I was asked to give a talk on writing horror at a convention in 2015. Somehow, I managed to pull it off without passing out. (I did need about a week to recover, mind...)
I'm told it went well and there were a lot of raised hands at the end and that's a good sign, right? Sadly, I don't have a recording to share with you but I recently come across the speech I wrote in advance so I thought I'd share.
How close it was to the actual speech I gave...? My nerves wouldn't allow me to say.
Love Your Darlings (Then Kill Them)
On Writing Horror...
Horror is no different than any other type of writing. Everything you read is nothing more than the conflict of two basic human emotions: love and fear. I know what you’re thinking. ‘Horror is about fear? Ya don’t say...’ but fear alone isn’t enough to make a story work.
Why?
Because not everyone is afraid of the same things. For instance, I have an overwhelming and irrational fear of zombie cows. I could spend all day writing about dead cows, walking the earth in search of gggrrrraaaasssss, but that’s not going to sell.
Why?
Because you don’t necessarily share my fear of zombie cows. (Yet. Come talk to me after the show and I’ll give you a dozen reasons to fear the walking bovine.) The point I’m trying to make is this: writing about something you’re afraid of isn’t enough because you’re missing the love.
(Yes, I’m rather obsessed with cows. But not in a creepy way.)
You can’t have real, honest, bone-chilling fear without love. Love is what drives everything humans do. We get up in the morning and go to work because we love our homes and don’t want them taken from us. We cover electrical sockets with safety caps when our children are born because we love them and don’t want the little fools to electrocute themselves. Etc. and etc.
Horror is no different. You can set the perfect scene: an isolated, run-down cabin in the middle of the woods on the night of a full moon. Oooh. Spooky, sure. But where’s the fear? Are readers immediately terrified because you’ve dropped them in a spooky setting? Of course not. They’re anticipating fear – more on that later – but they’re not afraid.
Let’s change that.
It’s the night of the full moon and we’re in an isolated, run-down cabin in the middle of the night with a young woman who’s had some pretty tough breaks recently.
Her mother died of a swift and aggressive form of cancer, barely giving the young woman time to say goodbye, much less come to grips with the loss. On top of that, her boyfriend of several years bailed on her because the crippling Depression that took hold of her after her mother’s death was really getting him down. (Jerk.)
Are we afraid yet? No? Well, I’m not surprised. You can dump a Job-load of tragedy on a character but that won’t make your readers afraid for them.
Let’s try again.
Poor – let’s call her Suzie. Suzie has always dreamed of being a vet. Barely a year into a degree that she had to work two jobs to pay for Aunt, I don’t know, Lucy calls to say come home before it’s too late. Suzie rushes across the state to get to her mother’s hospital bed just in time to watch her die.
Suzie screams at Aunt Lucy. What didn’t she call sooner? Why didn’t Mom let Suzie know she was sick? How could they do this to her?!
Aunt Lucy can only hug Suzie and tell her that her mother knew how hard she’d worked to get into that degree programme. She knew there was nothing that could have been done. That Suzie’s grades would have suffered if she’d wasted her time by her bedside. Her mother wanted her to fulfil her dreams.
So, Suzie heads back to university, where her boyfriend of several years offers her a shoulder to cry on. For a while. A few months after the funeral, Dave (Why not? It’s as good a name as any.) decides Suzie’s had long enough to grieve. He tells her to get her shit together before she loses him too.
But she can’t. Suzie fights and fights but the Depression gets the better of her. She comes home from class one day, certain she’s going to flunk out, to find an empty apartment and a Dear John. Dave left, taking Suzie’s last lifeline with him.
He even took the blu-ray collection. (Jerk.)
Suzie can’t cope anymore. She’s ready to end it all. Then, there’s a knock at the door. A neighbour (We won’t name them. They’re not important.) holds out a scruffy, dirty little puppy they found outside. The pup’s in a bad way. Good thing Suzie’s a vet. She nurses the pup back to health. They become inseparable, like ya do in these situations.
Her life has meaning again. She throws herself into schoolwork and has nearly become the vet she’d always dreamed of. Suzie just has one last project to complete, a month of practical experience. Too bad she got so far behind in her coursework. Now, Suzie has to take the only spot left: the one none of her classmates wanted, far away from campus, in the middle of nowhere, studying a local wolf pack, without even an internet connection.
Not. Even. Dial-up.
It’s Suzie’s first night in the cabin she’ll be living in for the next month. The cabin is a wreck, which adds to the sense of unease creeping along Suzie’s spine. She hasn’t even met her boss yet and she’s already prepared to run back to campus. Just as she thinks that failing her class might be better than spending a single night in the cabin, there’s a strange noise outside her door.
Are we afraid now?
