What is Scary?

Thanks Richm for the idea of a horror party. I will bear that in mind. This week I have to write a ghost story. I haven't read many ghost stories for years. I was an avid fan of the genre as a teenager and had loads of anthologies of ghost stories. I can remember being really spooked by some of them.

These days there aren't many things that really scare me in a book. Maybe the age of cinema has hardened us up so that we harder to scare. We are certainly exposed to copious amounts of tension and violence via the cinema and tv. A friend of mine said that she finds ghost stories scarier if they are true tales - an interesting point.

The stories I find scariest are post apocolyptic tales where you can almost imagine they are real or could happen - in books this is things like "Day of the Triffids", Douglas Coupland's "Girlfriend in a Coma" and Peter Dicksons Changes trilogy, in film it is things like "Children of Men" and Quatermass. Somehow these strike me as being far more chilling than something about monsters or ghosts.

A Horror of Horror

We have been set a hard task at college this week - well for me anyway - to write a horror story in 500-700 words.

I don't think I have ever written a horror story in my life, so this task is even harder than the fairytale we had to write last week. I think I may have to have several attempts before i come up with something passable. It's the starting that is the hardest part.

I suppose when writing in this genre the author should look at what scares them and build on that - for me it's spiders and rats but they just seem too obvious a choice to write about. I did consider writing about something I know about and giving it a twist - a child' guinea pig becomes possessed by a ghost or a demon for instance.

Richard Spurling says show don't tell, which is a good maxim.

"Like all fiction, horror is not going to work unless you can take your reader away into another world. The basic tools and techniques of good writing are as critical in horror as they are in all genres. It could even be argued that the only difference between the genres lies in the emotions targeted."

Basically I believe a horror story works well if a reader can emotionally engage with it - the emotional response usually being along the lines of fear and discomfort.