When talking to people about writing and what it takes to create a good story, I often say writers have to live with their stories for a while. The most critical component in writing a good story isn’t the number of words you put on the page. It’s the time you spend thinking about the story.
Each story I work on hums in my mind every waking moment, even if I’m not at the computer. I’m picking bananas at the grocery store, and it’s the static hiss in the ceiling speakers. I’m having a conversation with my wife in a restaurant, and it’s whispering to me from a table in the corner. I’m walking my dog, and the leash is off in my mind.
Whatever story I’m working on, whether it’s a short or a novel, it’s with me every moment of every day for weeks, months, even years.
Someone recently asked, if I’m writing a horror story, how I live with horror for that long. I get that question. It seems totally bonkers to live with horror always in your mind. Why would anyone do that to themself? They must be weird. There must be something very wrong with them. They must be sick.
I used to have insecurities about that. I worried what people thought. I worried there was something wrong with me, too.
The truth is, while I live with my horror stories for long periods of time, I don’t live with the horror. Not always.
I can understand how that might be confusing. I just wrote that I live with my stories all the time and I write horror, so what gives? The source of confusion is in our understanding of what horror is.
There’s this conversation that happens on the internet and among people passionate about horror. They try to determine which horror books, films, etc. are truly horror. It’s similar to metalheads who declare Metallica isn’t a true metal band or whatever. Call it elitism. Call it gatekeeping. The trouble is always the same: these passionate fans don’t actually understand the thing they’re passionate about.
I understand if that sounds controversial.
Here’s another potentially controversial statement: horror doesn’t have to be scary or frightening. It doesn’t have to be disturbing. It doesn’t have to be gory.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre. I’m not going to reread it because this is my blog and I don’t want to (it’s a very long book). However, as the generally accepted king of horror, Stephen King reveals he achieved that title for more than his own fiction writing skills: he’s a very knowledgeable and studied student of the genre.
I’m paraphrasing and interpreting here, but King argues horror isn’t any of those things above (scary, frightening, disturbing, gory, etc.). Horror, King writes, is storytelling that is willing to gaze unflinchingly into the darkness and be honest about what it finds.
A very small part of that idea has always stuck with me: Horror is storytelling.
Which is to say, when I’m writing horror, I don’t live in the scares or the macabre or the gore. I live in the beauty of the characters experiencing real, unrestrained, unfiltered humanity, a contemplation of us that is willing to dig into the dark places but mostly moves above ground. I live, mostly, in the space between the horrors.
For me, horror is its own foil, presenting tension between the light and the dark within the story. In The Shining, Jack Torrence’s deep love for his family is heightened by the struggle with his demons. In Bird Box, Malorie’s harrowing fight for survival is empowered by her desire to be a good mom, conflict over what being a good mom even means, and her anxiety over whether she even can be. Similarly, in The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie’s apocalyptic road trip is tethered by his surprise at finding a fatherhood he thought he’d lost and his traumatic fear over losing it again as well as Ellie’s innocence and her desire for autonomy.
Stephen King didn’t live in the madness while he was writing The Shining. He lived in the love of a family living on the brink isolated in the mountains. Josh Malerman didn’t live in the fear of what he might see if he looked outside while writing Bird Box. He lived in a found family and a mother finding herself. Neil Druckmann didn’t live in the threat of infection while writing The Last of Us. He lived in what it means to be a father and a guardian against a cruel world and what it means to be a child who’s never had anyone to guide them or to trust and what that means.
This is true for any story that contemplates horrible subject matter, not just horror stories.
While writing The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood didn’t live in the abuse and biological enslavement of a corrupt and religiously fanatical society. She lived in a world where women are oppressed and devalued and lived every day to stand up to it and prove her immense worth. While writing Frankenstein, Mary Shelley didn’t live in the grief of a family’s murder, the burning need for revenge, or the terror of being hunted. She lived with what it means for a man to learn he’s not God. In The Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler didn’t live with the desperation and fear of being homeless in a cruel world. She contemplated the diaspora of a people the world wanted to eradicate and how endless love perseveres through every tragedy.
These are just a handful of examples that immediately come to mind, but we could play this game all day long.
The point is, even when writing horror, we writers live far more in the light than we live in the dark, and isn’t that true of life, in general? None of us is free of tragedy, fear, anxiety, or grief. We all know those parts of being a human. We all know love, comfort, satisfaction, and fulfillment.
Horror is beauty as much as ugliness, comfort as much as terror, love as much as hate. It simply enables storytellers to go to those places if we need to. It enables us to authentically explore the darkness as well as the light.
So how do I live with horror? I seek the light, but when the darkness finds me, as it invariably does, I don’t turn away. I look deep into it and let it consume me.
But just for a while.
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