Unsealing the Sepulcher: Road Trip of Terror

There are many debates that go on amongst writers, editors, and other members of the publishing industry.  One I keep coming across is the use of a fictional settings and real world settings.  Now when I say fictional, I don’t mean a completely new world as in fantasy or science fiction.  I’m talking about fictional cities and towns that don’t exist in our world. There are pros and cons to each, but I think that as far as horror goes, there are more benefits to using a setting of your own creating than a real life one.

There is an exception to the rule, though.  I think that if you are basing on the events of your story on a real occurrence or history, the story benefits from the atmosphere and flavor of the place it actually occurred.  I mean, a story based on events happening in South Boston or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are going to be looked at through the lens of the people who lived there.  The story, the people, the mood all have a template you can take and make your own.

In that exception lies the reason I think that fictional settings are the way to go.  Readers are more than likely to be discerning readers.  If you write a story in New York City, you better have your facts straight and your details flawless, because there are enough readers that will be put off if you change a name of a street or add a completely new one.  Occasionally, I will see Author’s Notes at the start of book that take place in real life settings that say something like, “Although this story takes place in [insert place], I have made slight changes to benefit the story.”  Now, this is a literary CYA.  And to me, both as a reader and a writer, I translate it as:

“Hi, I’m a writer that has a pretty decent story, but I know nothing about the setting I’m using and I couldn’t either take to the time to research the town or city, or I have something that doesn’t really exist that would fit in a logical place in the city, I had to use this real life setting, but now that I put this note in the front of the book, you can’t get mad at me, kthnxbai.”

You can avoid all of that and have a setting that is exactly what you want, amplifying the story you are going to tell.  It is a tool that was used outside of horror.  William Faulker’s Jefferson City is a classic example.  You believe that place exists because it exists to the character.  Also, those stories can’t exist outside of Jefferson City.  You could put those stories in Oxford, MI that Jefferson City was based on.  It doesn’t have all the elements that come from the writer and the story.

So lets take a story set in New York City.  Does it need to be there?  Is there anything directly connected to the plot that can only exist in New York?  If not, why not make a city based on NYC, but with subtle, darker changes.  Like Gotham City, you just need to make some changes to the base template city and you can create a place that everyone believes in and wants to visit time and time again.

What if it does though? You want to use the Empire State Building to be the setting of the climax, what do you do then?  Well, it is the same thing as the city as a whole.  Why do it have to be that exact building?  Is it something about the history? Is it something that can only exist in the real Empire State Building?  If not, give your mind–your story–the room to grow in a new place.

But possible more important than anything for you as writer to get out of created setting, is what your readers will get out of it.  Not everyone is going to have traveled to the city you set it in.  Some readers that don’t live in the place or have ever been their, can easily have stereotypes in their mind that will color the way they read the story.  Not necessarily in a bad way, but it will be a different experience.  If you have a created setting, there are no preconceptions, those that live in the city or country can read it and make the connection to the places they see. No one’s left out and they are all fulfilled with the setting.

So what is better, spend a little more time making a little unique corner of the world for your stories and having happy readers all around, or use a real setting and have the real possibility of dissatisfied readers in a myriad of ways?

Unsealing the Sepulcher: Not Even Pumice Soap Will Get That Out

Gore.

It’s what most people out side of horror think of when they hear the word, “horror.” In fact, it’s what a some people think of if they are in horror, as well.  Because of this, the genre has a reputation for being all about the gross-out, the violent, and the inhumane.  We have yet to make full-fledged effort to dissuade others from believing that is the case. Simply writing good horror stories should be enough, right?

Wrong.

Because of this, you see new people coming up through the ranks and believing they have to keep pushing the envelop on what a person can withstand while reading without getting so nauseated they expel their own viscera.  What they aren’t learning is the effective way to craft gore and splatter.

The first step of writing gore it determining the level that you need. Not want, but need. There are a lot of stories that are just gore factories and the writer is having fun trying to think of new inventive ways to defile the human body. Really, they are only defiling the story for the reader. I will say, though, that there are stories that need all the gore that is in them. Offseason and the Mephistopolis trilogy needs everything in there, the stories wouldn’t be work if they were toned down any. But there are times where a bloody massacre or the pillaging of a corpse is more effective when just the action is suggested and not seen; one of the times where the “Show don’t Tell” rule takes a back seat.

