Elsa Carruthers

WPF January 2008 Term

Reading Journal:

Writing Horror by Edo Van Belkom

            Although this book is seven years old, it had a lot of useful information on horror writing. The sections that I found the most helpful were the first, Part One: The Horror Genre, the second, Part Two: Writing Horror and chapters nine, twelve, and thirteen of Part Three: The Horror Marketplace.

            In part one Belkom discusses the differences between horror and other speculative fiction and lists the basic subgenres of horror. The subgenre list is fairly complete and he took the time to give great examples of each.   What I particularly like about this part is that he shows how horror fits in the speculative fiction family and that it is quite easy to blend and stretch genres by adding horror elements to a story such as subject, mood, and tension. An example of this is the movie Alien. Alien is most often classified as a science fiction movie but it also works as a modern horror. It works as a horror because of the many scenes in it that were written specifically to terrorize the viewer. She is trapped with a predatory alien or “monster” and it is obvious that only one of them will survive.  

            Part two of the book is the nuts and bolts, how-to section and the best part of this section is chapter six, How Does Horror Work. In this part Belkom gives a tutorial on how to write fiction that is suspenseful and frightening. He explains how to use rising tension and the power of suggestion rather than specific descriptions of a monster or “boogey man” to terrify readers. He says that readers tend to fill details on their own and often make the story more frightening for themselves that way.  

Another thing he says is that it is a good idea when writing horror to use everyday settings and everyday characters because readers relate and identify with regular people and places and that makes it easier for them to suspend disbelief when the writer introduces horror and or supernatural elements into the story. 

            What I liked most about this book was that it is positive throughout. The message is that perseverance is really what gets a writer published. There is even a quote from Stephen King that I love.

            “In a way, with those early (unpublished) novels, I felt like a guy who was plugging quarters in the machine with the big jackpot. And yanking it down. And at first they were coming up all wrong. Then with the book before Carrie, felt I got two bars and a lemon; then with Carrie, bars across the board – and the money poured out. But the thing is, I was never convinced I was going to run out of quarters to plug into the machine. My feeling was, I could stand there forever until it hit. There was never really any doubt in my mind. A couple of times I felt I was pursuing a fools dream, but those moments were rare.”

Elsa Carruthers

WPF January 2008 Term

Reading Journal:

Mr. Hands by Gary Braunbeck

                Mr. Hands is a novel about a woman whose daughter is murdered and who suddenly finds herself with the power to seek vengeance against evil doers. Her daughter’s doll is somehow connected to a being or golem that does the mother’s bidding –with terrible consequences. It is a classic morality tale that is very well told and executed.   It works mainly because the reader is immediately invested in the story that the narrator starts even in the prologue.

                Chapter One is a page turner from the first line and I took an immediate like for RJ and his mother and immediate hate for his father.   The conflict is incredible. I was so impressed by the way that so many story-lines were brought together in the book that I tried to do it myself in a short-story turned novella I’ve been tinkering on (not as easy as he makes it seem)  Love this book!  Passed onto my husband who is now one of Gary's biggest fans.

Elsa Carruthers

WPF January 2008 Term

Reading Journal:

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite

                This novel is about two homosexual serial killers that meet in New Orleans where they join together to hunt a young man named Tran. He is the perfect victim, he is beautiful and sensitive and though the ending was inevitable and a little disappointing because I did want it to turn out better, I felt compelled to read through to the last page. 

                Brite’s writing impressed me deeply. Her prose packs a wallop and demands attention. Her subject matter and frankness also impressed me. She was not afraid of writing intimately about the lifestyle – even some of its unsavory parts.  I felt like an “insider” who had lived in the French Quarter all her life while reading Brite’s novel.   

Brite’s sensitivity while describing the suffering of AIDS victims and the deep love two men can share was moving. I was particularly moved when I read about John’s infection and his suicide in front of his only two friends. But the parts that “got” to me were when Brite managed to lull me into thinking I was reading an erotic scene only to pull the rug from under me and change the whole scene into a gory bloodbath. 

The effect was more than unsettling. I’m sure that was her point. To these men, Jay and Andrew, inflicting pain and suffering and ultimately committing murder is erotic. To them these acts of torture are expressions love and affection. And yet, both know, even comment on the fact that what there are really showing is not love at all. Or, if it is love, it is a very one sided kind of love –self love. The victims become objects to play with and the love that the killers attach to them is really just the love that they are giving to themselves. 

When Jay lets Andrew convince him into hunting Tran, even though he developed a respect and affection for Tran that didn’t allow him to kill Tran during their sexual encounter, for a flicker of a moment Jay had doubt. If Jay could have withstood Andrew’s power and charisma, he might have stopped killing.   At this point I think that Brite missed an opportunity for a huge conflict. Jay and Andrew love each other and have joined each other in killing. Although he is the bigger monster of the two, Jay is submissive to Andrew. But what would have happened if Jay refused Andrew his wish of killing Tran? What if he said no to killing altogether? 

Elsa Carruthers

WPF January 2008 term

Reading Journal:

Danse Macabre by Stephen King

            Danse Macabre is a survey of thirty years of American horror genre film, television and literature to the 1970s. King divides horror into three areas or archetypes: The Werewolf, The Thing Without A Name, and The Vampire. By Werewolf, King means stories about an inner evil that changes a person. Stories like Psycho, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Thing Without A Name refers to anything other and are tales of an outside evil. Aliens or Martians that turned hostile in response to our aggression, weird inventions or hybrids, accidents of birth due to medical intervention, machines that come alive are all examples.  

Vampire tales are also stories about an outside evil but unlike works like Frankenstein the evil is unavoidable; predestined like the prime athlete’s unexplained heart attack. Frankenstein, and novels like it, center on evil that is conscious and man-made. Dr. Frankenstein created the monster. The evil in Dracula really can’t be explained. It is ancient, supernatural. Victims can be said to sinners but really they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is like hitting some awful lottery where all of the prizes get progressively worse.

King also asserts that symbolism is inherent to the horror genre. To quote him, “Begin by assuming that the tale of horror, no matter how primitive, is allegorical by its very nature; that it is symbolic. Assume that it is talking to us, like a patient on a psychoanalyst’s couch, about one thing while it means another. I am not saying that horror is consciously allegorical or symbolic; that is to suggest an artfulness that few writers of horror fiction or directors of horror films aspire to.” (p.43)

I tend agree with him. People ask him and all horror writers why they write horror. For me it is what I know. I read the comics, watched the movies, and read the stories. And still, it’s more than that. Horror allows me a way to say things I just can’t in any other genre. Sure other genres touch upon some of the subjects that I think about, subjects that scare me and others, but they don’t center on them. Other genres don’t focus on the macabre, the grotesque that is everywhere in our society. And by writing those stories I’m doing what Stephen King says all horror writers are doing. I’m talking about one thing all the while meaning something else.