Why do we write Horror?

Discussion in 'Horror' started by HellOnEarth, Jan 15, 2007.

  1. Kincaid

    Kincaid New Member

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    I think what Fantasy of You was saying, Max, is that not everyone considers death the ultimate threat. In fact, some people consider death a comfort, a way of escape...some people embrace it. Some people hate life and seek after death. If everyone feared death, or thought that it was the ultimate threat, then there would be no suicide.
     
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  2. Kincaid

    Kincaid New Member

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    By the way, Max, my last message wasn’t to be rude, or start an argument or anything. I do respect your option. You have interresting views
     
  3. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    If writing Horror is a coping mechanism, I think Clive Barker is well beyond help. I mean have you seen his artwork, or read his books?

    We enjoy Horror the same way we enjoy jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, and roller-coaster rides. It is for the rush of adrenaline caused by fear. There are different types of Horror. Body Horror, not to be confused with torture porn. :p The Hunt type. Psychological Horror. And the Classic Monster/Alien/Creature Horror. Torture porn is more shock value than scary, unless you are afraid of that kind of messy stuff. :p So ultimately how can it be just a coping device, when it can be multi-faceted. It can help release the demons, as well as face them. Anything can be Horror with the proper manipulation. It is not that difficult to turn the sweet old lady selling daises, into a dark and sinister being that feast on the flesh of train conductors from the B Train from the Metro. See not that hard to make anything scary. :D
     
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  4. SadStories

    SadStories Active Member

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    My writing is mainly motivated by me having a lot of feelings and thoughts I have no one to share with. Some of my most bothersome and strongest feelings are despair. Writing something truly horrible is a way for me to get it out.

    As for why anyone would want to read horror, honestly I'm not very sure. It's not my favorite genre when I'm on the other side, lol! I think it's the mystery, really. I tend to prefer slower, atmospheric stuff like The Ring over straightforward horror.
     
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  5. DeadMoon

    DeadMoon The light side of the dark side Contributor

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    I live for Horror. In books, movies, comics and even action figures. My wife and I even were married on June 6th, 2006 or as we refer to it as 666, ( in sin city and 6 o'clock) It is a bond for us, something we both are into and that makes it that much better. So naturally we both write about it too.
     
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  6. Feo Takahari

    Feo Takahari Senior Member

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    Horror fans may not like this perspective, but my impression is that a lot of mass market horror is about unity. You see a metaphor for a group of people who're different than you, and it portrays them as strange and dangerous, so you feel reassured that someone else sees them as strange and dangerous, too.

    Of course, there's a decent argument to be made that true horror isn't mass market in the first place . . .
     
  7. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    It's a bit more nuanced than that but not by as much as we might hope.

    Horror is where our fear of the other and the fear of ourselves combine. Quick exercise. Name all the really stereotypical horror villains you can off the top of your head. Vampire, zombies, werewolves, ghosts and Frankenstein; right? These are all things that start out as people and the first three are all things that we can't necessarily tell apart from normal people. In them we get to dress up our fear of our own darker nature as being a fear of a definitive other and that makes us feel better. It's not us who would do terrible things, it's some different kind of people who'd do that; dangerous minorities who can co-opt our precious american bodily fluids. By couching it in those terms we can explore extremely dark areas in a non-threatening way. Even when the movie ends another way; we understand that 'the vampires were the good guys!' is a subversion and the 'real' ending is supposed to be that the good guys win even if it wasn't in this case.

    It's how we confront difficult questions about the darkness in ourselves without having to take away the message that we are fucking awful people.
     
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  8. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    While a lot of really good traditional horror stories focus on "othering" as you describe, looking at things through the wrong end is what really gets me going. I've written a couple of stories with apparently sympathetic characters that turn out to be serial killers or Nazis, and there's an old Twilight Zone episode where a woman is being attacked by aliens, panicking out of her mind, and it's not until the last scene that we see the American flag and NASA symbol on the side of the ship.

    Nothing at all against either form, of course.
     