But how do you make that distinction?

- Consider the story you want to tell: This is probably the main factor in determining the level of explicitness in a story.  Gore is a flourish, stay true to the story and you’ll see how much is right, if any at all.  Would “Call of Cthulhu” or “The Raven” still be the masterpieces they are if there was any gore involved?  But if you are doing a story from the point of view from a monster, you would expect more visceral detail.  Then you need to start thinking if the violence is a part of the themes and ideas of the story. If you are looking at something like the survival instincts of humans, that could be better candidate then the fear of clowns.

- Consider style: If your writing style is much more quiet and subversive, using more artful expressions, then a moment of gore is harder to pull off as the reader would be expect a different kind of writing and you will pull them out. If there is more simple and direct, it will be easier.

- Consider atmosphere: I think when a lot of writers are writing gore, they’re trying to write a terrifying atmosphere. Except, people have been writing strong, scary atmosphere before gore and splatter were common horror parlance. Before writing, go over what you’ve written and see if you strengthen the tangible dread of the piece, the effect will do what you are thinking the violence would do. I’m willing to say eight out of ten times it will. Make the setting, the mood, the emotion of the story haunt the thoughts of the reader first.  If you create an affective atmosphere, any amount of gore used will be that more poignant.

The next step is the actual writing of the violence. Here it is worth repeating:

Gore is a flourish. It’s a privilege, not a right.

If you go into writing a horror story thinking, “I’m going to write the sickest story anyone has ever read, most likely you will, but it won’t necessarily be the best story.

- Point of view: It’s real easy, if you are enthusiastic about gore, to not think about who is viewing it and their reaction. You get sucked into the play of visceral vocabulary. The two people that would experience it intimately, and with that, the most detailed, are the victim and the assailant. No matter how large the spray of blood, the victim is going to experience more the actual physical feelings of the attack then sight and sound. But they can only experience so much before the brain shuts down to keep the trauma of the experience from shattering the mind. The assailant will experience the sights and sounds, but every attack is an emotional release of some kind. Explore those feels and the reasons for the attacks. It is also possible the point of view character is a bystander.  That character will have an experience more like the assailant, only they would be trying to grasp for some sense of reason to explain what is taking place. In that way, the bystander is a mixed viewpoint of the victim and assailant.

- Word choice: Like barrels of red dyed corn syrup, using the same words over and over can make your moments of splatter feel less effective. It is also very easy to go over to the scatological side of the language that, while you can write anyway you want, there are words that in the eyes and minds of many, cheapen the story being told. Dictionaries, especially medical dictionaries, thesauruses, and poetry are keys to creating artful ways to describe the violence you are describing.  Read, read, read.  Make word lists. Get a notebook and spend sometime trying to find new ways to describe and visualize the gore. All of these will be great recourses not only on the rough draft of the story, but in the editing and finalizing last draft.

- Read books with violence and gore not in the horror genre: Mystery books and thriller books are great. Poe pretty much created the mystery genre and it is a close cousin to horror.  Mystery takes gore in the serious way that horror has forgotten sometimes is our responsibility. Read what you can, use them as textbooks on new ways to approach the violence in your story. Why? If you read some the books out there, they are just as violent and gore as horror novel, but people still think highly of those stories. Nothing is treated like a parlor trick or a sophomoric prank on the reader.

I use gore and splatter like most of us, and it takes time to refine it’s use in a story so that it’s as affective as possible. It is also one of the main deterrents of our genre.  I’m still learning to craft my horror so that even the non-conventional horror reader will enjoy it. It is something that I will always need to work on and all writers need to. Writing is a craft that gets better with time, practice, and experience and there is never a ceiling to how well one can write.

Unsealing the Sepulcher: Carve That Frown Upside Down

Carve That Frown Upside Down

“Horror and Comedy are two sides of the same coin.  Both rely on shock, or surprise, and the suffering of others.”

~Ray Garton

A good horror story is intense.  Emotions are provoked and continually stimulated.  Fears permeate your thoughts and the atmosphere becomes constricting and claustrophobic.  In a short story, and possibly even a novella, a writer can get away with the overwhelming dread trapped in the words, waiting for a willing mind to posses.  But I would say that whatever length the story, you need a tool to help ease the dramatic and emotional tension of a story.  Not completely, but enough that the reader isn’t afflict with the same amount of emotional torment as your characters.

