Why write horror?

When I took my recent getaway, I struck up a conversation with this middle-aged retired couple. They were okay until I said I wrote horror. Their reaction was immediate condemnation and disgust. If they had a cross, they would have pulled it out then, and if they had Bible, they would have started an exorcism. Next time I'll just say I write fantasy.

This wasn't the only time that happened. Back in 2002 when I was at an SF workshop, one of the three stories I submitted was horror. The published author and professor leading the workshop said he didn't like horror fiction, as opposed to optimistic SF, and proceeded with an acerbic review of it. He didn't say, “no horror," so how was I to know? SF and horror have a lot of overlap (see Alien) . At the time, I used an earlier version of OpenOffice, which by default saved in a file incompatible with Word. No one informed me it didn't print up right. So, included in the critiques, I got this truly inappropriate blame about the format by a woman telling me she didn't read horror, that it gives her nightmares. Her tone suggested I not only inconvenienced but actually abused her. Workshop rules said we couldn't defend ourselves or speak during critiques. So it was all very embarrassing. I still want my money back; this workshop cost a lot. I will say, though, one author, Kij Johnson, (creator of The Fox Woman series) took me aside and gave a me some very helpful suggestions, though it was to be years before I wrote again.

This goes to show writing horror marginalizes you, even more than atheism does. This poses another question: why would an atheist like me even write fantasies about supernatural beings that absolutely do not exist? The short answer: because reality gets boring. It's part of a larger question, though, why should any fiction author waste time writing characters that they know don't exist? There's a more lengthy answer is also more theoretical and philosophical. Reality weighs on us. Being conscious requires our minds to create a constant waking narrative. That narrative is our mind's interface with the physical world. To maintain it puts unconscious constraints and demands on our minds and emotions. Because that "real" narrative is strictly connected to events and objects we perceive in the physical world, a person's it is rigid and wearisome for us.Yet, consciousness must create, immerse or conform to narrative.

Dreaming shows that our minds do this as intrinsic function. My hypothesis: our unconscious minds crave a "vacation,"  a narrative it can create or escape to, one that has more imaginative freedom than the reality we live in. That is the whole reason for fiction and much of the reason for games. Meanwhile, the mind still craves the stimulation of the unexpected.

This hypothesis might explain the appeal of fiction, but it leaves horror as an anomaly. Why “escape” into something that frightens you? No doubt, enjoying a story or film that scares you is a paradoxical experience to say the least. Evolution has made fear unpleasant, thrills notwithstanding. Though nothing can jump off the page or out of the screen to kill the reader or viewer,  physical safety implies neither a feeling of security nor a psychological separation from the fate of the characters in the story. It's not that audiences are cowards, either. They simply can't see a reason to marshal courage for story they're supposed to enjoy, nor can the see the cause in withstanding the nauseating things described. Additionally, such bravery is futile; they can't change what's already written on the page, and when the story or film is finished, they might not feel relief. Many carry it to bed with them where it prompts nightmares. We all know somebody who has memories of the horror movie that traumatized them as children, and they have never checked the genre again as adults. Of course, such people can't see the point in horror, and their aversion is understandable.

More than any other genre outside of porn, horror isn't taken seriously as literature. Even more than fantasy, it's maligned as exploitative, sensational and shallow. People question the morality of its themes and motives of its creators. For a writer trying to sell his work, it's a niche with few outlets. In most Writers' Market fiction entries, the most common phrase you'll read is "no horror."  (This makes searching for horror with Writers' Market's clunky, inadequate search engine just that much harder. Every publication that says "no horror" comes up with a search for "horror.") It's largely segregated from more respectable literature. People don't want to see those disturbing stories juxtaposed with "real" fiction. Even many SF & F fans don't want it.

On top of this, there are religious and moral objections even to the lightest, most fun horror. Such as, for example, H. P. Lovecraft. (I know; not the "lightest" horror by any means, however, the stories are written on the same general theme that became a cliche fifty years ago. Hence, nothing's left but hydrogen).  Any of his stories are a challenge to any Christian dogma and doctrine. Yes, the Cthulhu universe is fictional, but its non-occult parts resemble ours enough to challenge believers. They have to think again about where the universe might have really come from. This line of thought, for Judeo-Christian religions can't lead to anything but blasphemy or weakening of faith.

Writers, especially for screenplays, are reluctant to confront religion directly. It hurts profits to have your movie banned, and it's painful to have your books burned. Also, many writers have not thought out the tension between horror and religion and are themselves religious. Sometimes the conflict between religion and secularism is played out within a writer, a skirmish in the culture war. A writer can be as torn as the society he or she lives in.

I knew all this when I first began to write. Yet, I was driven to write horror and it wasn't rational, wasn't commercially the best of choices. I tried to go against it, and results were decades of writers' block, which if you think about it, is commercially the worst choice.

And from here, I get to one reason to write horror: even with the low regard for the genre, originality in good horror is a way to challenge our deepest assumptions. In life only a trauma causes re-examination of beliefs. So, horror is like a simulated trauma. Perhaps, this is a way to illustrate the nature of good and evil, conscious and unconscious, spiritual and illusion, in a way that can't be managed in conventional literature, cinema, or in any other genre.

