A Literary Critic Offers Some Tips for Writing Powerful Horror Stories

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, Jason Zinoman offers some interesting, although rather dated, observations: the book was published in 2011. Many of his observations could serve as guidelines to apprentices who are interested in writing a horror novel (or movie).

Jason Zinoman

For instance, Zinoman, in discussing Rosemary's Baby, points out that the film is “about issues that people could relate to—the nervousness of entering the real estate market; struggling in a faltering, sexless marriage; and the yearning, desperate search for fame (11-12). In fact, he says, the movie is “about the perils of domesticity” (14).

In addition, Zinoman declares, Roman Polanski “made the movie strictly from Rosemary's perspective and maintained that it must always be possible for “all the supernatural elements on it to be a series of coincidences” (21), so that “the suspense hinges on finding out whether the bizarre things happening . . . are real or the product of delusion” (21).

Throughout Shock Value, Zinoman insists that the cause of the bizarre incidents is best left unexplained and emphasizes the unseen, offstage incident as preferable to the seen, onstage incident in maintaining suspense. In fact, “in addition to the virtue of the unknown, the setting of an indistinct mood, and . . . rooting the magical or supernatural in a palpable realism” are “powerful ideas” (63).

Initially, horror movies were viewed as providing the audience with a catharsis (76), which 'assumes the audience identifies with the victims,” but Alfred Hitchcock helped to revolutionize this accepted view of the nature of horror films when he put “the audience on side of the killer in Psycho and repeatedly in the position of the voyeur.”

This twist causes the audience to identify “with killers,” rather than with their victims. As a result, it has been argued, this shift in perspective no longer allowed a catharsis for viewers; instead, it allowed “audiences to express their repressed sinful thoughts through the monster” (77). The monster became a surrogate scapegoat upon whom viewers could project their own lusts for violence, blood, murder, and mayhem. The movies, once masochistic, became sadistic (77).

Due to his upbringing in a home in which a strict evangelical faith was practiced, Wes Craven was more sensitive to “the allure of self-sacrifice” than many other filmmakers, Zinoman suggests. Craven understood that churchgoers went to church “not merely” to escape “pain,” but also to heroically “confront it,” which provided them a sense of “triumph” over evil (77). A horror movie could provide the same sort of experience, vicariously, for “a secular audience looking for the pleasure of masochism” (77).

Zinoman cites several films that accomplish just this task. Writing of The Last House on the Left, he states:

In a godless world without redemption [this film] . . . includes no struggle with faith. instead, senseless evil inspires just more senseless evil, adding up to a nihilism that invites no happy endings (79).

Religion and horror are alike, the author suggests: both induce feelings of “awe” as people are “shocked by their own helplessness,” but religion and horror differ by how they handle people's experience of awe: “religion helps you cope with this feeling. Horror exploits it” (92)

From Zinoman's observations, we can derive these story-writing tips:

• Make sure that the readers (or audience) can relate to the “issues” with which the story is concerned.
• Tell the story (or film the movie) from the main character's point of view.
• Maintain the possibility of both a natural and a supernatural explanation for the “bizarre” incidents that occur in the story.
• If a story is intended to evoke readers' or viewers' masochistic interests, focus on the main character's point of view; if the story is meant to arouse readers' or viewers' sadistic impulses, focus on the monster's perspective.
• After challenging the protagonist's faith, a religious story is apt to restore it through self-sacrifice that leads to redemption; a secular story is likely to end in nihilism, represented by anarchy and chaos.
• Whether a story is religious or secular in nature, it should maintain the possibility of either a natural interpretation or a supernatural explanation.

Zinoman also has some intriguing insights concerning John Carpenter's Halloween, but we'll save them for a future post.