Writing horror, how do you deal with it?

My suggestion? If you are afraid... use it. Use it up until it's been flipped in every hole it has then pour salt on the bleeding parts. Fear is what horror is all about. Use it in any way you can. If writing it causes you to look over your shoulder, then that is a very good thing. If it keeps you awake at night, use the time to write more, feeding off the fear. I've written some strange and disturbing things when afraid.

Don't let it stop you. Without fear, you wouldn't have horror anyway. Don't let that fear keep you from writing it, if you think it'll be a good novel. It may or may not be, but that isn't the issue. If you let fear cripple you now, it'll come up more and more often until you can't write anything.

So what if you are afraid? You've been afraid before, right? And your monster came after you. You have to realize that these strange encounters, while disturbing at first, is only your creative mind trying to get your attention. You imagination screaming for more. Your character is talking to you, be it visual or otherwise. The monster isn't actually coming after you. It's giving you something. Your job as the writer is to figure out what that character is trying to say. My characters speak to me all the time, in different ways. I dream about some of them, hear some of them when I'm in the bathtub scrubbing my hair, see them in the mirror behind me. It is, and always was, your imagination working subconsciously because your conscious mind isn't getting the job done well enough to satisfy your creativity. I know I sound like a know-it-all right now, but I've been dealing with this since I was twelve, when I wrote my first novella. Before then, I attributed it to my over-active imagination. I started telling stories (verbally) when I was five. My first one was all about how I wasn't an actual baby, but an alien egg my parents stole and hatched beneath their bed with a light bulb.

Wild imaginings are there for a reason. Get to know the characters when you see, hear, dream them. Conduct interviews, ask questions, act and react with them. They are, after all, only another part of you. You aren't scared of yourself, are you?

It's okay to be uncomfortable with them, dislike them, even fear them on some level. But you have to remember, you are their creator. Your mind made these little fuckers, excuse my language. So, put them to work. They are yours to command, after all. It takes discipline, yes, but that in its self is not an unattainable thing. You may have to force them to listen, because our minds don't always do what we say, but they will listen. The best thing for you to do is return the favor and listen to them as well.

Hope this helps.

Peace and love
~Ellen

ETA: I did say once my monsters never came after me, and they never have. I've seen them, but never had one literally frighten me. Disturbed, yes, but never frightened. I've always know what they were, though. You knew it was your monster when you saw it... yet you were afraid. That is gut reaction for a lot of people. It may *feel* like you are being sought out, but it is in a very good way.

Mine is too, so I understand. I do. It takes work, it really does, but you can make it work to your advantage. If these things scare you, then that's good. It really is. Stephen King once said he only writes about things that scare him. (This was waaay back when, so that may not be the case anymore) and I only write things that scare me, when it comes to horror. If I'm not getting gooseflesh and freaking out, then I know it's just garbage anyway. Talk back... and see what those puppies say. You might be surprised what you learn. There are things about a character you might never know, until you ask. It's just teaching your mind to recognize the fear and put it on the backburner. You can do it, though. I know you can.

ETA: If you can't hold your pen for shaking too bad, buy a voice recording device for those times. I have one.

It could... if you don't want to dream. If your fear is so great that dreaming of it would be undesirable, then yesyes, that sounds like a good game plan. I relish the dreams, but unless it's heights or the dark, I like to be scared. Ghosts and goulies and wicked, evil beasties make me happy. Always have. I realize some people just aren't as flipped in the brain as I am, so you know. But that should work for you. Pleasantries before bed should soothe enough.

I hope one day to be in your position, in that the things I write scare me that much.
It sounds like a story that needs to be written, good luck.........

Sounds to me like you have one hell of an imagination!

As has been said, use it! If you can convey your own fear into your characters...BINGO.

icerose said:

My worst real dream I was in a car crash and was paralyzed from the waist down. I literally could not feel my legs or walk for a good 45 minutes after waking up, I had to pull myself along the floor until I got my sensations back, it was freaky.

