User blog:Banningk1979/Technology and Horror Writing

Technology is part of our lives now. Cellphones, Ipads, Google Maps/Earth, these are now common place in our everyday lives.

Now, writing is art, and art imitates life, so with that being said, we cannot escape technology when writing a modern set horror story.

With that, it is becoming, in my opinion, that much more difficult to compose stories that are meant to create a sense of isolation and dread, when most anyone now days is going to have a smart phone on hand.

Lost in the woods? Google Map your way home. Find a mysterious symbol carved in a tree? Just image search that thing. Oh, is that a mysterious building out in the middle of the woods? Google Earth will give us a nice view of that.

I find these days, that when writing any sort of story about people being isolated or lost, that it is almost paramount to through in the "and my cellphone has no signal...."

The problem with that, is no signal is going to become a necessary cliché. I almost dread the day that clichés become a necessary component to tell a story, but in all honesty, that seems to be what we're looking towards.