All The Benefits From A Christmas Horror Reading Group
Despite what most people think, horror groups are amazingly healthy
When Lex H Jones asked on his personal Facebook page who wanted to be part of a Christmas ghost story reading, I saw a great opportunity to smack my Imposter Syndrome in the face with one of my stories.
One of the first things you may find useful if like me are considering taking your fiction writing seriously, is to test your work in front of a reliable audience first.
The way you do that will depend on what each writer considers the best option. In this sense you can:
- Submit your stories to publications that are asking for work that fits with your content
- Tell your family and friends to give you feedback on your stories
- Publish them on your blog
- Get some Beta readers to give you their honest opinion
As always there are advantages and disadvantages to each of the above as you can imagine or might have experienced yourself.
- Nobody likes rejections
- Your family and friends might not be truly honest with you because they might not want to hurt your feelings
- Your blog can be that place where you don’t get feedback from readers
- Beta readers might not know you that well to give you the kind of feedback you need
And here is where my recent experience in the Horror Reading Group comes into play.
Benefit 1: Knowing Some of the People in the Group
Since I had already interviewed Lex a few months ago on my channel, I already knew him and therefore I felt relaxed enough to have him as the coordinator of the activity.
If you want to know more about Lex and his book The Old One And The Sea, which by the way I used to help my younger English students, here you have the link to the video:
Luckily for me, there was also one of my favourite people from 2021 in the group. I’m talking about editor, horror writer and publisher of Sinister Horror Company J.R. Park. You can read my review of Park’s book The Company of Words via the following link:
Benefit 2: Not Having to Read your Own Story but Somebody Else’s
This is a great benefit because you are not thinking about your story but somebody else’s.
It’s true that when you hear other people reading you might feel they are more confident or more theatrical than you. But what’s important is that everybody enjoys the experience. It’s amazing how difficult the storyteller’s job is.
Benefit 3: Everybody is as Nervous as You Are
If you have never recorded yourself in front of a camera, now is the time. Despite having my channel, reading a story is a different game. You need to make sure you don’t make mistakes, that you use the right intonation, stress the phrases in the right places and create tension when required.
You may experience technical problems which could lead to some frustration, but it can also help you learn new skills.
Benefit 4: You Make New Friends and Discover New Authors
Behind the scenes is always a good moment to talk to other authors, check their work, follow them on social media and make new friends. As well as that, you discover new authors you can help by buying their books and if you like their work, you can recommend them to your friends.
The same can apply to you. If people like you in a relaxed informal context, they will feel curious about your work and will want to read it too. Don’t forget that writers also read and they read a lot.
Benefit 5: You Promote your Work Effortlessly
It’s a given that not everybody in the group is going to like your style or what you write about, but for those who do, you might be a discovery for them. This will translate into fresh eyes looking at your work. The good news is that if you have an impact on them, they will tell their friends about you.
Benefit 6: You Broaden your Audience on other People’s Platforms
If people like what you do, they will genuinely share you on their platforms which will bring a new audience to your sites too. This is a nice way of being promoted without you having to do the promotion and feel you are too much in people’s faces.
Benefit 7: You Might Get Future Collaborations
Among other discoveries, I have come across George Daniel Lea, who helped us put together all the intros to the stories so they all looked similar and put them all on a playlist on his YouTube Channel ExaggeratedElegy.
His interest in certain TV shows and programmes makes him the perfect candidate for an interview on my channel.
Benefit 8: You Benefit from Other Writers’ Work
When you read and listen to other writers’ stories, you also learn new ways of using vocabulary, imagery, metaphors, expressions, collocations and many other ways of combining and retelling stories that can surprise you. The best ones are those that stay with you for a while.
To conclude, I’m sure you could find other benefits from this activity too. Maybe you get encouraged enough to run your reading group during next Christmas. But in the meantime, you can watch what Lex’s group did this year and get some ideas, as well as meet new authors you can start following if what you like to read are Horror and Gothic fiction.
Takeaways
- Being part of a Horror reading group makes you confident in many ways
- You can test your fiction writing safely
- You make new friends and you create new networks
- You learn from other people’s work
- Contribute to promote the horror community
Final Thoughts
Still don’t know where to start with the Gothic? Why don’t you watch my free introduction below and find out how it can help you find your own Gothic identity?
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I am a “Confidence Builder through the Gothic Mode”. I write and talk about the Gothic all the time to help you create identity awareness. If you want to go deep into your Gothic self, visit me at Alice in Gothic Land, watch my videos on my YouTube channel and follow me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. You can also book your First Free Assessment Call with me and I will help you figure out your very own Gothic journey.
