Welcome to another edition of Fiction Notes. You can find previous essays here—topics range from idea generation to the importance of talent, to outlining a novel. If you like what you read, please hit reply or shoot me an email. And if you haven’t, please sign up!
Happy Friday! As I promised last week, in this edition I'm going to be covering a few principles and techniques you should take into account when trying to add an element of Horror to your story. In other words: how to craft a 'sense of horror.'
A few weeks ago I covered the idea of creating a 'sense of wonder' in your story:
What do they mean by Sense of Wonder?
According to Wikipedia, quoting The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction:
SENSE OF WONDER n. a feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one's awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time, as brought on by reading science fiction
Or… George Mann speaks of "the sense of inspired awe that is aroused in a reader when the full implications of an event or action become realized, or when the immensity of a plot or idea first becomes known."
"Sense of Horror" and "Sense of Wonder" have a lot of similarities, but also a lot of differences. For one—while I did leave space for wonder as not necessarily a positive thing, a sense of horror is intended to produce, without a doubt, a negative effect in both the character and the reader—one of dread and/or fear.
So... How can you achieve this in your stories? First, you need to consider the idea of 'powerlessness.'
Powerlessness
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” ― John Steinbeck
As I wrote last week, Horror, perhaps more than any other Elemental Genre, is intrinsically tied to Character:
Horror is often-times paired with visceral fear, yes. But as explained by the quote above, that kind of fear doesn't necessarily come from the supernatural. The Horror EG isn't even about the fear per se, not in its most effective, condensed form. It's about the character's relationship to said fear, and about what the fear is turning them into.
There is nothing more fear-inducing that a character's loss of control. This works in a circular fashion—or a negative feedback loop, even. When horror ensues, power is taken away from character. When characters have their power/sense of agency taken away from them, horror ensues.
This is the first, most important step one can take as a writer to introduce an element of horror to a story. The second step would be to add another layer––an awareness of said powerlessness. When the character is not only without agency but aware of it, a sense of dread immediately arises. Fear arises. The powerlessness/horror loop intensifies.
When trying to create a story where The Elemental Genre of Horror is everywhere—where the bookshelf genre is Horror too, this sense of powerlessness needs to be felt throughout the entire thing, punctuated once in a while with a moment of illusory control—just to keep the characters (and readers) on their feet.
When trying to incorporate just touches of the Horror EG into your story (i. e. a scene, a moment, a sequence), things are reversed. You have a story in which the characters' agency is paramount throughout, and then introduce an instance of powerlessness and lack of control to trigger a sense of horror.
Let's look at other ways of crafting a sense of horror in stories:
Foreshadowing & Sense of Dread
Just as Wonder or Mystery work best when foreshadowed, so does horror. Why? Because Horror and the anticipation of Horror are quite intertwined. In one of the Writing Excuses episodes I studied for this edition, Dan Wells (one of Writing Excuses' co-hosts and a special of writing book-shelf horror-fantasy books.) says, paraphrasing Ann Radcliffe:
[Fear] is something that hasn't happened yet. You're afraid that something bad is going to happen. Horror is your reaction to something bad that has already happened. It's a sense of dread that your world has changed for the worst irrevocably and now you have to deal with it.
A Horrific moment works best when predated by fear of that moment happening. Foreshadowing that horrific event creates that sense of dread in a story––creates fear, be it in the characters, the reader, or both.
The Horrific Element
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't. ― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
This is the traditional 'inciting incident' or supernatural element one finds in most horror stories, or non-horror stories where there is potential for horror-filled sequences and moments. It's simple but effective. It works at all levels of your story, big and small: You introduce a fear-inspiring element to your story, and then think, and watch, and learn, and see how that element alters each aspect of the story. By each aspect I mean: everything from characters, to plot and setting.
The Wrong Choice
This is my favorite technique out of all the ones I'm listing today, probably because, while I am as far away from a traditional horror writer as you can possibly get, I do like playing with psychological horror, and deeply enjoy the exploration of morality.
I like moral compromises. I like stories where the line between good and evil is not only blurred but a path through which the characters tread. This, I think, is the best kind of story––a story where the main character, deeply familiar to us by now, is presented with a binary choice and fails to choose correctly. Most ancient tragedies follow this path. Stephen King does this a lot, too. Those stories are as horror-inducing as anything.
How do you accomplish this? It's simple: You imagine that moral choice the character has to take, think on it deeply, and then build your story around that choice and make it so that, by the time the character gets to the place of choice, three things happen: 1) The character has no option but to choose, and 2) The reader knows exactly what choice the character is going to make, and they know it's going to be the wrong one.
Layering Fears
This technique was also suggested by Dan Wells. It works best when dealing with a story where Horror acts as a Main Elemental Genre and goes as follows:
You work backward. First, identify a primal fear (think: fear of the dark, fear of death.) Once you've decided upon that fear, ask yourself: what's a thing I'm afraid of (or that the character could be afraid of) that would hide that fear? Then, ask yourself that question again. What other, smaller fear, would hide that second fear? An example would be:
A character's fear of death, which is hidden by
A character's fear of the dark, which is hidden by
A character's fear of caves, which is hidden by
A character's fear of bats.
And on and on and on it goes until, as Dan said, "you backtrack the character's journey so that they are having an anxiety attack on their way to insanity."
The Inmost Cave
You might recognize the term 'inmost cave' from the 'approach to the inmost cave' stage of The Hero's Journey Model, as introduced to the world by Joseph Campbell. Let me say, first, that while I respect Campbell's work deeply, I am not a fan of using it as a roadmap of any sort when crafting a story. I don't think that's what it was intended for, and believe deeply that using this framework as a means of creating a story, instead of analyzing a story, leads to nothing but dead ends. Still––Campbell was onto something here.
There are two reasons, I believe, why the 'inmost cave' or 'descent into hell' trope was featured in sp many stories throughout the ages. The first is a metaphorical one: the 'inmost cave' symbolizes the character's descent into the realm of absolute chaos, where everything can happen, where change is in the air. The second (and more practical one), I talked about last week:
But there is one more thing—one other result that makes having at least one horror-inducing moment in your story worth it. Here it is: Horror maximizes all other emotions. Light shines stronger in the presence of darkness, that sort of thing.
That's the thing—if you include a horror-filled sequence (of any sort, it doesn't actually have to be the character's descending into a cave where they will fight a dragon) then everything that follows will shine brighter.
If the character (or you, the reader) just cried or were made to feel extremely anxious, when you cheer, you're going to cheer that much harder (and you might even cry again, too). If the character just went through a period of intense dread and finds themselves enjoying a respite—well, that small break is going to be that much more satisfying. The humor, too, will become funnier. Love will feel more passionate. Action will become more exciting.
Now, this works better near the end, of course, because it makes the end itself much stronger. But it doesn't have to be so, not necessarily. You can introduce a horror-filled sequence anywhere in the story, and for different reasons. To give you just one example (and I'll try to be as spoiler-free as I can)—in the Name of The Wind, the protagonist Kvothe goes through as horrific a sequence as you'll ever read. Starting around page 120, up until page 205 (of a 700-page book, first in a trilogy), the story is nothing but horror, after horror, after horror.
And there is a reason for that: it forces the character to change, to get out of a stupor created by what one could call the inciting incident of the story (he witnessed a murder—again, no spoilers). It does one other thing, too, which I find extremely interesting: this sequence leaves wounds in the character's psyche and soul, marks we will see him try (and fail sometimes, succeed others) heal throughout the rest of the book and the trilogy.
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That's it for Today. Have a great weekend!
Until next time.
Matias