This is where humor can play a vital role.

It seems antithetical, humor in a horror story.  I even know people that aren’t sure what to do when they come across humor in a horror story, unless it is within the context of the relatively normal aspects of the character’s life.  Usually, when I talk about humor in horror, I get questions like, “How are disemboweled corpses funny,” or “You’re sick to laugh at the horrific things [insert antagonist] does in [insert book title].”  Now, there is a whole sub genre of humorous horror, but that is another column for another day, and where I think people get confused with humors relation to horror.

Take the release of Drag Me to Hell.  When I went to see the midnight premiere, there were a number of people making comments using “colorful metaphors,” as Spock once said, that broke down to the fact that they expect blood, guts, and demons and not so much slapstick, gross outs, and reactionary humor.  That is why it is humorous horror.  Because of stories like this, you tend to see a lot of horror writers pull back on the humor, because they are afraid it might break the understood contract of reader and writer that the story is supposed to terrify, not make you giggle.

So, they go for really depressive stories that, while still chilling, also feel like you need to off yourself. Many writers tend to add bundles of sex, because nothing fits death like sex, just ask Freud. Or, they tone back the atmosphere which can, at times, ruin the story because it is too light to be seen as scary.  Now, don’t get me wrong, these things can work in the right story in the hands of the right author.  But call me old fashioned, a good one liner can free up the space on the page that a good sex scene takes up and be just as influencing emotionally.

Also, I think it is hard for writers to write humor, because they think it is hard.  And it really isn’t.  We all have some sense of humor, you just have to turn it from a passive ability to an aciv one. All you need to do is find the weird, absurd, even optimistic angle on a horrific moment.

Sometimes it will just be a line of dialogue said in a conversation between characters:

“Christ, what happened to his head?”
“Looks like what ever attacked the other victims couldn’t help itself.”
“But the eyes, look what it did to them.”
“You did the same thing after my wife’s deviled eggs, I told you not to have them.”

Or a twist in the prose:

You would have thought a whole person exploded in the room.  Bone slivers and organ chunks caked the walls, ceiling, and furniture.  At least it was an improvement over the horrid seventies decor.

See how in just those small moments, a little bit of the tension the reader experiences is eased?  And there is a benefit to that.  If you ease the tension, you have more room and tolerance towards the further pushing of their limits of fear from not only horror readers, but all readers.  Think of it as a mental free weight exercise.  You want to push those feelings to maximum and hold it.  Then ease up and repeat.  That is tension.  That is drama.  Even Hamlet had jokes.

Everyone has his or her own brand of humor.  You can tell when someone has made something up on their own and when they are just repeating what they heard.  That is where the artistry is needed.  You have to make sure that your humor also fits in the moment you wish to use it.  Bad jokes are one thing, some can be so bad they are funny and are in a way self-repairing.  A joke in bad taste, though, is a sure way to make a reader to put the book down and never pick it back up.

In the end, humor has to be treated like anything else in a story, with pacing and careful amounts.  Too much can over take the story and it becomes an absurd Kids in the Hall skit.  To little and you could hear back that readers wished there was more or that it wasn’t there at all.  Always keep humor next to atmosphere and style in your writer’s toolkit.  It is a valuable tool in the creation of realism.

Unsealing the Sepulcher: Facets of Horror

This is the first of a few articles I wrote for Sonar 4 e-zine. I wanted to repost them since it seems like the website for the e-zine is gone. Nothing has changed, but after going over them, I will probably revise all of these at a later point…probably for a book in the future. So here is the first article of Unsealing The Sepulcher.

Facets of Horror

Most writers would use this time to introduce you to what horror is.  Well, I think that instead of that (since you can find an article like that everywhere) I would use this time to talk about what horror isn’t.  Sure, maybe in my subconscious it is my way of talking about what horror is, but in a world of misconceptions, horror is at the forefront of misunderstood genres of literature.  And no matter what else you read about writing horror, if there are any misconceptions in your head about the genre, you will have a hard time selling your work to editors.

Is It Just An Emotion?

If you haven’t encountered this yet, you will soon.  A lot of people who tend to not bother with reading much horror inevitably say:

“Horror is an emotion, that why is one of the simplest and hardest genres to write in.  It about fear and scaring the reader.”

After this, they usually tend to bring up some phobia of theirs, most likely spiders or snakes from my experience, and say how a story could scare them if it played on one of those fears, but how stories around that fear could also become redundant after a while.

