He is horrible — horrible beyond anything you can imagine — but wonderful. He haunts one for hours afterward. I am still shuddering at what he showed.
-H.P Lovecraft, regarding Nyarlathotep.

H.P Lovecraft could spend thirty something pages saying “Guys, no really, this thing is just so awful you wouldn’t even believe me. It’s horrible and beautiful and awful and wonderful and if I even looked at it I would be driven mad.”

Lovecraft didn’t come out and throw the monster screaming in your face like some cheap scare-video. He didn’t let you get jaded to it by constantly showing blood-gore-blood-gore until the reader is going, “Oh. Let me guess. This room is bloody too? Oh look, a foot. Huh. Yawn.”

Oh, no.

There’s something to be said for anticipation and the limitless capacity of the human imagination. Just ask anyone with a fear of needles and an impending hospital visit. Or you’ve just sent a potentially embarrassing message and you keep seeing the ellipses start and stop as you wait for their reply. Or you’re expecting a very important phone call. Or you get a phone call that wasn’t expected at all.

Building up something without actually showing it can create dread, and dread can be a very powerful tool.
Dread is a more sinister emotion in that it seeps in slowly and festers in a way that is almost maddening; You haven’t seen anything yet, so what is there to be scared of? You don’t know what is going to happen, so why assume it is going to be bad? Because someone or something planted the seed that it would be awful, and your own imagination watered that baby with anxiety and trepidation until it blossomed and it’s grinning and begging you to feed it, Seymour.

In The Punisher movie, there’s a scene where a man is strung up and Castle is talking about how he’s going to burn the man with a welding torch. He shows the torch to him. Lets him hear the roar of the fire as the torch starts up.

Then Castle explains what it can do to him. He builds up the idea that this is going to hurt and will mess him up something awful. He will feel nothing at first, saying the nerves will be fried away, and he does nothing. He tells him he will smell burning meat, and then sears a steak nearby. He tells him he will feel cold…And then what does he do?

He touches a cold Popsicle to his back (likely cherry flavored). A harmless frozen sweet treat meant for children on a hot summer’s afternoon. The tortured man absolutely loses it and starts screaming in agony.

Why? Because he believed him. Castle built up all this anticipation and dread such that an unpleasant icy feeling was perceived as torture comparable to something Spetsnaz came up with.

So how do you do this in writing?

Plant the seed. Tell them there’s something behind the door that goes to the basement, and most people are going to assume it’s probably an Eldritch horror crafted from their childhood nightmares instead of a surprise birthday party. And then show hints that they’re right.

…about the horror, not the birthday party. I’d love to read that story though.

Weird sounds that could be explained by something benign, but they don’t know. Weird smells. Weird sensations. It could be something perfectly normal, but they don’t know that for sure, and until they know, they’re going to fear.

This is the growls and shadows outside your tent wall when you’re camping.
This is finding one piece of a larger puzzle that something bad happened here, like a pool of blood oozing out from underneath a door.

Do you want to open that door?
(If you answered yes, you might be a horror writer and we should be friends.)

But a better question is: can your character afford not to open that door? Write so that they must confront this thing that they don’t want because not taking action also leads to bad circumstances.

They found that pool of blood? Well, who was hurt? Are they still here? Where are the children?

Evil is coming, and not taking action won’t make it better.

In closing, showing horror and gore and pain can be a useful tool, sure. But sometimes it’s what you don’t see that’s really scary. Because how can you address it if you don’t know?

I leave you with the most succinct example I can think of from Futurama:
“Did he at least die painlessly? …to shreds you say.” -Professor Farnsworth

Journeys

October 14, 2016

Guy Anthony De Marco

This is a short story which I’ve used in workshops to point out that one does not have to write blood-and-guts or pure horror to qualify as a dark tale. This was published in a literary journal many years ago, and it originally appeared in a shared writing project on Everything2.com where a new person would write the next chapter of The Walking Man.

It was a dark and stormy night…

The Walking Man found that the clouds from the south were outpacing him as he trekked over the narrow ribbon of fading asphalt through fields of corn. He pulled his jacket closer to his body, willing himself to build up body heat before the first tickles of water splashed on his thinning pate.

All hopes of a quick sprinkle evaporated when he heard the roaring of the downpour approaching, savagely tearing at the cornstalks and blasting them with gusts of freezing air. As far as the eye could see, the road obliviously stretched itself east and west. There was no shelter, and he knew he would be in for a miserable night.

