Bare Bones-How To Write Horror

This thread evolved from the "Helpful Threads" thread as most of you will know.

Our purpose here is to examine the details of writing horror stories (including the flash, short short, short story, novella, and novel forms) in a "mechanical" sense rather than a general sense.

We'll get technical at times, I hope, being very specific about very specific topics.

We'll be general, I hope, about topics that need generalizing.

Moreover, I hope we'll be able, with the number of people who are here at AW and/or able to be lured over to be "guest vic..., er, speaker", to drill down to the specifics of how one goes about writing in the horror genre, a genre which has a very different grammar and syntax, a very different purpose, and a very different readership than virtually any other genre.

Rules? We're not going to be that much into "rules" here. As long as you stay generally on topic, are asking a good question, are not spamming the thread, we'll keep things as wide open as possible within the weekly topic.

With that said... let's kick this puppy (Oops! Sorry, Haggis) off.

Week 1 Topic: Grammar & Syntax

Most of us down in the other thread thought this would be as good a topic as any to begin this thread with. We'll spend the rest of the week discussing grammar and syntax and the niceties thereof (and the nuances) and we'll also decide (Thursday or Friday, I think) what everyone wants to discuss for next week's topics.

Cassiopeia asked,We know grammar and punctuation are common across the genres but what about syntax. Is there a type of syntax associated with this genre?

I responded, 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!"

Now, don't anyone get the idea that I'm some kind of expert. Dissent and discussion, argument and counterpoint are going to be welcomed so long as we stay reasonably civil within the boundaries set by the Mods.

So, in the immortal words of Ed Sullivan, "And away we go!"

Week 2 Topic Voting

Suggestions,

Plotting - Plotting (of course) the horror story (Plot? What's a plot? Do they worry about plot in the movies? Hell, no... I don't need no stinkin' plot!)
In The Beginning - Beginning (of course) the horror story (How the hell do I begin this horrible idea I have?)

I consider an outline to be a rough plot of how your story is going to unfold. A true plot may be rough, with only a few pages of notes or generalized chapter outlines or it can be nearly as long as the novel is going to be itself.

Personally, I think of a true outline as being only a rough sketch of the story "outlines". It's only the rough beginnings of a plot - like having all the chapter titles, but not what actually goes on inside the chapter itself.

A plot (and I find myself favoring the 3x5 card method of plotting) can be an extremely detailed and involved accounting and description of what goes on in a story not just chapter-by-chapter, but scene-by-scene and also includes specific character descriptions (cards), scenery descriptions, and everthing the writer might eventually need to know about his or her work.

Or, it can be a few hundred words that provide the writer a basic roadmap for where his or her story is going to go.

It' kind of like the difference between a verbal set of instructions on how to get to your destination (the outline), a roadmap (the simple couple-hundred word plot, and a GPS system (the plot that may be as long as the finished work).

icerose, Sure, why not? What do you suggest as the first things the writer is going to have to tackle first, what first challenges they're going to face, and what they first need to address?

Obviously, the gist of a notion, the ghost of an idea is not going to be enough to power a writer all the way through to the end of a story. There's a lot of stuff that needs to happen between the idea or notion and the first placing of fingers upon keyboard or pen/pencil to paper.

We're right there right now.Put yourself in the place of someone (yourself, hopefully) who's just been struck by the thought "Hey, that'd make one helluva' scary story." What's the first thing(s) you need to do? A few of these things are absolutely critical, but there's one that's most important, way more important than any other. You just got a great idea. What do you do first?

C'mon, the clock is ticking...

icerose, On the contrary. Your answer is quite helpful. You point out some of the agonization and decision-making a writer has to go through to be able to move past idea and onto plotting and outlining (and we'll get to the difference probably in a couple or three weeks, maybe).

First though, let's take a step back. You've had that idea. It's burning in your mind like a fever dream. You've just awakened in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat, knowing that this is an idea that will absolutely make you a success as a writer. This story's going to sell. It's so sure-fire you can't even begin to believe it yourself.

What's the absolute first thing you should do NO MATTER WHAT ELSE HAPPENS?

One hundred points to the woman with the rose encased in ice!

Absolutely.

The first thing you do when you have a great idea is "WRITE IT DOWN!"

I don't care if you're in the throes of the best sex you've ever had, if you're on a gurney going to the hospital for a heart attack, waiting for the bell to ring before class starts, or mulling your morning coffee - when you have one of those ideas, no matter when, no matter where, no matter what - WRITE IT DOWN!

The fact is that for every writer out there there's a hundred million other people who've had good ideas that vanished within seconds as their short-term memory faded after a dream or in an idle moment of contemplation or in a moment of inspiration. For every ten thousand wannabe writers with an idea, there's a single author who wrote down their idea and followed through on the writing of that story.

If there's nothing else this thread can establish, it should be the importance of writing down - and filing - every single story idea your ever have.

Some of those jewels will come back to you eventually.

When you're writing your idea down, it's at least as important to try to write down everything about the idea including the characters, names, descriptions, and scenery that comes to you as it is to just write down the title and the basic idea.

Most ideas come complete with all of the above. You know how the story starts and how the story ends, who the characters are (at least the important ones), and how the story ultimately needs to unfold.

Unfortunately, you might not know how the story unfolds in the beginning or the middle and we'll eventually get to those points.