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  9. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Horror appeals to me because darkness fascinates me. I am unable to write something without substantially antagonistic character and substantial stakes. ATOT, the only idea I have that is actually part comedy, rather than spiced with very occasional humour, has such things as active bigotry, and an accidental major death. There's pain and conflict and loss on a very real scale.
    Anyway, horror is just really interesting. There's something maniacally pleasing about achieving that level of fucked-up. If I'm intentionally designing something as twisted, and it comes out twisted, it feels fun in this wild kind of way. Maybe it's a kind of indirect way of venting negative emotions. Maybe it's just the adrenaline and such, the thrill of that element of consequence and emotion. IDK. I just enjoy it. It's probably a bit of both.
     
  10. Samuel Lighton

    Samuel Lighton Senior Member

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    I include horror elements in my writing because everyone - every single person - enjoys feeling their heart race. If they don't enjoy the perversion of horror, then they at least accept it. It gives in to some of the baser instincts we have as human beings, that of violence, and it allows people to enjoy that experience in the safety of their own minds.
     
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  11. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    But that's a subversion not it's own form. It's playing off the audiences expectations of the traditional form and taking them in a different direction; in this case the exactly opposite direction. You can only subvert the form because the form exists; because we expect that the object of our fear will be othered and conquered. Without that expectation your twist has no power, in fact it's not even a twist at all. I agree that in terms of content and theme horror (and all genres) have grown beyond their initial purpose and can be used to tell a variety of stories but the primal needs of writing a horror book is in drawing lines between us and them. Whether you do that very straight facedly and stab all the vampires or play with it and pull away the curtain to show there is no line, both need to draw that line first.

    If you write a romance set in the zombie apocalypse where no zombie attacks happen at all the audience will still expect some zombie murder at some point even if your book isn't written with any other indication that it's a horror book. That expectation is what we're really talking about here. There's all kinds of ways to use that expectation as a writer but the expectation remains. We expect the leads in a romance to finally get together. We expect the white hat cowboy to overcome by being a rugged individualist. Those expectations are what speak to the true function of the genre.
     
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  12. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    And to the specific concepts themselves. But yes.
     
  13. Feo Takahari

    Feo Takahari Senior Member

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    That reminds me of an argument I had on TV Tropes with folks who claimed "women are weaker" was an "omnipresent trope." They claimed any story that doesn't portray women as weaker is consciously subverting expectations. I think they haven't watched enough shoujo, because plenty of series exist within a framework where it never comes to mind to expect female characters to be any less capable than male ones.

    My work in regard to othering isn't nearly so stark. I do reference, play off of, and undermine expectations that characters who are strange or deformed will be villainous. But while some of it may be subversive, I don't think all of it qualifies as "subversion" per se, and I think a lot of my stories about heroic or likable outsiders would still work even if you weren't familiar with the original tropes.
     
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  14. Raven484

    Raven484 Contributor Contributor

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    I like writing horror sometimes because part of me wants to share what scares the hell out of me. I love to read horror, but it is very rare that the story is good enough to scare me anymore. I love reading horror, but I really miss the scare Stephen King use to instill back when I was a teenager.
    I think maybe getting old and facing death nearing everyday has taken the real scare out of horror novels for me. I usually read King, Koontz, Lumley, so if anyone has anyone new I should check out, please recommend them to me.
    Some of the horror stories I read from Indie writers are better now then big authors. Just wish I knew more of them so I could get a good scare.
    The scariest story to me was one of King's short stories called Trucks. When I read it today, it is weak as hell. But when I was 12, I was a paperboy and had to deliver papers at 5am every morning. After reading that story, for weeks I was constantly looking over my shoulder with every sound that was made.
    I really miss that kind of scare!
     
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  15. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Have you read any of Barker's other work? He's freakin' brilliant. His Hellraiser franchise is better contextualized when you know that it's part of a larger spectrum of "hidden world" stories he pretty much always writes.

    I think the OP of this thread from 2007 is dead wrong about the horror-genre being a coping mechanism. I think horror exists as a genre because it can. Because those of us with a seat in the front end of the airplane of life are so sufficiently removed from anything actually horrible that we can take the routines and subroutines designed to deal with real danger and make toys of them.
     
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  16. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    I agree. My theory is it's a combination of morbid curiosity, that side of us that wonders about the darkness out there, the thrill of high stakes, and the adrenaline of fear. Plus the good horror story are also just good stories so they're clever and entertaining.
     
  17. Raven484

    Raven484 Contributor Contributor

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    I read "The Damnation Game" by Barker. I loved it. I couldn't get into the hellraiser ones though. Maybe I should try them again. I last read Barker in 1992, maybe now it will make more sense to me.
     
