CREATIVE WRITING
HORROR: The first time hurts
Author Grady Hendrix sets out the seven simple questions to ask before you write your first horror story if you want to increase your odds of survival
W
hen I started writing in the early 2000s, horror was dead. The genre had flamed out in the mid-90s and fantasy writers like Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, and George RR Martin dominated genre fiction. Barnes and Noble took out its horror sections and shelved horror in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Literary fiction writers wanting to play with genre gravitated to mysteries and fantasy, from The Lovely Bones to The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. The big bestselling books came from Susanna Clarke and J.K. Rowling and they were about magic.
Fourteen years later, horror is having a moment. I’m seeing more and more writers shopping first novels that are horror, more and more kids in workshops experimenting with horror, and more and more horror-curious literary fiction writers dipping cautious toes into these dark waters.
Welcome to the party! If you’re curious about the strange noises coming from that old house, and you think writing a horror short story is your key to getting inside, then here’re a few questions you might want to ask yourself before scrambling over the rusted gate and switching on your flashlight.
IS IT SCARY?
That’s everyone’s first question about horror, and it’s absolutely the wrong question. Recently, I was asked to work on a screenplay for a horror movie by a director I really like. His comedies were sharp, his dramas were beautifully observed, but this horror screenplay felt like someone jumping out of a closet and shouting, ‘Boo!’ Scary? I guess. Interesting? No. An elderly, ancillary character in the screenplay felt very close to the director’s life and I asked if he’d be open to making him the main character and turning it into a horror movie about aging and feeling out of step with the world as you get older. The director was baffled. To him, horror was about scaring people, not talking about real life. We didn’t wind up working together.