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Writing Horror, Part 2
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Continuing on in the HWA's Writing Horror manual, I've completed the next three chapters, and the following is a short summary of what I feel to be salient:
"Dark Light Focus: Karl Edward Wagner" by Robert E. Weinberg.
This chapter is no more than a succinct biography of the writer/editor Karl Wagner, who "was considered one of the fines short-story writers in the horror and fantasy fields of the 1980's." His background in abnormal psychology and a proclivity for nightmarish dreams probably assisted him in crafting numerous, well-received short horror pieces. Weinberg cites "Sticks," "Neither Brute nor Human," and "River of Night's Dreaming" as stellar works. The latter he describes as "one of the most unsettling horror stories set down on paper."
"Honest Lies and Darker Truths: History and Horror Fiction" by Richard Gilliam.
Summarizing Gilliams basic message is easy: Writers should lie to the best of their ability and use research to do it. When rewriting history, he claims, it's not necessarily important that all the facts are straight, but rather that the story has a relevance to today and that it resonates with current audiences. (He uses Braveheart the movie to illustrate his point, stating that although it strays widely from actual historical events, it is a compelling film which has generated new interest in its subject.)
Additionally, Gilliam briefly describes three sub-categories of the horror story:
1. What-ifs? -- Stories with an alternate history
2. Parables -- These mirror the problems of the contemporary era. (Seems like it would be easy to write a horror parable about current US politics!)
3. Gothic Horror. No brainer here, but Gilliam claims that most marketable horror pieces should have contemporary thematic content.
The chapter concludes with a superficial mention of writerly research methods. Mainly Gilliam focuses on Harlan Ellison's and Dennis Mannix's penchants for attempting to expeperience situations and settings firsthand in order to write about them. Apparently Ellison joined a Bronx street gang, and Mannix allowed vampire bats to chomp on his arm. Other research methods are left entirely up to the reader's imagination...
One final note about this chapter: Owl Goingback gets some props as one of Gilliam's sources for Cherokee religious history. It startled me to see that name because I met Goingback a long time ago, I believe, in Athens, Georgia, where the UGA Flying Rat Toli Team had a match against the Choctow. I swapped him one of our Flying Rat t-shirts for an Indian charm that I later hung from the mirror of my first car, a 1973 Opel GT.
"What You are Meant to Know" by Robert E. Weinberg.
My favorite chapter so far, and here's a quick and dirty wrap-up of it: Creativity sells, but - first - in order to work in the field, the writer needs to know his/her subject. The following works are essential "background" reading:
1. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
2. Dracula, Bram Stoker
3. The Ghost Pirates, William Hope HOdgson
4. Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James
5. Burn Witch Burn, A Merrit
6. To Walk the Night, William Sloane
7. The Dunwitch Horror & Others, H.P. Lovecraft
8. Fear, L.R. Hubbard
9. Darker Than You Think, Jack Williamson
10. Conjure Wife, Fritz Leiber
11. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
12. Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin
13. The Collected Short Stories of Richard Matheson
14. Hell House, Richard Matheson
15. The October Country, Ray Bradbury
16. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
17. The Exorcist, Willaim Peter Blatty
18. Falling Angel, William Hjortsberg
19. Salem's Lot, Steven King
20. The Stand, Steven King
21. Watchers, Dean Koontz
And I'm going to add the following titles which weren't on Weinberg's list:
22. Ghost Story, Peter Straub
23. The Song of Kali, Dan Simmons (not exactly horror, but downright spooky.)
OK, that concludes the section of the book entitled "Developing Horror Concepts." I'm hoping that the next, "Horror Crafting: Plot, Characters, Mood, and More" proves a little more insightful...
------------------------------
Books currently under the glass:
The Flickering Mind by Todd Oppenheimer
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
Writing Horror edited by Mort Castle, HWA
"Dark Light Focus: Karl Edward Wagner" by Robert E. Weinberg.
This chapter is no more than a succinct biography of the writer/editor Karl Wagner, who "was considered one of the fines short-story writers in the horror and fantasy fields of the 1980's." His background in abnormal psychology and a proclivity for nightmarish dreams probably assisted him in crafting numerous, well-received short horror pieces. Weinberg cites "Sticks," "Neither Brute nor Human," and "River of Night's Dreaming" as stellar works. The latter he describes as "one of the most unsettling horror stories set down on paper."
"Honest Lies and Darker Truths: History and Horror Fiction" by Richard Gilliam.
Summarizing Gilliams basic message is easy: Writers should lie to the best of their ability and use research to do it. When rewriting history, he claims, it's not necessarily important that all the facts are straight, but rather that the story has a relevance to today and that it resonates with current audiences. (He uses Braveheart the movie to illustrate his point, stating that although it strays widely from actual historical events, it is a compelling film which has generated new interest in its subject.)
Additionally, Gilliam briefly describes three sub-categories of the horror story:
1. What-ifs? -- Stories with an alternate history
2. Parables -- These mirror the problems of the contemporary era. (Seems like it would be easy to write a horror parable about current US politics!)
3. Gothic Horror. No brainer here, but Gilliam claims that most marketable horror pieces should have contemporary thematic content.
The chapter concludes with a superficial mention of writerly research methods. Mainly Gilliam focuses on Harlan Ellison's and Dennis Mannix's penchants for attempting to expeperience situations and settings firsthand in order to write about them. Apparently Ellison joined a Bronx street gang, and Mannix allowed vampire bats to chomp on his arm. Other research methods are left entirely up to the reader's imagination...
One final note about this chapter: Owl Goingback gets some props as one of Gilliam's sources for Cherokee religious history. It startled me to see that name because I met Goingback a long time ago, I believe, in Athens, Georgia, where the UGA Flying Rat Toli Team had a match against the Choctow. I swapped him one of our Flying Rat t-shirts for an Indian charm that I later hung from the mirror of my first car, a 1973 Opel GT.
"What You are Meant to Know" by Robert E. Weinberg.
My favorite chapter so far, and here's a quick and dirty wrap-up of it: Creativity sells, but - first - in order to work in the field, the writer needs to know his/her subject. The following works are essential "background" reading:
1. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
2. Dracula, Bram Stoker
3. The Ghost Pirates, William Hope HOdgson
4. Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James
5. Burn Witch Burn, A Merrit
6. To Walk the Night, William Sloane
7. The Dunwitch Horror & Others, H.P. Lovecraft
8. Fear, L.R. Hubbard
9. Darker Than You Think, Jack Williamson
10. Conjure Wife, Fritz Leiber
11. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
12. Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin
13. The Collected Short Stories of Richard Matheson
14. Hell House, Richard Matheson
15. The October Country, Ray Bradbury
16. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
17. The Exorcist, Willaim Peter Blatty
18. Falling Angel, William Hjortsberg
19. Salem's Lot, Steven King
20. The Stand, Steven King
21. Watchers, Dean Koontz
And I'm going to add the following titles which weren't on Weinberg's list:
22. Ghost Story, Peter Straub
23. The Song of Kali, Dan Simmons (not exactly horror, but downright spooky.)
OK, that concludes the section of the book entitled "Developing Horror Concepts." I'm hoping that the next, "Horror Crafting: Plot, Characters, Mood, and More" proves a little more insightful...
------------------------------
Books currently under the glass:
The Flickering Mind by Todd Oppenheimer
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
Writing Horror edited by Mort Castle, HWA
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