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Just from my limited knowledge, theres many types of horror. Psychological, supernatural (vampires, werewolves and such), the slasher horror you refer to, and many more. If your looking for a great book about writing horror and the different types, check out On Writing Horror. I cant say enough just how great this book is.

I don't really know, Cass. It's mostly markets and such that we have help-wise, so let me see what I can do.

Classifying horror is like trying to categorize your children. Yes, there are psychological, creature horror, blood and guts, supernatural, religious themed, etc. types and such.

Personally, I don't pay much attention to any of these. I just write what I write. It's horror, plain and simple.

To write horror, you have to understand fear and its effects. I know that sounds lame, but it's just about the only hard and fast line to horror.

I do note that horror in general is more character driven than anything. It's all about how the characters feel/think/react--because if you do it right, the characters become the reader and the scare is truer, feels more natural and delves deeper into the mind. Is horror more cerebral? I like to think so, though some may disagree.

I don't really know what to say regarding horror writing. I've posted quite a bit about it on my blog, though the posts are older--from months ago. My opinions on the best approach vary from story to story. But, if you take a look around some of the stickies up at the top, you might find some small nuggets of information. We tend to play a lot here in horror--prompts, games and just general goofing off. We're kind of like a family--as Haggis has said on more than one occasion. We haven't seriously discussed the mechanics of horror writing--at least not to my knowledge. Maybe someone who has been around longer will remember some threads and I can do a search, but I'd need to know a bit more of what you are looking for. I don't think there are any actual how-to's here, or they'd be stickied. I could be wrong, though.

Actually, a thread devoted to the mechanics of horror writing would be interesting. We could lure some poor, unsuspecting horror writer over to host it like Uncle Jim does his writing thread and then ambush him and keep him prisoner, forcing him (or her) to write post after post forever throughout eternity...

Joe Konrath around anywehere? He's written horror, is an AW member, and has also written thrillers which have a lot in common with horror I think. Maybe we could get Joe to start and host such a thread here (although Willie Merkle and a couple others might qualify as well).

I could, of course, recommend my own blog, but my comments there are still few and relatively unknown like me.

Just wanted to add that I'd love a thread like this too.

I know there are certain things I do that (hopefully) increase tension and horror in a story, although I'm no expert and wouldn't feel comfortable starting a thread about that.

I'm curious though... do you guys deliberately make certain choices in order to increase suspense? How do you decide what will make a scene seem more dangerous/horrific to the reader?

I guess we need to run things by Haggis and Her Tigery Mistressness to get a "Mechanics of Horror" thread initiated and stickied, and then we need a guest horror vic...er, writer to put us on the straight and narrow. I'm not hooked up with HWA, but I bet we could recruit from there or at least get a couple names.

If not, maybe Mac or Matera or Willie or Haggis or half a dozen others know some people who could chime in?

jgold, I deliberately make quite a few choices while I'm writing in order to heighten tension and suspense. Sometimes the choices come naturally, but most of the time they have to be beaten into churlish, snarling, tentacle-writhing submission in rewrites and edits.

When deciding what scenes will be the most dangerous/horrific for the reader you have to put yourself in the place of the reader - invision what you would think if you were reading this paragraph or scene from someone else's book. If your reaction is "That's just stupid" then it probably is. But if your reaction is "Gross" "Yuck" "Omigod" or most especially "That's totally cool!" then you might just have something that's a keeper.

NueroFizz is a HWA member, I think. Liam might be one to do it, but I don't see him much. Has anyone sent Puppy a message?

Hi Cass! Very cool, but I think you guys are already working on the thread you want. As for HWA, maybe Haggis will know someone, or someone who knows someone. LOL I believe Scott Nicholson and Jack Ketchum are members. But hell, we might as well beg the King to stop for a visit. AW is so huge it's good publicity. (Like he needs it. )

As for what makes good horror...pulling out the stakes. Any kind of writing is best done when you add yourself and let go. Horror maybe even moreso. If your knees start knocking you're doing great. If your heart starts pounding, you've upped the ante even more. If you can hardly write for looking over your shoulder, you've hit gold. But like Effie said, it's really only going to work when you've established a relationship with your character.

Well, we could hold up a mirror to a myriad of relatively good books on the subject and get a myriad of good answers I guess. We could also mirror Uncle Jim's writing thread (I expect we'll pull a lot of good material from there), but I guess the best place to start such a thread is just to start one.

I haven't sent Haggis a note yet, but I'll get one out right away and see what he says before I start one (and then I gotta' go dig into my archives and see which one offers the best "advice"; there's also a blog or three on writing horror as well as a "how to" over on the HWA site as I recall that we could cull some snippets from.

The best place to start, of course, will be "In the beginning" or how to start a horror story.

Do we want to focus on horror shorts or novels? I see no problem with either.

<Off to fire off a note to Haggis>

Message and permission request sent to Haggis.

