Horror: Medical/Clinical Body Horror - Cutaneous Abyss

Cutaneous Abyss: Layers peeled away to reveal the monster inside.

Story Dossier + Outline

Premise:

Desperate for a fix to her seborrheic dermatitis in a shadowy LA medical trial, Harper Lewis finds the experimental peel treatment stripping away not just her skin but layers of her humanity, exposing a primal horror buried within.

✨ Genre: Medical / Clinical Body Horror

✨ Tropes/Themes: Experimental Treatment Gone Wrong, Doctor Knows Best, Symptoms That Don’t Match the Charts, Clinical Detachment vs. Human Pain, Treatment Becomes Torture, Irreversible Diagnosis, Layered Revelations, Inescapable Fate

✨ POV & Structure: 1st Person, Past Tense, Single POV; 4-Act Structure.

✨ Vibe: Relentlessly grim and unflinching, with a slow-burn build to explosive body horror that strips away illusions. The vibe is one of inevitable doom in LA's underbelly, emphasizing raw physicality and moral ambiguity. Plot-focused without romance, it revels in the grotesque unraveling of normalcy.

✨ Book Size: Short Novel (40,000-60,000 words)

✨ Chapter Count: 28 Chapters

✨ Word Count: target 1800-2200 per chapter

✨ Heat Level: No Romance (plot-focused, no romantic elements)

What you get:

✅ Complete Premise with core concepts and Narrative Physics Architecture

✅ Complete Story Dossier — including detailed characters, relationship arcs, locations and objects, world rules and histories, multiple subplots, and market researched genre and style guides.

✅ A detailed 28 chapter outline.