Oh, the Horror!

As of late, I've gotten really into the horror genre. There's been an increased number of not only horror movies and books, but also TV shows, bringing the genre back into the front of the public eye. And I was no exception. I really got into Stephen King and Scream and the most current horror movies within the last two years. I've always been intrigued by fear and especially by horror books. The thing that's always made me scream the most in horror movies has, of course, been the jump scares. But, you can't really write a jump scare and have it be very effective in a story. The best you can do is go "and something suddenly jumped out." There's variations with descriptions of what jumped out and with word-choice, but it's never going to catch you off-guard and get you screaming like it would in the movies. So, over the course of this week, I really had to think about what Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft and Bram Stoker do to make their work have an even better effect than the jump scares in movies. I think what makes them so successful isn't really the momentary moments of fear, but that psychological fear that continues to creep in after you've set the story down. Things that make you sweat at night when you're just trying to sleep.

One of the hugest problems I ran into while writing was to steer clear of cliches. When new genres crop-up, they're new and fresh, and you're allowed to go pretty much any way you'd like because you're paving an unmade route. Something I found difficult with being a writer in the 21st century is that there are a lot of cliches that you have to take into consideration when writing anything. Take Romeo and Juliet for example, before the whole lovers from feuding families was a new idea and was such a beautiful concept, but now it's kind of a cliche. Horror cliches tend to be you're alone, it's dark, there's a forest, it's raining, there's someone in the house that isn't supposed to be. I tend to feel a lot of pressure when it comes to not doing cliches, although sometimes the cliches do work--that's why they're cliches, because they're effective. However, the writing should still be about 90% cliche-free. At least that's how I feel. My story starts out in a pool, a girl is swimming at night (night is a cliche), but it's not raining and there's no woods. Also, she's brought a friend to a cabin, so she's not alone. There's someone in the house that shouldn't be (cliche) and she can't find her friend (cliche). I tried to end the story in a round-about way by having my main character drowning by her own hand (not a cliche). I tried to leave the ending ambiguous to if she lives or dies, but since that feels like a cliche, I would go back and rewrite it. Throughout the piece, I tried to use my diction to make the psychological fear I talked about before. I tried to use words that made things seem not-quite-right. Words like skew and off-kilter and just an over-all eerie tone. I think I did pretty well, being my first ever attempt at a horror story. However, I would still love to go back a rewrite things and make them stronger.

Thanks for reading and, please, come back next week where I will be reporting on writing a comedic story.

#story #horror