Local author provides tips
Joining the ranks of Stephen King, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allan Poe may seem like a daunting task to aspiring writers. But local writer Ky George has some tips to help get people started.
George grew up knowing she wanted to be a writer. She got her Bachelor’s Degree in English from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2017. She decided to use her degree to go into education and moved to Gallup later that year.
Now, she’s the Head Director at Dził Ditł'ooí School of Empowerment Action and Perseverance, a charter school in Navajo, New Mexico. She eventually went back to school and completed her Master's in Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2021.
Her MFA thesis was a science-fiction piece that featured zombie-like creatures and focused on the themes of colonization and environmental segregation.
While she stays busy leading the DEAP charter school, George said she sees writing as more of a side hustle. She’s written a multitude of flash fiction stories in the horror genre.
Flash fiction is classified as short stories that are a maximum of 1,500 words. They typically only include one or two scenes. George said her flash fiction was inspired by her solo camping stories, which she then fictionalized and gave a creepy edge.
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR WRITING HORROR
George hosted a workshop with the Octavia Fellin Public Library on Oct. 5 entitled “Scary Stories: An Introduction to Writing Horror.”
Part of the workshop focused on five key components of any story: Voice, Plot, Setting, Characterization, and P.O.V. George said that she often tells new writers to start by visualizing their characters.
“I think a lot of the time [characterization] is one of the easiest places to start for young writers or people who are getting into writing for the first time,” she said. “It’s easy for us to imagine characters, and I think sometimes it’s harder to start with something like plot.”
She said it’s important for audiences to be able to connect with an author’s characters because that’s who they experience the story through.
King once said, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: Read a lot and write a lot.”
George agreed completely with that advice, especially the part about reading.
“That’s especially true in horror,” she said. “You’ll start picking up on certain story structures, and once you learn them you can play with them, you can make them your own, but you have to learn the rules first to break them.”
Doing all that reading could put self-doubt in one’s head, but George said writers shouldn’t compare themselves to one another.
“Because there’s already so much horror out there, I think sometimes it’s easy to get in your own head and say, ‘Oh this isn’t an original story, nobody’s going to want to read this’ when really that’s not true,” she said. “As long as you’re staying true to yourself and true to the story, I think it’s something that people are going to want to read.”
George said she’s hoping to do more writing workshops in the future. While this one was geared toward people ages 12 and up, she said she’s also interested in offering workshops for both adults and teens alike. As an educator, she has a special interest in helping preteens and teenagers with their writing.
“Writing can be a therapeutic hobby, something that’s really fun to do on the side,” she said. “And of course for young people, I want to see young people making the media of tomorrow, learning how to write and how to structure stories.”
One such workshop opportunity will come in November. The month is National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is an annual creative writing challenge where participants write a novel in 30 days. George plans to host OFPL’s NaNoWriMo Writing Group, which will meet every Tuesday in November. The group will serve as a support group for anyone looking to take on the challenge.
To follow George and keep up with her writing, you can follow her on Instagram @kygeorgewrites. Her poetry has been featured in the University of New Mexico-Gallup’s Red Mesa Review” and the Oklahoma Review. You can purchase an anthology that features some of her work entitled “Workingman’s Hands” on bookshop.com.
