'm pretty much committed

to building a story around it. Often a story doesn't go anywhere until I figure out that centerpiece. In

Carbon River (I know, I keep going back to that one), it was the treetop bundles. Once that came to

me, I couldn't WAIT to get to that part, and tore through the story in a couple weeks. Jozsa's Grove

had a centerpiece for each segment, so that one wasn't hard to write at all, and was easy to get excited

about.

In any case, I'll usually write a synopsis if it's a lengthy or complex story, to give the narrative direction:

mapping the maze is much easier than trying every path 'til you bumble into the exit. And using a map

doesn't mean I won't find a better path along the way.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Wow. Thank you so much for that, Mike. As an aspiring writer I found it

very inspiring and useful. Do you have any advice for writers that are just starting out?

MIKE MACDEE: I have to agree with Mark Twain on this one: if you're thinking about writing,

DON'T...unless you can't help yourself.

If you can't help yourself, read everything you can. Read fiction by the masters. Read terrible stories

that make you want to pull your hair out. Read genres you don't ever plan to write in. Immerse yourself

in every example of fiction and nonfiction that comes your way, whether it's good or bad, but get a

good mix of the good AND the bad (focus on the good, though). Most people on the internet are so

accustomed to the bad, their standards have been irreparably reduced: I'm pretty sure the Rate My Poo

site proves that "crap" is the standard for entertainment nowadays. This leads to authors who don't

bother learning how to structure a story or develop a character, and just throw together any piece of

crap idea that comes to mind, often typing it right into the creepypasta submission window without

editing at all; then they get butthurt in the face of criticism and make asses of themselves. If you want

to write, write, but learn to write well, and learn to have a thick skin: either go all the way, or go home.

Learn to write good essays as well. Essays and stories both require plotting and structure, both have

something to say, and both try to persuade the reader. If you can convince me to think sustainability is

a good thing, you can probably convince me to like your main character or believe your fantastic plot.

Granted, you need to learn when to show and when to tell for either to be effective.

And I can't emphasis the next three phrases enough. Proofread. Use metaphor. Proofread.

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Well, there you have it young writers, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Before we end I’d just like to tell our readers that Mike has a terrific website full of great stuff, including

great writing tips that I think all the aspiring writers out there should read, hilarious riffs, games, comics,

and more. Do you have anything else about your website you would like to tell our readers?

MIKE MACDEE: It's a shoddy Wordpress site, but it gets the job done. And I try to respond to all

comments, so don't be shy about saying hello!

HUMBOLDT LYCANTHROPE: Well, thank you so much, sir, for this opportunity. It has been a real

pleasure, and an honor.

MIKE MACDEE: Thanks for letting me talk your ear off, Humboldt. If the readers at home found this

helpful or insightful, I'll be thrilled. And thanks to the Creepypasta Wiki admins for thinking I'm a worthy

interview candidate.