Dear Mike,
I'm writing my first novel, a horror story about giant cicadas that hypnotise people into moulting. It's a metaphor for drug addiction. In my opinion, horror is its best when it's also a commentary, or a reflection, on something real that afflicts society, like capitalism, xenophobia, or intergenerational trauma. I'm nearly 6 months clean, and though it wasn't my intention, this book is helping me come to terms with how bad things were, and how hard I had to work to get out of that life.
You tackle a lot of the toughest parts of the human experience in your work: loss and grief, mental illness, addiction, trauma, recovery... How do you write about those things without falling too deep into memories of what they felt like? My creative writing professor says there's no place for grief in horror, but I know she's dead wrong. My novice guess is that drawing from experience to make a character's trials feel more "real" makes their stories more immersive and empathetic. What do you think? Do you have any advice for how to emotionally detach for your characters, or how to balance grief and terror in a story?
Thank you, Fíona
Hi Fiona,
First, a huge congratulations on 6 months. That’s an amazing feat.
Second, your creative writing professor is embarrassingly wrong when she says there is no place for grief in horror. That’s so wrong, in fact, it should disqualify her from teaching creative writing. (Or, perhaps this is a rare creative writing teacher who simply hasn’t been exposed to Charles Dickens, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, or Stephen King. Ask her to go read Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier, and then explain that there’s no place for grief in horror. What an embarrassing thing to say.)
I don’t emotionally detach from my characters at all, far from it. When it comes to truly facing my own traumas, darkness, grief, shortcomings, fears, and insecurities, I have far more courage when I’m writing than I do in day-to-day life.
It can be tough to fall too deeply into the dark places, or the memories - there’s at least some measure of safety to such expeditions when I’m writing. It can be similar to the kind of safety I find in therapy.
Sometimes, a character scares me because I can’t relate to them at all (Beverly Keane). Other times, characters are so close to my self that it’s impossible to separate them in my mind (Riley Flynn). Drawing from experience is a brave and beautiful act, and infuses your fiction with authenticity, nuance, and humanity.
Best of luck with your writing.
And whatever you do, don’t listen to that teacher. Apologies, but she’s full of shit.