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This sounds like a great idea for a story. Go for it. Maybe then you'll dream that your story will be accepted and you'll be paid big bucks for it.

Ice, I had one way back when that had this effect on me. I was sitting out on the screen porch one hot summer night working on it when I got so worked up I suddenly looked up at the dark night and freaked. I couldn't get in the house with the door locked fast enough. Do whatever you have to do to work it out. It'll get easier in time, but when it does, your stories will lose some of that edge. Start early and put all the lights on, but get to work!

I've had scary dreams that I thought, "This would be a great book", but the fear was gone by the time I started to write. I'm hard to scare and I find most of my dreams are sad rather than scary. But those that are scary--and that I remember--I try to use. My scariest dreams involve water and roads or paths that disappear into water. I've gotta use that.

How can I write horror?

I have the heart of a small child. I keep it in a jar next to my bed. Sometimes, when I'm writing and I just feel stuck, I look at that jar and the problem fades away.

Seriously, for me, I have a great deal of anger and animosity towards most people. Once, a guy I worked with looked at me when I was complaining about our customers and said, "you don't like people very much, do you?"

When my characters are getting mauled by some awful creature, I'm thinking of the bastard who short-changed me at the gas station. When my monster kills a woman, I'm thinking about the broad who flirted with me just to make another man jealous.

I'm writing a novel right now about two detectives investigating something five years after the zombie apocolypse. They are currently torturing a suspect who knows where the pedophile they're looking is hiding. The scene is hanging where one detective is nailing a stainless steel spike into the man's leg, just above the kneecap. Why am I hurting him with so much fun? That's the great thing about pedophiles--you can do anything you want to them and not feel bad.

I have a lot of nightmares. Sometimes, they get so bad I refuse to sleep. I sic my nightmares on real people I have encountered. Two weeks ago, I was at the grocery store and had to listen to a nagging woman in an electric scooter go on and on about how the sale was not really a sale. She's going to get her head ripped open and live for a long time as the doctors fumble with putting her back together using rusty instruments painted green. I had that dream not too long ago and it seems perfect for her.

I believe horror writers have a certain amount of anger in them. I believe horror writers, if given the chance, would have several bodies under their belt. And had it not been for those pesky cops and their fancy forensic laboratories, our world would be a few members short. The truth is, some folks are alive because it is illegal to kill them. In the fictional world, the defense of "He needed killin'" is a legitimate one.

I have let this question rest for a few days to allow some time for thinking. I guess what I write is considered 'dark' as I don't write the stuff that makes your skin crawl.

This might be the reason I don't do 'real horror'. I think I would find myself looking over my shoulder all the time. I love to view/read horror, but I think I am a bit afraid of letting my demons loose in my own head.

My hat is off to those that write what makes the goose bumps rise, the hairs stand on end, or the tummy turn.

Pick one from the list…

Well, I’ll give you the Stephen King answer first. We’re different people when we’re writing as opposed to when we’re serving mashed potatoes to the kiddies at the supper table.

When you’re writing, you’re in the moment of the scene, so it had darned well better scare you, otherwise it probably won’t scare anyone else.

If your story is having that effect upon you, then it’s probably working.

But, when the writing is done, it goes back into its mental toybox and more realistic worries creep in, like how I’m going to pay the light bill, get my next book written, which is a non-fiction one, while I meanwhile have this really neat-o fiction one pounding on my scheduling door, at which also pounds the numerous other deadlines, options for further work, the need to put some new tires on my car, fix the leak in the roof, and … and … well, you get the idea.

icerose: What methods do you use to write something that scares the heck out of you when almost nothing else does?

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Just write. I’m insufficiently imaginative, these days, to believe that monsters inside my head will spring to life and eat my soul -- after first torturing and mutilating my pale, poofy body in horrific fashion. But here’s the other thing, writing down the demons exorcises them, traps them in paper (or electronic ink) -- or at least it does by the time the work is finished.

