scottobear | Horror Writing

I've been thinking lately about horror, and about how best to create it in the course of telling a story in some medium. I've been aware of this for a while but it's only recently that I've been articulating it to myself. So I thought I'd write it down now while I'm thinking about it again.

The most potent forms of fear are internal. It's not the adrenaline panic of being ambushed or pursued. It's the fear your own mind creates out of an ambiguous situation. When you're alone in a dark house and you think you hear a noise, the fear you feel is what your mind comes up with out of that ambiguity. There's nothing objectively wrong or threatening. It's your own mind that threatens you by attempting to map a coherent pattern onto incoherent data.

In role-playing games, I've seen this work...especially on the very excitable. Let's say that you have assembled a set of clues to a mystery. You're sitting there at the table and nothing in particular is happening, so you're sifting through these pieces of paper and trying to put it together. Suddenly, you make a connection between the clues and you have a realization. It isn't spelled out anywhere. There isn't a sentence you overlooked that explains the mystery. It's just that you've made the connections and suddenly an explanation appears in your mind that's frightening. You start to panic a little, and you wave your arms or say something to get the attention of the other players, and you start babbling, trying to explain what you've just realized. That terror, that sudden vertiginous feeling of plunging into the dark heart of a mystery is a tremendous sensation. It works because you scare yourself, not because the referee scares you outright.

I got an inkling of this idea a long time ago, when I was in high school. There was news of a tropical storm, and the newscaster explained how storms are named alphabetically starting at the first of the year, so the first storm is named something that begins with A and then the second begins with B and so on--Anna, Bartholomew, Cheryl. And I thought: what if you were watching the news and you heard about a tropical storm named Wanda. And it's just another storm, no big deal, but then you realize that means it's the 23rd storm of the year, and that's a weird and terrible thing that there have been so many.

If you want to scare someone in a story, I feel that it's best if the audience makes a realization that the characters don't. This may be because you've been privy to information they haven't witnessed, or simply because you're thinking about things in a way they aren't. So the story gives you A and B, and you put them together and get C and that's what scares you.

Good horror storytelling is all about C, I think. I need to cook up a good spooky Halloween story.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think you've got it in one. As a horror film buff, the unknown is the scariest thing (ie. what your mind makes up) that has ever worked on me. Course, in film, I'd argue that the soundtrack also has a huge impact, but either way - I think you're right.

sure... I think the buildup and "realisation" really zaps it home. Certainly, film has fewer controls on the imagination,so music and tempo will really take charge there.

Yeah - this is why I've been such a cranky film buff for the last decade or so - they appear to have largely forgotten what it takes to make something truly scary - it was all gore. But I enjoyed both Blair Witches because they remembered that humans fear the unknown more than anything else in the world. Scariest thing I ever saw in a film was the dream sequence from the Prince of Darkness. Don't know if you've ever seen it, but it scares the bejeebers out of me even to spend time thinking about it (in the dark at night, that is). Getting slapped in the face with what is actually going on (film-wise) is almost an afterthought, a requirement of entertainment that you give it closure. For writing purposes I think people require a little more information, but if you're good at building suspense, they'll wait til the last page to find out what exactly is doing what to whom - ya know?

I'm the same way, and it's why I prefer older horror to new stuff. Prince of Darkness was an entertainig film, I think I recall the scene you're talking about.

Jacob's Ladder did a good job of 'just showing enough' to confuse and befuddle.

Well, for cinematic horror and suspence, Aliens was the ultimate - the soundtrack was brilliant, the idea of having to face it all nearly alone with nowhere to run (another great device - anything that you simply CANNOT escape is brilliant - Evil Dead showed that) was great. I realize it wasn't intended to be a horror per se, but it puts you on teh edge of your seat and keeps you there - which I think is the whole point. Saw Pitch Black recently and saw some really nice similarities.

Jacob's Ladder was intense and very acid-esque. Not sure I'd qualify it as a horror. Brainfuck might be more appropriate. More like Eraserhead than a horror, to my mind.

the first and second alien movies are excellent examples of two different kinds of horror.

agreed. Then they had to put it in the toilet with the third and fourth ones - I just about walked out of the theater when they killed of Newt and Hicks at the beginning of 3. It would have been so much more cool if they'd had the aliens on earth or a waystation or something.

Yeah, they should've kept the 'family' together.

well, it was a waste of fan base as far as I'm concerned.

(deleted comment)

now that's just mean. :)

I like it!

yup! the walking dead are nifty!

(I even like the remote 'mummy-cousin')

Horror Writing

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