Yeah, we know. That's a quote from Mistah Kurtz. He dead.

What is it about horror? Some writers have said it's about facing our fears, but I don't believe that. Most of the fears invoked by horror fiction aren't even real. Or they'd better not be. If some mad scientist tries splicing body parts together, you know he's been reading too much horror fiction. They ought to lock up both the scientist and the fool writer who made that up. Stop that.

What about this Fear Factor? Are you trying to get your reader to jump, look around guiltily, and then go turn on the hall light? That's not much of a trick. If you do it every five pages or so, after awhile, it gets boring. Or, at least, it does to me.

Here's what I think is wrong with the average 'horror' plot: total lack of concept. I'll give you an example.

Plot: four couples head up to the mountains for a weekend retreat in a comfortable cabin. They've got food, drinks, and the key to the hot tub. One couple's happy, one's anxious, one is feuding, and one's on the brink of divorce. Two members of different couples are planning to sneak off to the woods and have a quick extramarital liaison. The story's all about Bill and Sally and George and Betty and Trevor and Eunice and Biff and Buffy: their lives and loves.

Then they get to the cabin. Oh, dear. It's infested with (pick one):

• A hatchet murderer.
• The ghost of a hatchet murderer.
• An ancient talisman that leads unwary Eunice to open the portal to a mysterious realm full of Aztec hatchet murderers.
• A killer octopus.

At this point, the plot falls apart completely. We no longer care whether Biff and Buffy will patch things up, or who's sleeping with whom. One by one, the characters are all killed in nasty ways, until the last two survivors manage to slay the menace.

Except, of course, they don't. Not really. The monster waves his arm/ectoplasmic appendage/tentacle feebly, to let us know to watch for the sequel. Bah.

Move this story to outer space, of course, and you've got an Alien movie. I'm with Ripley: nuke it from orbit.

How to Write a Real Horror Story

A real horror story is gothic. It needs three elements:

1. A problem that really bothers people.
2. A skewed logic.
3. A commitment to solving the problem – or at least, to demonstrating what happens when you don't solve it.

A real horror story may have a happy ending, or a tragic one. But it gets somewhere, and doesn't waste your time. And it never, ever plays that 'survivor' game.

What kinds of problems do real horror stories tackle? How about the problem of death? Victor Frankenstein makes a monster because he wants to defeat death. The protagonist of Stephen King's Pet Sematery buries his dead son in the woods for the same reason. Both stories end tragically. But we are edified by them.

Skewed logic is a staple of this kind of story. After all, you're not in the normal world. You're in a parallel universe. One in which dead flesh comes to life, or men turn into bats and drink blood, or people speak to us across time. That kind of world.

It's not about bumping off innocents right, left, and center. Leave those cheap thrills to the midnight movie at the drive-in. It's about getting the characters to confront the consequences of their own decisions.

So you decided to become immortal by joining the Undead, Monsieur Lestat? Well, you'll have centuries to learn to live with yourself, if you'll pardon the expression. Conjured up a demon, have we? Can't get rid of it? That will teach you to read the footnotes in the grimoire.

Stories like this are edifying – and they go all the way back to the ancient Greeks. What do you think a tragedy is, anyway? It's a story about consequences. A wrong turn in the decision-making process.

Bari Wood's novel The Tribe is a beautiful example of what I mean. The backstory begins during the Holocaust. Some inmates survive by creating a golem. Many years later, they confront anti-Semitism in the US. Do they make a golem? What happens when they do? What does this tell us about the legacy of hatred and fear, and what these things do to the mind? It's a brilliant book, full of consequences.

Another shining example of real horror is John Farris' All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By. This book is my Number-One recommendation for a Halloween night's reading. It has everything: historical guilt, interwoven family stories, voodoo…swords, hoop skirts, and snakes....what's not to love?

Do you have a favourite real horror story? Share the title with us. And remember: if a writer invites you into the woods with a bunch of married couples, don't go.

Say you'd rather stay in town and watch the Twilight Zone marathon.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

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