That is not horror.  It is a convention of horror; a tool that many horror writers use to start an emotion bond between the reader and the character and events in the book.

While I don’t know this for sure, I tend to link that the reason people think that way is twofold

1. Many “What is horror?” writings, be it articles or whole books, tend to always add the definition of the word horror within the first 100-300 words (I’m not going to do that to you, I trust you have a dictionary near you that if don’t know what I means, you can look it up).  So, immediately, we are thinking about the emotion, not the genre.
2. They need to justify to themselves why they don’t read more horror.  I think that there is a part of us that, no matter how happy a picture we paint in our minds of the worlds, knows there are realities to be afraid of.  Not the “Boo!” kind of scary, but the “you come home one day from work and there is a message on the machine telling you the worst news you could possibly hear” scary.  As horror writers, we have to use the “Boo!”s as a metaphor of the “ugly reality phone message”s.  And readers know this, and there are those whose reading is an escape from all those phone messages.  It is a confluence of emotion they don’t want to experience.  So by saying the genre is just about one specific emotion, it is easier to cast off and pick up another book.

Here’s the funny truth, all genres can be compressed down to just one emotion.  And, in a way, that is good, that is how we determine what we want to read, by the experience we will have.  But in no way is any genre, especially horror, just an emotion.

Splatter, Splatter, Everywhere!

This is the next stereotype of the genre you will come up against.  You say you writer horror and a good number of people who believe that means you write the book versions of Saw and Hostel.  Now, you might have a story in a similar torture theme as the movies, but they will never be like the movies.  At least, not until the movie rights are sold and a film version of your book is made.  I say this because horror films and horror books are completely different mediums to convey terror to the audience.  Movies can use direct sights and sounds for an immediate response.  That’s why you have those seat jumping moments.  Books have to develop the scene in the mind of the reader.  Because of the slow pace, every detail has to be deliberate

Movies can get away with a reckless gore in movies, after a few seconds it gone and we are onto the next scene.  Books do not have that leeway.  From Clive Barker to Edward Lee, the best horror writers that come from the tradition of splatterpunk and extreme horror are purposeful with every ounce of gore on the page.  Sure, it is still graphic and there will be people that won’t want to read it, but the popularity of horror movies has cast a light on horror books to be the same in the amount of unneeded violence.  The only way we writers can break that stereotype is to be dutiful with our viscera.  Make it count!  Make it meaningful!

Devils in the Details

This can be both the most fun and the most terrifying misconception of horror writing.  As long as there has been books that were deemed evil, corrupt, or tainted, they have always been considered to be tools of black magic or the Devil.  Now, as a horror writer, I do have to laugh at this some times.  One reason is that, unlike other members of the horror arts that I have met, horror writers are the most even keeled, cuddly teddy bears and not satanic worshipers imbuing their stories with the powers of the demons they called forth to sway the unknowing souls of their readers into the embrace of the Prince of Darkness.  Sure, I like my dark clothing every once in a while and I make a dead baby joke around those that appreciate them, but I also practice chivalry and love Hawaiian shirts.

But I have been on the end where someone was so adamant that because I wrote horror stories I was channeling evil into me and needed to be exorcised.  It is a scary moment when someone you know, or worse, someone you don’t, blatantly tells you that they will try to save your soul for you when you know that there is nothing evil in the story you written.  In a way, lazy horror writers can be blamed just as much as anyone.  The supernatural and the infernal have always been great metaphorical tools for horror writers as much as for bards and heads of religious orders.  But there has been a trend in the recent past of where such things were used willy-nilly, some times as a method of senseless violence as mentioned in the last section.  All elements of a story are metaphors.  When a writer forgets that, they give up this control of the story.  When a reader forgets it, their mind will fill the void with another meaning.  If both happen, it can result is such a grave misunderstanding that can plague a genre.

The Faceted Mirror

Horror stories are meant to unveil the secrets hidden from us in plain sight.  Like a tri-fold mirror, a horror story reveals the truth of reality, but from different angels.  Horror is just another angle to tell the story of a lost love one, of the journey after life, of what love is, everything that stories have always been about.  It is a darker vision of these stories, but even day turns to night and while we sleep there is another world waking up.  Look at your horror stories as such.  We have the night to ourselves; let’s not waste the moonlight.