Why Do I Write Horror? Part One
Do I write horror because I'm fucked up? Or am I fucked up because I write horror?
Ah, look at all the lonely people.
The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
Why Horror?
Why do I write horror? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?
Way back when I used to attend a writers’ community monthly breakfast, there’d usually be about a hundred attendees, who’d all sit at big, round tables and eat breakfast and sip coffee and get to know each other a bit better before the speaker of the month would step up to the mic.
And the thing that sticks out almost two decades later is the reactions I’d get. A typical table would have eight people, and it was pretty standard for each writer to introduce themselves. No matter what table I sat at, the smattering was always very similar. There’d be the one or two fantasy writers. There’d be a couple of 60+ writers writing their memoirs. Then there’d be a selection of historical, or mystery, the occasional science fiction, and always a romance writer rounding out the table.
And then there was me. The lone horror author.
I’m not exaggerating in the least when I tell you that every time… every fucking time… I introduced myself—“Hey, I’m Tobin, and I write horror.”—the other seven mouths at the table would pucker up tight like vapour-locked sphincters. I’d hear something like, “Oh I don’t like all that Friday the 13th stuff,” and they’d proceed to talk amongst themselves while I pretended to enjoy the limp bacon.
I quickly learned that the horror author was the leper of the group.
The damn thing was, out of the hundred or so people who attended those meetings month after month, there was exactly one other horror author.
And now, we co-author stuff, but that’s another story.
But out of that group, there was just two of us. Two out of a hundred. I tend to consider myself a rather rare and precious commodity…
Okay, I can’t even write that without snorting. Yeah, I’m just the guy who writes the stuff most don’t want to read.
Why the hate of horror?
Why the disdain? Why is that? Why do so many people turn their noses up at horror, in a world where True Crime is both horrific and holds a huge market share? Or a world where one of the household name authors is Stephen King?
I think its because horror is, of course, about fear, but it’s also about confrontation and emotion.
I think all fiction is about feeling something, right? Comedy makes you feel delight. Romance makes you feel love. Fantasy and science fiction make you feel wonder. Mystery makes you feel anticipation. Every story, if it’s doing its job is likely pulling some feeling out of you. Good writing does that for me.
Just like romance is very much about emotion—and I’m talking actual romance here, not smut that is about emotion and bodily fluids and filling many orifices with protuberances—whether the emotion is love, elation, or despondency, etc., its emotion. Horror plays in a similar, if darker sandbox. Fear. Terror. Worry….you know the drill.
But while the emotion is there, it’s also about confronting all those things we really don’t want to confront, to feel. Cruelty. Helplessness. Death. The unknown.
So, when I hear, “Oh I don’t like all that Friday the 13th stuff,” I can only sigh. Yes, slasher is a form of horror, but it’s not my horror.
I’ve said this a few times and in a few different ways, but I write horror for a few reasons. The first is, it allows me to drag all the demons out into the light. I get to—much like if I was in therapy—examine them in a safe environment. I get to study them, to understand them. To see them for what they are. And then I can pick them up and throw them into a story, move them around like chess pieces, and control them.
My demons no longer control me. I control them.
But there’s other aspects. I love my supernatural beasties. The vampires, the werewolves, the demons, the ghouls, all the monsters. Love them all. I grew up watching them and reading about them. They’re friends.
What I enjoy, however, is using them in my fiction, making them horrifying, but then throwing them up against the regular humans. Because, in my experience, I’ve learned over and over and over again, that the very worst monsters aren’t the ones in our imagination. It’s the ones that are out there, walking around the malls, driving in their cars, serving you your Big Mac. Some of them are the worst monsters ever, and you don’t know, because they don’t look like monsters.
And that, to me, is fucking terrifying. Humans are terrifying.
So, no. I don’t want to jump scare you. I don’t want to give you a quick fright. Instead, my aim is more diabolical. I want you to feel dread. I want you to be uncomfortable. I want something I wrote to not just linger in your mind, but infect it.
I don’t want you to read it. I need you to feel it.
That’s my horror.
Thanks for stopping by
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I have a mug that says All Monsters Are Human. I think humans can be on a par with anything fictional.
I had a chuckle at the 60+ writing their memoir. Shocked at first that people reacted that way to you writing horror, but now that I think about it, it is rare in a group for someone to work in that genre. Great piece!