Here’s another answer:

Get over it. It’s just made up stuff. The boogeyman is yours. You made him. If he wakes when the lights go out and you lay your head down to sleep, let him know that he is at your beck and call, that he can take a number and wait, and that you’ll get back to him in the morning, on your own time. Meanwhile, if you dream of him -- if you do -- consider only that which may prove useful to your design. This playground is yours. That’s all.

Here’s another one (all in good humor, too):

I’ve never, ever set out to write a horror story and found myself incapacitated by fear. It’s just a damn story, after all (advised word choice, by the way). “I’m so afraid of my own titanic and awesome imagination that I tremble -- nay, quiver, positively quiver! -- in fear at its each moment of terrible waking!” Sounds like a load of hooey. Are you so afraid of imagined things that you can’t proceed? Really? Like, c’mon an’ everything! Get a GI-Joe, action-figure-like kung-fu grip!

And one more:

If the possibility of writing horror doesn’t agree with you, write something else.

On this little tid of a bit:

TedTheewen: I believe horror writers have a certain amount of anger in them.

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Everyone does. Horror writers have no more or less than anyone else. (Well, except for maybe one scientist who turns big and green when he gets angry.)

icerose said:

I guess I don't get your type of humor Summonere.

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That's okay. I'm pretty sure no one else does, either (and I hadn't intended to step on virtual toes, if indeed I did). Still, I'm puzzled when I read things like...

icerose said:

I was merely trying to find out what other writers do when they're faced with a story that might be a bit too scary for them to write and how they conquer it in their own lives and write those stories anyway.

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See, my basic response to all questions amounts to little more than, Well, you're a writer aren't you? So just write. That's probably somewhere between not very helpful and not at all helpful. But how can a horror story possibly be too scary to write? That sounds like saying a thriller is too thrilling to write, or a science fiction story too science fictiony to write.

If, however, the matter is one of really liking the idea that you have and fearing that you will not do justice to it ... ah, now that may be a different fear altogether.

But to the point at hand, you could always take Stephen King's other advice: Write quickly.

I have to say, I agree with Summoner here. If it's horror, there's never too scary. Horror is supposed to be as scary as it can get. It is supposed to make you piss your pants. Not all of it, no, but trust me, if it has you scared enough to piss yourself, you're doing it right. There are levels of scary, sure, but as scary as it can get is the best. I love reading stuff that is going to make me tremble in my bed with the lights out, even if I did read it in the daytime. I like that scare, and i like giving it to other people. That's why I write horror. I may never accomplish giving others a major scare, but I'll sure as hell try. You should too because it sounds like you have the potential to do so.

icerose said:

...I really do have to write it during the day when the light is full or it just gets to be too scary for me. As crazy as that sounds, it really does.

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Well, to lean on Stephen King once more, he's said that he sometimes has to sleep with the lights on.

I always sleep with a light on, unless I have a migraine, like I did last night. I'm too afraid of the dark to sleep in it, and even if I do have a headache, I have to leave the TV on, turned down low. Sometimes, even then, I have to force myself to go to sleep. I freak out in the dark.

In my 20s I could think myself into a blue funk, but nowadays I can still think myself into sadness or anger or humour; just not into fear. Maybe it came from having to manage too many crises in my day-job.

I still feel fear; I know what scary situations are and from personal experience I how people feel and think and act in them, so I can write about those things authentically. I can also write about the perverse and the abhorrent and feel strongly about those things. What I can't do these days is make myself believe that scary situations are imminent or relevant when my senses tell me that they're not.

I've been writing horror stories since my 20s, and I don't believe that they've gotten any worse for this change. My preferences in horror stories has changed somewhat over the years (I much prefer the suspenseful and psych aspects nowadays to splatter). Fewer situations scare me, but perhaps more concern me -- I'm perhaps more of a sucker for suspense than I used to be.

All I can suggest is that you don't need to suffer quivering neuroses to write horror. I don't know that they are, but if your stories are terrifying you beyond the point of inspiration, it might be an idea to dig into that psychologically. Horror invention may be an integral part of your psyche, but I don't believe that it should clobber your courage, your self-confidence, your faith or your sense of perspective.

Hope that helps.