Guys, you're always welcome to start any thread on horror. Don't need to ask. If it's stick-worthy (and this should be) it will be stickied.

It will be damned hard to find a pro to "host" the thread. There are not a lot of Uncle Jims out there willing to make that kind of time commitment, and we're fortunate to have ours already in Novels. We do have our HWA members though, as has been pointed out. I know Fizzy belongs, and I expect Liam does too. He qualifies, for sure, and I can't imagine why he wouldn't have joined.

Why don't you guys poke around among those you know and see if you can't rustle up a thread-of-the-week pro or three? I'll poke around among the mods and see who someone there might know.

If push comes to shove (or whatever other trite phrase you can think of), we can always do it ourselves. Pick a weekly topic (pacing, dialogue, hooks, whatever) and discuss it to death.

So, okay then. Let's go forth and multiply.

FOTSGreg said:

Message and permission request sent to Haggis.

Click to expand...

With the appropriate sacrificial offerings?

ETA: I guess so... (damn my crappy internet connection)

Haggis said:

Why don't you guys poke around among those you know and see if you can't rustle up a thread-of-the-week pro or three? I'll poke around among the mods and see who someone there might know.

If push comes to shove (or whatever other trite phrase you can think of), we can always do it ourselves. Pick a weekly topic (pacing, dialogue, hooks, whatever) and discuss it to death.

Click to expand...

Bolding mine.

Puppy, I actually think that might be better. Then, no one would have to really commit (we know how time can be), just pop in once a week and give their opinion on the current discussion, if they can and if not, we could just discuss it amongst ourselves. Good idea.

Who's gonna do it? I don't know anyone but you guys in the writing/publishing world.

Haggis, Thanks very much for the answer(s). I trust the sacrificial offering in the traditional manner was to your liking (I can't vouch for her being a virgin and we had to use a hot BBQ instead of a volcano and the utterances may not have been exactly phonetically correct, but overall it does appear that we have our answer).



I'll go start a thread on the mechanics of horror writing, but before I do I'd like us all to decide on a title for the thread. As Haggis said we can always make it sticky if it eventually deserves to be.

My proposed titles,

Writing Down The Blood
Writing In The Blood
Writing With The Blood

<all 3 with a nod to our 'Sisters In Blood' Horror Hounds>

or

On Horror Writing
On Writing Horror

or

Shock and Awe (The Mechanics of Horror Writing)
Bare Bones (How To Write Horror) <I kinda' like this one>

Whattaya' think? <Any and all other proposals will be considered and should be voted on, of course, but Haggis and Her Tigery Mistressness will have the final say (maybe, ultimately, if they want to)>

I'm kinda liking those last two, Greg. I'm feeling those titles.

Cassie, Horror definitely has its own grammar and syntax, I think. However, that grammar and syntax is intended for purposes of holding the reader in suspense and not explaining what is going on to them. In this manner the grammar and syntax of horror is very different from science fiction and fantasy, some might even say simpler.

However, if it is simpler, then it is also more psychologically complex and complicated because the writer must somehow manage to engross the reader in his imaginary world and hold their attention, their suspension of disbelief, and their sense of apprehension and, 'fear' perhaps is the best word, in a much more careful manner. A mere turn of a phrase can serve to ruin an entire story if it is not handled with the utmost deftness. A single word or miswording can throw the reader entirely out of the psycholoical state they have placed themselves in when reading horror.

Horror writing, however, does not require the command of language that science fiction or literary novels do. The words themselves can be much simpler. There's little or no technobabble of bafflegab in good horror (there is enough in bad horror, of course). The best language is often the simplest. The best words are often the most straightforward just as the best actions by the characters are often the most straightforward.

If the characters speak like real people, it is much easier to get the reader to suspend his or her sense of disbelief and become engrossed in the story world in my opinion because the reader wants to become part of the story world. They want to be scared, to get that adrenaline rush as the hero faces up to the challenge presented by the story's monster (be it human or otherwise).

So, in order to have our characters speaking like real people, we have to use simpler grammar and syntax. That is not to say that real people are simple. But examine the way you use language in everyday conversations or when under stress. You won't find too many characters in a horror story saying "Cap'n, the warp convutranslationers are positively ionized and we'll all die if I don't depolarize the Gable-torsioners within the next fifteen seconds."

Instead, we have a character in a horror story saying "Cap'n, we're all going to die if I don't fix this right now!"

That's a spectacular point, Greg. And might be a good starting point for the discussion at large once the thread is up and running.

So... what are we going with? Weekly topics to discuss or just a general how-to type thing? I think it'd be better as a weekly discussion thing, but that's only my opinion.

I vote for Bare Bones too, and my vote is for the weekly topic sort of thing. My suggestion for the first week would be "In The Beginning - How To Start Your Horror Story", but the grammar & syntax thing might be a good place as well especially since that's an incredibly important part of your beginnings.

Cassie,

Aw, shucks...

I'll be sure to copy the post to the thread here in just a couple minutes as a starter.