On Writing Horror
Writing Journal: On Writing Horror
On Writing Horror was a production of the HWA to advise novice writers of the art and “science” of writing horror. It has essays from a myriad of the organization's membership. The first bit of advice that seems to stick out is from the essay by Wayne Allen Salle. He posits in a boiled down form that writers should write what is the truth of the character and the story not just what they know. Oftentimes when a writer reads The Writer or Writer's Digest, he or she is given the advice to “write what you know.” That is all well and good, but some people do not know that much or have such a narrow scope of knowledge that his or her writing would be very boring. Salle seems to say that it is important to write as accurately as a writer can about the subject that he or she knows about, but that it is also important to realize in the world that the writer has created that there are certain truths that transcend what the writer knows to the laws and truths of the “real world.” Being a stickler for the exact facts and “just the facts ma'am” may not be true to the story and its characters and nuances. The following essay by Michael Marano seems to lead into the idea that a writer can learn more that what he or she knows about a subject by borrowing the idea of method acting. He states that a writer can go to the scary places being written about by studying them closely or even submerging himself or herself into the situation.
Much of the text deals with the idea of improved writing itself. Several of the veterans talk about getting the bones down. They discuss the syntax and formation of lines and sentences. They talk about getting things moving and keeping them at a pace that adds to the writing. All these things are important to keep in mind while reading. Sometimes it is easy to get bogged down in the story or in the process of writing. What tends to happen is the story stalls somewhere far from the end, and it may be abandoned and then forgotten. This particular text deals with this issue, and the issues of finishing a work, pimping and selling the work, and avoiding the clichés that everyone is tired of.
Some of the topics discussed in the text go against some of the advice given in other works. As mentioned earlier, writing magazines often discuss the write-what-you-know formula. This can be problematic for horror and spec fiction writers because the worlds and situations that we write about are unknown because they are for the most part unreal. The previous edition of this text written in the late 1990's had much of the same advice as the current edition. This is no shock because later editions often just add a few new articles or paragraphs but keep the initial text as close to the earlier editions. This new edition, however, adds many new sections and discusses the changes in the market that have happened over the last decade. The advice about storytelling and doing so in a grammatical fashion stands up across other composition related texts.
This book is thorough in its explanations of writing horror. It covers most every aspect of the profession, and little would need to be added. The section that discusses mental illness, personality disorders, and other mental defects might be longer and injected with more information. Horror fiction relies on the psychological. Unfortunately, not many writers, especially novices understand the psychology of fear and dread. Most have little knowledge of psychology and psychopathology beyond an introductory course in college. This adds to much erroneous writing about the psychological factors of depravity. This section could be moved nearer the front and stressed more. (This idea would hopefully keep the novice or none psychologically sophisticated writer from confusing someone being psychotic or sociopathic.) The section on redneck horror could be more informative as well. As the author of that essay said, rednecks do not live exclusively in the South, but most people think they do. The discussion of the stereotype bias for this subset of the American population might be stressed more. Publishers and reading audiences would not tolerate a book or story filled the stereotyping of city dwellers that a rural writer might make. Why should they tolerate the stereotype of country dwellers by urban (not urbane mind you) writers? Because rednecks do not read perhaps, but hillbillies do (and they're watching, 'cause I'm one of them.)
Examples are given to help people understand things better. In my own writing I have a few examples that stand out to some of the points made by the authors in this text. In a my story “Dr. Kildare's Favorite Color”, a nurse on a psychiatric unit makes a statement that in real life a good and wizen nurse, like the character in this story, would never say. The director of my unit (a psych unit) read this work upon publication. She brought to my attention that a real psych nurse would never make a statement like that to a patient. Although I had not written what I knew to be true in the real world, I had written the truth for the story's world. In that world, this nurse would have said that because the rules and laws were different. This falls in to the idea of writing what you know but also being true to the story you are writing and the rules that are involved in that world.
Everyone is different. I hope that is not a shock to most people. On Writing Horror is edited by a single editor, but it is filled with works by numerous authors. Each other shares his or her advice to the novice writer who has picked up the text. The problem is that advice is just a suggestion of something that work for this person so it might work for you. In a perfect world, all advice given when implemented would turn out to the same result. That would be a good spec fiction work, but reality is totally different. It is not difficult to come up with an idea or situation in which a writer might have to vary from the advice given in this book. Dues ex machina, the dreaded god in the machine, is an example. This wonderful plot solver is frowned upon but keeps coming up over and over again. Why? Some situations warrant it. I can think of this in Stephen King's Dark Tower Series. Many times convenient things happen for the characters brought about by dues ex machina. In the stories, this problem is solved by saying that the author, Stephen King, who in a way is a god, leaves these things in his story as he writes about these characters. It is still a convenient way to get characters out of a corner. Time travel stories also have the advantage of using this device because of characters remembering to leave stuff behind so that the time traveler can use it. Isn't the sun coming up just at the right moment in a vampire story much the same thing?
If teaching this book in a module, the section that talks about the psychopathology of characters would be a main focus. This is because I know this, and you should always teach what you know. The psychological constructs of a character's mind is also very important. It can be handled sloppily and mess a story completely up, but it can be handled masterfully and make the story excel and be a page turner that the reader cannot put down. This concept is also very easy to grasp. Although psychology is brain science, it's not brain surgery. Just a little knowledge of mental illness, personality disorders, and cognitive functioning and processing can add much to a story and its characters.
On Writing Horror has been a useful guide while writing. It offers not only tips on how to write better but also lists of books that may aid the writer in improving their concept of the genre and what has been done very well in the past.
