An Introduction to Knifepoint Horror

What is knifepoint horror?

There are many ways to tell a story, but to truly scare a reader, not merely entertain or amuse, horror should be pared down to such an essential, minimalist form that literally nothing is left over to allow the mind even a respite of a single paragraph. To accomplish this, the most primal element of storytelling---a single human voice describing events exactly as it experienced them, without the intrusion of a writer’s artifice---is adhered to without variation or exception.

Knifepoint horror tells its stories through taut, unadorned first person narratives which carefully mimic the sound of that agonized human voice. It’s a voice which needs to tell its tale so badly that it shuns all the stylish techniques which dilute, stretch, and burden tales of terror with unnecessary detail. To read knifepoint is to sit beside a stranger in the dark and hear him say, Now I will tell you exactly what happened to me.

Knifepoint can have no standard passages of dialogue, no excursions into the minds of characters other than the narrator’s, no comic relief, no romance, not even any standard paragraph and sectional breaks. It must sound to the ear like a spontaneous confession. Even the use of traditional upper and lowercase lettering is forbidden---only cold, emotionless capital letters may tell the story on the page. The most complex of tales, which might normally fill hundreds of pages, must be stripped down to its bare spine.

This is storytelling that absolutely must have a riveting story to work, simply because no other writing skills are truly allowed to emerge. The challenge for the writer is to scare a reader with no tools but a tremulous campfire voice too devastated to enhance the awful truth of its experience.

Now available from Amazon.com is Knifepoint Horror: Book One, an extensive compilation of the genre's first entries.

THE DICTATES OF KNIFEPOINT HORROR

1) The story must be told in the first person, and begin with a simple statement of the main character's name.

2) There can be no entry into the minds or voices of characters other than the narrator.

3) No standard exchanges of dialogue can be included.

4) Regardless of the length of the story, there can be no chapter, or even sectional, breaks. It must be revealed in the uninterrupted grammar of someone who simply cannot stop until the story is fully told.

5) Extensive descriptions of settings or characters, which do not propel the story forward, are anathema to knifepoint horror. The genre focuses entirely on the unfolding of the story's essential spine.

6) In general, the story must be written so that it authentically mimics the sound of one person relating a chain of events to another through a rudimentary personal confession, single long journal entry, or oral account. Literary devices such as extended flashbacks, diary or epistolary formats, or other unusual techniques dilute the intent of knifepoint. Forbidden are such tried-and-true tools as prologues and epilogues, one-sentence paragraphs designed for shock or suspense value, introductory quotes, asides, and any hint of humor.

7) The story must be told entirely in uppercase letters to create a bleak monotone.

8) The story can have no title.

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