Horror has a long, fine, unappreciated tradition. For an example: the Bible is a horror story. I say this without any sarcasm. How? Look at the Old Testament objectively: a wrathful, unstable, vindictive supernatural being who says He's God, who probably is God, takes control of a small desert tribe. They proceed to massacre the tribes around them and create a thriving kingdom. But this "god" is both mean-tempered and jealous. They must make sacrifices to appease his constant bad temper, and He loves the smell of burning animal flesh and blood, making his altars, and later his temples abattoirs. Meanwhile, his subject people may acknowledge the powers of no other supernatural beings. But since the existence of God implies that others might exist, this proves to be impossible for the people. They incur their jealous God's wrath and he goes on regular killing sprees on His chosen. Finally He withdraws His protection and lets the surrounding kingdoms punish them decimate them.

Look at the psychological elements of using horror in Christianity: horror, original sin, the fear of Hell and of a wrathful, vindictive God is used to challenge people's deepest assumptions. The preacher hopes that these stories will convert people. And, when contrasted with the Christian “loving” God as a source of relief, it works. So, don't tell me that horror isn't effective.

Before I get sidetracked into making this a criticism of Christianity, I'll add horror elements are hardly unique to Christianity. Most religions have them. The Iliad and Odyssey: the Cyclops was a monster, of course. So was the Hydra in Heracles Twelve Labours, and Medusa, even the concept of such a thing is terrifying. There's always a monster, an evil to fight in any culture. Back to Christian literature, there was Dante's Inferno and Paradise Lost, with plenty of horror scenes in both. Then there are Indian myths. Modern horror stories draw on Kali a lot. Examine any of the Assyrian or Aztec gods, and they are monsters.

So, despite its ill-repute, horror is a refinement of ancient literary traditions, that go back long before Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Take all the horror out of religious scriptures central to our culture, and they will make no sense. The difference today is that it has been segregated into a genre, and people are more skilled in writing it, and depicting it on the screen than they were. 

The reason why horror occurs in religious scripture is because fear makes people pay attention and remember. Of course the writer always wants that in any literature. If you're careful, you can sneak a theme in there that will make readers think later as they recall how scary the scene was. If you're clever and lucky, they will do so many times in their life, especially if you connect it with something commonplace. All writers desire this. As Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, said when asked why his stories were so violent, he said it because he was competing with movies, TV and video games, so he needed to use whatever he had in his arsenal. I never forgot that quote. Nevertheless, he understated it. With the Internet, there are literally millions of writers. If you feel you have something important to say, you pull out all stops to get noticed, get your point across, and get people to remember it. People remember being terrified. We all have memories to this day of that horror movie that scared us as child, made us hide behind the chair, and gave us nightmares.

But let's face it, when you're not in danger, an adrenaline rush is thrilling. Some travel the whole world for it, such as to surf fifty foot waves in the cold water next to a crumbling glacier. People desire horror for the thrill, but readers are not generally thrill seekers. If they were, there are greater ones in real life that entail real danger. They want to simulate the thrill in a safe way.

Moreover, horror stories create tingles just like spicy food, providing a morbid sense of humor, or creating shivers that one can later laugh about. Comical horror is not the brand of horror I choose to write in, however. Yes, my stories do have humor, but no gags. The people in my stories aren't generally laughing. They're too scared, too stressed, and too beleaguered. The readers, separated from the danger, have the luxury to be outside the situation looking in. They can laugh, and, I hope, (I am still a new writer) often do. The humor comes from characters responding to impossible situations, to creatures that "have no right to exist.”

Also, horror stories can and do inform people about life. They rescue us from the danger of too much optimism and remind us of how happy we should be for our good luck. This was the point Leonard Mlodinow made at the end of his non-fiction, non-horror book, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives. If you're reading a horror story and not living one, you have every reason to be happy, and also something to learn from a horror story now and then.

So, I've made every point except one: any rational reason I list here is dwarfed by my unconscious mind. I “followed my muse” into horror. I went where my creativity was most fertile, after I resisted the call for decades only to spend the duration with writers' block. What I must put on the page starts deep within my unconscious. After it's out, I can embellish and alter it according to the themes that I think are important. Though even that process is a conversation with my unconscious, a difficult one because that part of one's mind is not verbal. I simply have to try different things until they feel right, while it speaks only with yes, no or maybe.

Experiments indicate that people act first, and then the part of the brain that thinks consciously kicks in to give the "cover story." Even with an electrode in their brain causing their hand to move, the person will claim that they moved it deliberately and will come up with reasons why. Our unconscious minds are really what control us. Our surface mind only provides the narrative to explain it. This implies nobody generally knows why they do things. Our conscious mind is a PR department; it makes our our actions socially acceptable. However, it's more than that. It provides the stories, the threads that makes our lives coherent.

For a writer, it's also an outlet for emotions that are too extreme to be appropriate to the situations of every day life. What if you have more excessive emotions about something than is socially acceptable? You do the best things, but still there isn't enough relief. When this happens, I find writing it helps.

I could resist it more, deny that I am a horror writer, but now that I've seen some of my writing, I know I'm onto something good. It's fulfilling, and I'm not going to garrote the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Update 12/20/2011: I'm sorry it took so long for me to notice it, but blogger cut off the first paragraph of this entry. I've put it back on. For people who have praised this essay and forgiving that glaring error, I thank you for your forbearance, and I'm glad the message came through despite the mistake. I've had so much trouble with the blogger interface, I'm tempted to switch to wordsmith.