The howling fury of a storm rocked him when it caught up with his plodding body. In seconds he was drenched and cold; the joints of his hands began to ache with the sudden temperature change. The wind whipped the pebbles and decaying vegetation from the last harvest into a stew of stinging projectiles. The Walking Man tried to shield his eyes, but the absolute darkness that had descended on him, combined with the airborne flotsam, made it impossible to see the road. Only the change between the asphalt and the soil kept him from wandering too far off his course.

He knew it was living when he tripped over the yielding body. It was some form of animal, and it made a small gurgling noise when he crawled back to it. His bruised knees protested painfully and his hands were further injured from pebbles burrowing into bloodied palms. He gingerly reached out and touched a broken cat, run down on the roadway hours or days before. He scooped the cat up as best he could, turned his back to the wind and opened up his jacket to shelter the animal, whose head lolled about from pain and lack of strength.

They bundled together against the shrieking gale, the man shivering from the cold and the wetness and the cat shaking from spasms of pain. The jacket made a decent shelter for the cat, and it stopped gurgling enough to look up and let out a stuttered mewling of thanks.

The Walking Man began to assess the cat and discovered it wasn’t alone. A dead bird had been hidden underneath the matted cat body. Perhaps the cat had been hit when it went after the starling, a bloody chain of events as the killer was himself the victim in one ironic fell swoop. The bird had died suddenly; the cat was paying for its salvation with suffering and time.

The storm kept battering the Walking Man for the better part of the night. The cat rarely made a sound – it was several hours before he realized the cat had died in his arms. Dragging himself to the stalks of corn creating a natural fenceline on both sides of the road, he used several flattened beer cans he found on the way to dig a small hole in the rich earth. He carefully placed the two bodies in the void and thought about erecting a temporary cross until he figured the cat and bird were atheists at best. He placed two flat rocks over the gravesite, wished them well on their journey as he soggily stood up to continue his own.

squish flop…
squish, flop…
squish, flop…

About the Author:

Guy Anthony De Marco is a disabled US Navy veteran speculative fiction author; a Graphic Novel Bram Stoker Award^®nominee; winner of the HWA Silver Hammer Award; a prolific short story and flash fiction crafter; a novelist; an invisible man with superhero powers; a game writer (Sojourner Tales modules, Interface Zero 2.0 core team, third-party D&D modules); and a coffee addict. One of these is false.

A writer since 1977, Guy is a member of the following organizations: SFWA, WWA, SFPA, IAMTW, ASCAP, RMFW, NCW, HWA. He hopes to collect the rest of the letters of the alphabet one day. Additional information can be found at Wikipedia and GuyAnthonyDeMarco.com.

How Dark is Too Dark? Setting the Right Tone.

October 13, 2016

Frank Morin

Frank Morin Horror No Comments

Apocalypse — Image Found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction

I’m going to write a story where the world is on the brink of destruction. Few people, if any, will survive.

Simple enough. And dark enough to fit this month’s theme of dark and pulpy fiction.

Or maybe not.

Even though the high-level setting is pretty dark, I get to choose where I drop the story on the Darkness Spectrum. That choice helps set the tone, which will impact everything from plot to character to conflict.

For example, I could take a popular route and make it a gritty, YA post-apocalyptic story, like Divergent, by Veronica Roth, or Suzanne Collins’ The Hunter Games.

Or I could engage afterburners and drive it all the way to the extreme end of the spectrum and make it Horror, like The Stand, by Stephen King.

I could dial back the gore a bit and choose a Dark Fantasy, like The Warded Man by Peter V Brett, or really Dark Fantasy like Joe Abercrombe’s The Way of Shadows.

Or I could make it Epic Fantasy with some cool horrific elements, like The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks.

Then again, I could go the other way entirely and make it a light-hearted humorous tale, like Douglas Adams’ hilarious Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

This fundamental choice of tone sets the stage for much of the book’s progression. This month we’re talking about pulpy, dark fiction. Those stories must generate the proper emotions, ranging from fear, to abject terror, to loathing, to revulsion.

Although all of my stories have dark elements, I generally soften those edges with a lighter tone. That was a conscious choice I made, based on which aspects of the adventure I wanted to focus on, and my target audience.

