Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Edgar Allan Poe

         Over the coming months, I hope you join me as I explore the power and pleasure of horror writing in its myriad forms. We'll incite the muse creative to find horror in the mundane, the fantastic, the present, the past, and the future while we even share a laugh or two exploring this versatile and timeless form of writing..

The Power of Horror

         
         H.P. Lovecraft postulated in the 1930s that because it required imagination and detachment from life, horror’s appeal was narrow. But over ensuing decades, so much of our world has created a need for detachment and fueled human imagination worldwide. And I beg to differ that its appeal was narrow even before the proliferation of arms and corruption in government worldwide, terrorists who defy any and all government, of holes in the ozone born of natural design or human ignorance, global technological advances fostering somnambulistic acceptance and acquiescence. Each of these, and more, fosters detachment. And, as we explore the possibilities of harnessing that detachment, we create works prosaic and poetic of horror, and as writers exert control over the outcome.

         Horror incites terror in your readers, but terror does not necessarily do likewise for horror. Okay, you've stood in line for 2 hours to get on a two-minute roller-coaster ride your friend says is to die for. The lap bars click shut and you start the climb. You reach the apex and raise hands skyward in anticipation of a throat-clearing scream during the descent. The scream catches with your heart. Gravity takes hold of the car on the track, and you realize you're no longer seated. Your butt is following your hands skyward. The lap brace isn't locked! You grab hold of the bar now at your chest, swallowing back rising bile as you wonder what's wrong with the gravity. You're still in your seat when the now-demonic ride ends, but you're alone in the car. You jump off as they shut down the ride and run towards a gathering crowd to find your friend, on her back, a gatepost replacing her bellyring. Tears clot your eyes and you drop to your knees. As EMTs trailing a gurney and lifesize ziplock bag stride towards the morbid tableau, you reach in her pocket to rescue your car keys. The slight pressure of your fingers releases several coils from the opened belly, catching your wrist in a morbid friendship bracelet of soft warm entrails.

         The first part of the example above describes terror at the realization that the ride is defective and death is likely imminent. The ending is the realization of the end with a visceral reaction. That's horror. It gets into the psyche, reaches into the minds of the reader, invokes a wince as they envision the image.

         This is a partially true story, by the way. We were on the last car and the bar apparently didn't lock. "Brace your knees," I yelled, terrified as I grasped the bar and willed my body to be one with the car. We both made it without evisceration. I still like best the last seat in the last car of a roller coaster, with my hands up, but knees braced

         What I did in the sketch, however, was imagine 'what if.' That's where horror writing steps in; to play out what exists in the recesses of your mind. Pose the question 'what if' for a common object, a toy, a doll, a radio, and you can envision horrific images and actions by mortals, otherworld beings, animals, inanimate objects....

         A common misperception in horror writing is that there be incessant terror and a lot of bloodletting. Also, don't you find yourself saying 'why is he/she looking back, running from a knife-wielding maniac, or monster, or vampire, or ghoul, or....?

         The feel of human entrails wrapping around your skin, if only for a momentary touch with death, evokes a more intense fear, dread, or dismay (unless you're a mortician by trade perhaps). Both tangible visible ordinary objects and ideas or tenets political, natural, 'supernatural,' have been the subject of horror stories long before Lovecraft postulated his theory. As our fears and terrors have changed over time, so too has what we know as horror, not just from one era to another, but from one person to another, based on their own life experience and imagination, both as writer and reader/listener.

         So horror is personal, a conversation between the writer and the reader, with intense yet subtle inference driving the point home throughout the story or poem. I think writing horror is much like writing poetry - conveying in words the essence or a thing or idea so that your reader feels for a moment the intensity of its being. I will be exploring over the coming months the means by which I can do this, the types of horror writing, be it fantastical or apparently ordinary, and I hope you enjoy sharing my journey.