Having just finished up drafting the 7th and final book in my Land of Szornyek series, I thought I would share one of the more useful tools I developed over the few years: a list of monster parts.
I had the idea when I was working on the last blog post about writing monsters. I often use random lists I find on the internet to help me ideate, and this list is one I developed over four years and seven books.
Coming up with monstrous features, especially when you have to create a lot of creatures, can be difficult. So here are a few categories of monster traits I made up, populated with examples of those traits. I’m no scientist, though, so if you want to get really far into the weeds, go look up classification systems for new species discoveries.
I also surfed images of deep-sea creatures, monster art people shared freely online, dinosaurs, aliens, microscopic bugs, weird plants, and classic monsters for ideas for monstery bits.
Once I developed the list, I sometimes used it like a grab bag puzzle: “Okay, let’s take some… tentacles, poison, and a flytrap mouth, then make it enormous!” And then I would ask myself: What does it eat? How does it defend itself? Is it aggressive? When does it attack? What can my characters do to piss it off?
And voila, monster!
(Okay, in real life, I put a lot more effort into it than that, lol, but often times started here and worked outwards .)
Without further ado, the list! And, to be super helpful, I included a gallery of monster sketches I’ve done over the past few years.
Monster Body Parts
Tentacles
Face tentacles
Too many tentacles
Claws
Big teeth
Too many teeth
Multiple rows of teeth
Teeth in weird places
Too many eyeballs
Too big or small eyeballs
Eyeballs in weird places
Only one eye
Glowing eyes
Wings
Spikes
Horns
Tail
Too many tails
Too many heads
Snake body
Gelatinous blob body
Tusks
Visible bones
Hooks
Beak
Spines
Antennae
Scales or other armor
Too many arms
Too long arms
Human-like hands
Hands in weird places
Snout
Suction cups
Spiky ball tail
Too many legs
Really long legs
Really short legs
Human face
Quills
Quills that shoot out
Knuckle knives
Flytrap mouth
Scorpion tail
Pincers
Hair or fur
Too smooth / no hair or fur or any skin texture
No ears
Weird toes
Metal exoskeleton
Mushroom hat
Fire for skin
Uncomfortably muscular
Feathers
Metal feathers
Webbing
Long neck
Pustules
Hard shell
Thorns
Skin frill
Unusual skin texture
Weird tongue
Odd colors
Monster Characteristics
Slimy
Invisible
Enormous
Skeletal
Tiny or teeny tiny
Mid-sized (when it shouldn’t be)
Ghostly
Smelly
Grotesque
Super fast
Heightened senses of hearing, smell, taste, vision, etc.
Floating
Tall
Flat
Flexible
Slithery
Duplicate
One big one and lots of little ones
Wriggle
Bulbous
Slug-like
Creepy
Blob-like
Translucent
Rigid
Too soft
Spidery
Skittery
Aggressive
Able to go places humans can
Able to go places humans think are secure
Gluttonous or voracious
Thief
Clammy
Sweaty
Burning
Sanguinary
Nauseating
Annoying
Things Monsters Can Do
Flying
Climbing
Hiding
Poison
Venom
Neurotoxins
Hypnosis
Disappear
Blood-sucking
Strangle
Constrict
Shapeshift
Crawl inside you
Erupt from the ground or another thing
Disguise itself/camouflage
Possess you
Consume you
Take your mind
Scream or make weird or loud noises
Make no noise
Be difficult or impossible to detect with certain or all senses
Spray (ink or poison or acid, for example)
Detach its parts from one another
Disappear and reappear
Dig
Jump or hop
Swim
Sense things humans can’t
Hear thoughts
Make slime
Scratch
Suck
Morph into something else
Mimic
Desecrate corpses
Violate any basic human moral code
Consume things humans need (like air, water, blood, etc.)
Use innocuous things as weapons
Crawly
Explode
Suddenly change in size
Seem harmless, but then suddenly become not at all harmless
Slowly encroach
I could probably come up with a thousand more descriptors, but hopefully, if you’re brainstorming, this will help you figure out what direction you want to go. Below, I’ve included a few monster sketches I did based off of the above lists, so you can see how my Dr. Frankenstein-esque method of hacking together monsters from random parts turns out.
Anyway, happy writing!