Fear isn’t just about the right settings, the right tropes. It’s caring about your characters enough to not want them to die. To create fear, you first have to create love. If you can create characters that readers love, you can use your readers’ fear of losing that character to create effective horror. Writing horror is just writing characters that people love, then doing horrible things to them.
Which is, you know, the fun part.
Because every horror fan knows that bad things happen – and they’re much scarier when they happen to good people.
Your horror story will succeed or fail with your characters. How many times have you been reading a story, knowing that bad shit’s about to go down – only to realize that you don’t actually care? The main character is such a jerk (stupid Dave) that you kind of want the axe murderer to chop his head off.
The author failed to create love and, because of that, failed to create horror.
What I’m saying is that if you start with a character that readers love, then threaten them with horrible ends, you’re writing horror. Writing good horror, that’s another thing again.
Good horror relies on the fact that, in literature, it’s all been done. You’re not going to be able to put a character in a situation that’s never been written before and that’s okay. Good horror isn’t about writing something ground-breaking, that no one in the existing universe has ever thought of before; it’s about taking those old, over-used themes, tossing them into the proverbial blender, and pouring out something that tastes different.
If sometimes a bit funky.
A lot of horror writers will talk about avoiding clichés. Don’t make your character investigate a strange noise in the basement! It’s a cliché! Yup, it is. But why does that have to be a bad thing? You can use clichés to your advantage – and you’d better, if you want to be a successful horror writer.
You know if that girl goes down into the basement, some big nasty is going to jump out and kill her. Everyone knows. Hell, she knows. That’s why she grabs Daddy’s shotgun off the wall, turns every light in the house on, and stomps down those rickety, wooden steps, ready to blow the intruder’s head off.
Here’s where you, as a horror writer, have a choice. Are you going to give into the cliché and do what’s always been done? Your readers won’t be impressed if you do, so why not George RR Martin that shit up and flip expectations on their heads?
Everyone is expecting the baddie to jump out and frighten the heroine. So let it. Then, let her shoot it in the face and, when she’s doing a little victory dance, let her notice the bracelet she made for her boyfriend weeks ago that he never takes off. Make her realize that the ghoulish face is just a dime store mask. Drive her to her knees over the bloody corpse of the only boy she’s ever loved.
Then bring the baddie out of hiding to rip her head off.
Clichés are one of the most powerful tools a horror writer can use in crafting their story. When readers think they know what’s going to happen, they’ll freak themselves out waiting for it, essentially doing your work for you. You can come along afterward with a few nasty twists and, voila, you’ve given half your readers heart attacks because they were so busy waiting for what they were expecting that they didn’t see what you were really doing.
This is where my favourite part of writing horror comes in handy. Foreshadowing is essentially just showing people exactly what’s going to happen, while making sure they’re not paying the slightest bit of attention. Like the cliché, foreshadowing is essential to good horror. Unfortunately, like the cliché, it’s also the reason horror often fails.
Foreshadowing requires balance. Too little, and you leave readers wondering what the hell just happened. Personally, I get angry when an author drops a surprise that has absolutely no bearing to the rest of the story. It’s insulting to your readers. Don’t do it. When you unleashed that surprise, you want your readers to say, “Oh, my god. That. Why didn’t I pay attention to that in the first place?!”
But don’t overuse it. If you try to force foreshadowing down your reader’s throats, you’re going to annoy them just as much. You don’t want anyone saying, “Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’ve mentioned that rusty old nail twelve times in the last three pages. There are blind monks in Tibet who know that chick’s gonna get impaled on it.”
So, where’s the balance?
Remember Suzie?
Yeah, Suzie’s just about losing her shit right now. Her faithful canine companion is at the front door, barking wildly. A wolf’s howl splits the night. Oh, the clichés! If you’re not expecting werewolves by now, I have to wonder why you’re interested in horror. If you think there’s a werewolf waiting outside that door, though, you missed the foreshadowing – which is exactly what was supposed to happen.
While you’re all focused on the barking and the moon and the wolves, I’m just going to give Suzie a little push. She was ready to bolt, anyway.
Suzie makes a run for it. She grabs the dog and makes her escape through the back door. Fear’s gotten the better of her though and carrying a squirming dog isn’t helping any. She knows the cabin is in bad shape, but she doesn’t think about it. She just runs…
…until her foot goes through a rotten floorboard on the deck. The dog goes flying. Suzie falls, breaking her ankle and impaling herself on the pile of tools her boss meant to warn her about but forgot. He’s at the door now, with a bottle of wine and an apology for making her stay in such a lousy place. Poor Suzie.
While her boss goes to investigate the strange whining noise coming from behind the cabin, let’s summarize:
Writing horror is creating characters that readers love, then doing horrible things to them. Writing good horror requires an understanding of clichés and the ability to subvert them, all the while using foreshadowing to hint at your true intentions. If you can do all this, you can be a successful horror author.