  18. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Imajica is really good. Also Weaveworld. :agreed:
     
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  19. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    I've been thinking about this thread for a while and trying to put my finger on why I love horror (reading, not writing, though maybe one day...)

    It's not the unity thing. That doesn't resonate with me at all.

    At first I thought it's the comfort of seeing people escape horrific situations. I feel like I'd go to pieces if I was in a horror situation, so it gives me some comfort to see other ordinary people escaping them. It's the same reason I like "horror non-fiction", as I call it: Natasha Kampusch's and Jaycee Lee Dugard's books, that kind of thing. It's not the misery I like, it's the escape and the hope. Knowing just how much humans can endure and still come out whole.

    So that is a part of it, but it's not IT, because I also love horror that ends on a hopeless note. Ones where nobody survives and the antagonist is victorious. I think that's because horror is a bit like drugs, or porn... you start out small and then you need more and more extreme stuff to get the same thrill. I'm so desensitised to horror that hardly anything affects me. I'm always looking for something that will make me afraid or at least give me a "wow, that's harsh" moment. The last thing that did that was the movie The Girl Next Door, and that was maybe 5 years ago.

    I don't think there's one answer to why a person likes a certain genre.
     
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  20. Raven484

    Raven484 Contributor Contributor

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    Will give them a look Wreybies, thanks.
     
  21. Raven484

    Raven484 Contributor Contributor

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    I hope one day you do decide to do a horror or mystery novel. From the beta that I have read from you I think you would be great at it. You really tell a good story with great flow. I would love to see something from you other than Romance, you definitely have the skill for it. (The real man inside me coming out, Romance makes men's ears bleed, even if its good. Lol.) If I were to guess what other genre you would be great at, I would pick mystery first. You are very organized and I think this would set up your mystery well.
     
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  22. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    But that's less to do with horror and more to do with why we tell sad stories generally. You can write a western that touches on those same notes; I'm writing (in so many words) a highschool drama where all that's really happening is my teenage girl slowly being ground down by the weight of the 'real' world. Constant lies and deception and pain slowly sapping her will to fight on. This isn't a horror book at all. It's a YA romantic drama. It's just transposing my character into the 'real' world as I see it and seeing what happens. No mystery, no murders, just life.

    I write this kind of stuff a lot; depressing, underwhelming contemporary worlds with good people being forced to do bad things. I do it because that's what I think the world really is. We're all just good people dealing with the bad things we've done. But the reason to write it is a matter of expression. People don't see the world the way I do and I write to try and put what I see into words. Doesn't matter if I'm writing cyberpunk or these coming of age stories; or even about a boy-prophet having sex with his mother; it's all coming from my view of people and the world. Good people compelled by their inner deamons to do bad.

    But none of this is what makes horror horror. The makers of the vast majority of horror movies aren't trying to make propaganda. They aren't saying 'Holy shit don't leave your house!'. Their view of the world is not that if you go walking in the woods at night will get you devoured by Cthulhu. I hope that's not yours; that we should be afraid for our safety in the real world. In fact, the authors view of the real world in horror is typically shown in the real world. It's the mean kids who get their comeuppance by cosmic horror or the mindless consumerist who tries to rescue their phone. But that could be in any story about anything.

    The 'horror' and the 'real world' are separate things being put together.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2018
  23. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    Because hell is in the heart.
     
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  24. FaythFuI

    FaythFuI Member

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    Because putting a character through pain/fear and watching them rise up against it is one of the most satisfying things to read/write (in my opinion.) I've always adored horror because I love writing tense, dangerous scenes where characters have their lives held in above them... I also love writing seductive, manipulative, and malicious antagonists that play with their victims - these characters usually manifest the best when I write in the horror genre.

    I also agree with the fact that writing dark/horrific pieces can offer an emotional release - throwing your MC in the face of death and watching them fight for their life, fight for what they believe in, fight for everything...it just internally motivates me to push forward in the reality I live in. Granted, I also have my little dark, sadistic side that likes making my MC suffer, but my characters are my children and I only want to make them stronger. Horror/fantasy will always be my niche.
     
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  25. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    I love Horror so much I have that "Somebodies watching me feeling".

    MLP.gif
    Oh wait, they are watching you. :superlaugh:
     
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