Documentary texture
Chapters may include found documents, logs, and transmissions.
Analog Horror / Lo-Fi Sci-Fi
The uncanny through systems
and documents
Analog horror delivers dread through institutional texture — found documents, log entries, transmissions. The engine enforces documentary form, caps data metaphor density, and protects ambiguity as a requirement.
The uncanny delivered through systems and documents — dread that feels institutional, like finding something in a file that was never meant to be found.
Pipeline
How we write Analog Horror / Lo-Fi Sci-Fi
Data metaphor cap
Maximum one data metaphor per scene — density controlled.
Institutional setting
Protagonist operates within a bureaucracy that is part of the threat.
Protected ambiguity
DELIBERATE_UNRESOLVED mandatory — the file is never complete.
The contract
What readers expect
Reader promise
- Found documents that feel uncomfortably real
- Institutional settings — offices, facilities, archives
- Horror through omission and redaction
- The sense that someone has been editing the record
Engine enforcement
- Documentary texture — logs, transmissions
- Data metaphor density cap — max one per scene
- Institutional setting required
- DELIBERATE_UNRESOLVED mandatory
From the manuscript
Sample prose
Facility 7-Alpha Incident Log · Excerpt — Playback 00:00:00
INCIDENT LOG — FACILITY 7-ALPHA. Playback begins 00:00:00. Audio quality: degraded. Background hum consistent with auxiliary generator cycle.
Subject reports hearing their own voice on the intercom approximately forty seconds before speaking. Timestamp cross-reference confirms no outbound transmission during that window.
Second anomaly: filing cabinet 4-C contains personnel records for employees not listed on the current roster. Records dated three years forward.
Reviewing officer notes: "I have stopped opening drawers. I write down what I hear instead." End of excerpt.
Write analog horror
from the archive
Build dread through documents, institutions, and files that were never meant to be read.
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