Last weekend I attended the SciFi Weekender in Pwllheli in Wales to try and promote and sell some of my Beyond Series books. So I was thrilled to be asked by Author Sam Stone to sit on a couple of discussion panels. As this is quite a long blog (for me), I decided to break it into two parts.
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| Graham Guy, Me, Sam Stone and Austin Chambers on first panel. |
Horror Writing
Visceral Versus
Psychological
Horror to me is defined as stepping into a fantasy world
that you normally wouldn’t entertain in everyday life. For instance you
wouldn’t court a mad psychopath who is so unpredictable that you could
potentially become their next victim, whether rape, murder or cannibalised! Nor
would you really meet a person or a mythological creature that frightens the
life out of you and disturbs or disgusts you. To me, this is horror.
When I was asked to sit on two writer’s discussion panels for the Sci Fi
Weekender, it actually made me think properly
for the first time about the genre I regularly write in. I never normally analyse or label my
work until I have to publish the book. So I lay awake most of the night before
thinking about what horror writing meant to me and which did I prefer. Needless
to say I was tired the next day, but with the adrenalin pumping and microphone
in hand, an eager audience waiting for something profound to be blurted from my
lips, this is what I wanted to say – even if I didn’t articulate it very well at the time.
Visceral Horror is the blood, guts and gore of the genre,
the things that we watch or read that makes us go eeewwwuurgggh!!! Psychological
Horror is suggestive, giving the audience the opportunity to use their own
intelligence and imagination to make the spine shiver and the heeby jeebies get
jiggy in your tummy.
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| Zombie Cop! |
As I am predominantly known as a novelist, I wanted my
audience to be clear that ‘writing horror’ isn’t just restricted to writing
books and short stories for anthologies or magazines. Graphic Novels, TV Scripts, Film Screen
Plays and Theatre all come under the writing banner too. At the end of the day
a person thought it, wrote the script and then let others produce the creative
media the story is being told in.
So we discussed novel writers such as Dean Koontz, Stephen
King. Horror Films which crossed over into the Sci-fi genre too, such as Cloverfield
and Skyline (I found terrifyingly disturbing films). Supernatural Horror like Nightmare on Elm Street, Carrie
and Paranormal Activity – Serial Killer Horror like Halloween and Friday the 13th. Granted there is some blood and gore in them, but only right at the end when the psychological tension has been built to a crecendo. I pointed out horror in the theatre, psychological plays like A Woman in Black,
The Haunting and Ghost Stories (my personal favourite). I did see a visceral
play in the form of a Jacobean Play called The Changeling (I have reviewed this
play in my Blog before). Quiet shocked when there was a lot of stabbing and
blood at the end.
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| The Weeping Angels on Doctor Who. The thought of something horrible happening to you when you close your eyes for just a second is terrifying! |
I concluded that psychological horror worked much better for
me because I like to think about what’s going on in the story, being kept on
the edge of my seat or compelled to turn the next page of the book, but a
certain amount of visceral horror is needed to push the story along. For
instance, my Beyond Books do have a certain amount of violence or blood based
wounds and deaths because the supernatural creature themselves are visceral and
NEED to drink blood or kill with their bare hands or decapitate the odd immortal
Lycan, because it is necessary for their survival.
One cannot help but feel sympathy for a vampire who is made
against their will and then must feed on human blood to continue to survive –
or a were-wolf pack ripping the heads of the feral wolves that attack them in
their homes when all they wish to do is live peaceful lives and hunt in the
forests.
It seemed unanimous amongst the group that it was easier to
accept this fictitious world because we all know it’s not real, but an escapism
of the drudgery of real life. However, psychological horrors involving humans
inflicting the visceral blood lust and gore on fellow humans is deeply disturbing for me. For instance,
serial killer TV programmes that I have watched like Dexter, The Following, or Patrick
Jane tirelessly hunting for Red John in The Mentalist is far more frightening because we are all too aware that these sort of people really do exist.
In fact, as you read this and look around, (if
in a public place, of course) notice the people and ask yourself – Who are they? Why are they there?
Are they inherently good people or could they be the next Yorkshire Ripper or Myra
Hindley?
How many times have friends and neighbours said in the news
about killers. “Well, I’ve watched them grow up on our street. I’ve known them
all their lives – He was such a lovely person – I can’t believe he could do
such a thing!” And the shock quotes could go on and on. I’ve never heard anyone
being interviewed after a revelation of a captured serial killer saying – “I
knew all along the guy was a complete wacka-doodle… or - I thought about
telling the cops when I saw him cooking his pet guinea pig on a campfire when
he was a kid… He gave me the creeps!!” To me this kind of horror is truly
disturbing and which is why I am exploring the mind of a serial killer in my
crime thriller series Mancunian Tales. I have two books written so far, but I
want the one I’ve been currently researching to write to be released first as
part of a trilogy.
Really interesting post.
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