Set in Stone, and its sequels in my Petralist series are YA epic fantasy, with big magic, big adventure, and lots of humor. The humor makes the tales accessible to all ages and helps the readers laugh through what could have easily become very dark, desperate scenes.

In my Facetakers sci-fi/fantasy time travel thrillers, some elements, like the extraction of human souls by pulling of people’s faces, can be borderline horrific. There’s a lot of fast-paced action and some really high-stakes challenges. The tone of the book is more gritty and dark than the Petralist, fitting for New Adult thrillers.

So choose your tone as a conscious decision, as part of your story development, along with character, voice, setting, conflict, and plot, and it will help set the foundation those other elements build upon.

About the Author: Frank Morin

Frank Morin loves good stories in every form. When not writing or trying to keep up with his active family, he’s often found hiking, camping, Scuba diving, or enjoying other outdoor activities. For updates on upcoming releases of his popular Petralist YA fantasy novels, or his fast-paced Facetakers sci-fi time travel thrillers, check his website: www.frankmorin.org

The Darkness Within

October 12, 2016

David Heyman

Dave Heyman Genres Horror No Comments

THE DARKNESS WITHIN

Hello all! For my take on this month’s subject matter I will be focusing on internal darkness as a concept, and how that darkness has been used by a specific author I have been reading all of my life. Living as I do in Maine, the subject couldn’t be more appropriate as Maine is the home state of a man who for decades has reigned over America’s fear and anxieties with the authority of a King.

Stephen King is traditionally cited as a ‘horror’ writer, which is a genre as broad and multifaceted as fantasy or science fiction. When people think of King, they likely conjure up monstrous images such as the vampires of Salem’s Lot or the horrific creatures of in The Mist. As a young reader growing up in the 70s and 80s, this was the King that fascinated me. Horrifying demonic clowns (It), cemeteries that reanimated the dead (Pet Semetary) and possessed killer machines (Christine, Trucks, The Mangler). I could name countless more- -the short story collection Night Shift was particularly loaded with these wild monster stories.

As a kid, I ate it up. Great stuff, with more than a bit of pulp to it too.

As an adult though when I go back and read King, I see a different type of horror. One that is much more unsettling, because it is more familiar. It is one thing to look in the mirror and see a monster behind you, it is quite another to look in the mirror and see the monster in yourself. To me, the real potency of King’s work is not in the boogeymen, but rather in the darkness he would show in the average person.

Sometimes, he’d highlight people who were basically good, if damaged- -then force us to watch as they were slowly overcome by the darkness of some external force. A great instance of this is Jack Torrance in The Shining, his baser natures and fears preyed upon by the supernatural Overlook Hotel. Sure, a ghost in Room 217 is scary- -but looking at Jack’s slow transition from well-intentioned husband and father to family destroying monster? Horrifying. Another example could be Louis Creed from Pet Semetary, who allows grief to push him into incredibly dark places.

In other cases, a supernatural event allows people who were already dark an opportunity that had not presented itself. Big Jim from Under the Dome was a monster from page 1, with far more evil in his heart than the actual villains responsible for the town’s isolation. All he needed was that moment, that crack in the door that society normally kept shut. You can see this same dynamic in the short story The Mist, as well as multiple instances of it in Needful Things. There might be rage and evil inside anyone, just waiting for the right circumstances.

I feel these stories are so potent because they prey on a fear within all of us that is much darker than any skeleton or zombie could induce. The fear we have of each other, and ourselves. We wonder, could that be my neighbor? My spouse? Could that be me? Could I be driven to that dark a place? Could I do those horrible things?

What would it take? Not much, those dark whispers of King’s stories say. Maybe much less than you think.

Pardon me, I just felt a chill go up my spine.

I have found this a useful lesson for my own writing, when writing not just my villains but also my heroes. Darkness is a naturally occurring part of the human condition. Including a hint of it in any character makes them a bit more real, but also a bit more dangerous. Readers who care for you hero might worry that in his or her rage they might let that dark part take over, driving them to do something that is not in their best interests. It helps make bad choices believable, allowing for more opportunities for things to go wrong for your hero.

As writers, we all want things going wrong for our heroes, right?

As a fellow Mainer, I couldn’t be prouder to focus on Stephen King for my walk down the dark road as it were. In addition to his superlative On Writing, I recommend writers check out his lesser known Danse Macabre, which is an interesting discussion on what the master himself finds scary.

See you next month!