 Horror/Scary: August 07, 2019 Issue [#9689] |
This week: Storytelling Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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“It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Great Tales of Horror |
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STORYTELLING
At the heart of every good horror tale is a squirming knot of worms.
I remember a mini-series called, 'The Arabian Nights'. If you're not familiar with it shame on you, but the gist of the story is how the sultan's new wife must tell a story every night to keep the sultan from killing her by morning. So her life depends on telling stories so good that the sultan waits another night to hear the ending. Cleverly, she tells stories that are cliff-hangers, never giving away the end until the following night, and then ties it into yet another story to avoid her death.
What if we had to write stories that had to be that good or we would be killed. It gives you a whole new perspective on storytelling. There is a knack about telling stories. Sometimes it is a learned craft, sometimes it is just a gift. You know who the good ones are by how you hang upon every word. In 'Arabian Nights' the sultana goes to the best storyteller in all the city and asks him his advice. He says, "You start at the beginning, go through til the end, and then stop." When your life is on the line your creative skills must be at a peak, your imagination totally encompassing.
Show, Don’t Tell is a critical rule in all of storytelling, so critical that you should probably have it tattooed on your forehead backward so that every time you look in the mirror, there it is. But in horror it’s doubly important not to convey the fear that the audience is ideally supposed to feel. You can’t tell someone to be scared. You just have to shove the reader outside the firelight and hope that what you’ve hidden there in the shadows does the trick.
When you write horror, you’re trying to shine a light in dark corners. Key word there is “trying” — the flashlight needs to be broken. A light too bright will burn the fear away — the beam must waver, the batteries half-dead, the bulb on the verge of popping like a glass blister. It’s like, what the light finds is so unpleasant, you can’t look at it for too long. Look too long it’ll burn out your sanity sensors. In this way, horror isn’t always concerned with the why or the how — but it is most certainly concerned with the what.
Horror explores tragedy and misfortune, so our characters need to reflect that. Often, they’ll be in a horrible situation because of terrible decisions they’ve made, or desperate measures they’ve taken. Sometimes they’ll just be unlucky and stumble into terrible scenarios, but how they respond is important.
No matter how cool your ideas for the horror, the monster, the supernatural assault or whatever your story might explore, it will be nothing without the characters to carry it. And in horror, our characters are often more flawed than usual.
And above all else, Write What Scares You, your life may depend upon it.
See ya next time,
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DEAD LETTERS
Quick-Quill  says:
There is beauty in the dark forest. Fog that floats and entwines its fingers in the boughs and leaves. The soft hoot of an owl, or the rustle in the brush. Around the bend the path follows the curve of a lake. Ripples lap at the edge. A photographer, would pick up the texture, light, shadows and when you look at the result you'd see beauty. Then you notice a hand clawing the mud beside the edge, a predator feasting in the undergrowth and a partially decayed body that looked like the roots of a tree. Where there is beauty, there can also be horror.
ForeverDreamer  comments:
Thanks for including "Dismal Creek" . You have been very kind about including my stories in the Newsletter.
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