There are several keys, I believe, to getting the whole idea written down. Keep a notebook or voice recorder by your bedside at night. Some of my best ideas have come from dreams when my subconscious is free to play merry hell with my neurons and synapses and rearrange things as it darned well sees fit. There's a mighty fine new digitial recorder being sold that records up to 288 hours of voice recording digitally and has the software for editing and the USB cable for dumpling the recordings to the computer. It's manufactured by Sony and sold at WalMart for only $49.95. You can mark it off as a business expense on your taxes.

Using pencil and paper, try to draw a map of the core ideas found in your story. Every story has a central idea. But every story also has a web of secondary ideas and relationships. You don;t have to be an artist to draw li8nes intercionnecting the ideas as they come to you as you draw out your "idea map". This simple exercise will help you later on when you're trying to figure out why this event and that character or vice versa are somehow related.

The important thing, of course, is to get it down in some form that you can reasonably expect to be able to retrieve it later.

Just as an aside and example, last night while watching The Universe on The History Channel I had an idea for a science fiction story. They were talking about Saturn's rings and explaining how the outer ring is only about 30 ft thick, but how, on occasion, there are waves that move along the ring that rear up over a mile high. Now, the rings move around Saturn at upwards of 50-70 thousand mph, but I was thinking about what might happen if you had an explorer trapped in a ship inside the ring system. He's got the technology to move his ship into the ring at a speed where collisions with the particles will not instantly destroy him. He knows that he somehow needs to "surf" his way out of the ring system and knows that the phenomenon of the wave in the outer ring can "fling" him free of the system.

How does he go about doing this and what challenges will he face along the way?

I'm going to call it "Surfing Saturn".

There, I just wrote the idea down and I now have a solid reference point for the story itself (even though it's not, technically, horror, it can be made very dark - a situation faced by a lone explorer, far away from the rest of civilized humanity, and one which the character and only the character can surmount - for a similar "dark" SF story, please see The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. You can find it here,

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/...e World Turned Upside Down/0743498747__19.htm

Of course, at the end of the story the character will realize that he's not only survived, he's invented a new extreme sport...

Okay, what's next? Let's go back a bit and look at grammar and syntax just for jollies.

I said that the grammar and syntax for horror novels had to be at once simpler, but also more complex than the grammar for, say, science fiction and fantasy novels.

So, the simpler part is easy. We don;t have to go in for a lot of bafflegam and technobabble. Our characters can be relatively straightforward in their speech and mannerisms. That makes them more real to the reader and allows them to connect on a deeper level.

But how is the grammar and syntax more complex?

Horror has to create a sense of "suspense", of "tension", of psychological "desperation" in the characters if it's going to succeed in its purpose (which is to scare people, to get their blood racing, their heart beating, and to give them the "rush" that comes with being scared).

Some of this is done by using pacing. The story has to go through several ups and downs just like a roller coaster. But the majority of it, it seems to me, is done with the use of the most basic words at the most basic times, that is, using the right word at the right time to set the moment and create the scene.

Some might call this "turning a phrase", but it's really more than that. It's using the appropriate word in the appropriate part of the sentence.

For example, in our very basic example above, we have a character saying "Cap'n, we're all going to die if I don't fix this right now!"

Now, that's okay as it stands, but there are a few other ays to turn the phrase and, quite frankly, I don;t like it the way it sits right now. It's not immediate enough. It doesn;t quite "feel" right. So, let's look at the critical components of the sentence itself.

"Cap'n, we're all going to die if I don't fix this right now!"

"Cap'n" is a simple colloquial address from one individual to another. It's important only in that it tells the reader who is speaking and who the speaker is speaking to. Be careful, wary, and avoid, if you can, the overt use of colloquilisms. They get tedious very, very fast. Scotty has a great on-screen personality and his brogue and colloquialisms make him a great character on-screen, but I really don't want to be reading, and trying to interpret, his brogue on the printed page.

"...we're all going to die..."

This sets the intensity level of the situation, but it does little else. If the writer has been careful in setting up his scene, we already know how critical the situation is. So, this part of the sentence is also secondary.

Finally, we arrive at "...if I don't fix this right now!"

This is the crux of the sentence and the portion that readers will remember when they move on. It sets the tone for what's going to be said and what's going to happen next, but it;s very, very passive. In a crisis situation very few people, save maybe Scotty, are actually going to say something like this. What they're more likely to say is "Leave me the f%^k alone so I can work" or they're going to completely ignore anyone around them. Let's say the character has to address his captain and state what's going on just for jollies, again. So, how do we make this sentence more "active"?

By choosing the critical words and changing the grammar and syntax so as to heighten the tension of the situation.

"Cap'n, we're all going to die if I don't fix this right now!"

So, how would you rephrase this sentence to impart more of an active voice and to heighten the tension of the scene (without actually adding any additional words or window-dressing to the sentence itself - we just want to look at this single sentence and restructure or reword it and it alone)?

That's your assignment for the next 24 hours.

Have fun.

That's exactly the kind of thing that editors face every day.

They can't change the author's meaning for a particular sentence or phrase, but they can suggest changes to make the sentence stronger.

The object isn't to flesh out the scene, it's to make the sentence stronger.

It's okay if that's not completely understood right now. That's part of the exercise. Look at the sentence. Figure out a way to make the sentence stronger, to make it come across to the reader as something other than just a catch-phrase the character might rattle off all the time.

I'll even open it up. Rewrite the sentence completely to make it stronger, more dramatic. Remember, the characters in the story have 15 seconds to live unless the speaking character does his job.

Make him say it "live".

Shail, You're definitely not intruding. This is supposed to be a workshop thread on writing horror stories and novels. Everyone's welcome and everyone's opinions are valued.