Horror.
Sure, it comes a little late for Halloween, but it's still November. The winter is coming, and the nights are getting longer. Sounds like the perfect time for some scary stories.
I've been thinking about horror stories, and there are some characteristics that seem to unite horror stories. They often, but not always, link to the fear of death or physical harm. They often create fears out of the Other, Uncanny, and Self. But what I have really been thinking about is how atmosphere and treatment is what causes the feeling of fear, not the subject itself.
For example, a big nasty monster is horror material. Until you can kill it by shooting it in the face. Then it's adventure or even humor. A skeleton is horror material until it dances. Or maybe it gets scarier that way.
Horror, like comedy, is about treatment of the subject and atmosphere. That's one reason I think Doctor Who is so good at making harmless things seem scary; they nail that atmosphere and treatment.
A child asking for his mummy becomes UNCANNY and disturbing. A room full of cubes is threatening. They take the mundane and link it to death and disappearance, and they present threat with it, and suddenly we have horror.
I was teaching this to a student and said that, given the right treatment, you can turn a character opening a perfectly normal box of chocolates into something to fear and dread. I took the challenge myself, and I'm currently writing a short story about some pretty terrifying chocolates.
Hence, the challenge for you: take something ordinary and just not scary. But look at how you treat the subject, how you treat the atmosphere and how you add threat until the subject becomes scary.
This is a focus on language and style as well as an exploration of when something goes from ordinary to scary. In Christine by Stephen King, I'd argue that the car becomes scary when it gets malicious intent and the apparent inability to die.
So, challenge up! If you do it, I'd love to see what you write! Feel free to post in the comments. I'll post what I have as soon as I'm finished with it.
Managing tone is something I usually struggle with, so writing this was an interesting exercise. Here's what I came up with:
ReplyDeleteThe hairbrush's bristles seems a welcoming sea of tentacles, all touched with a globule that proclaims that it cannot possibly cause any harm. Yes, someone has decided to engineer a handle that keeps your hand away from actually being near these things, but, of course, that is merely for convenience, right? The tentacle cluster is so kind, cleaning up the dead cells and hairs of your head so that your unshorn places can be silky and smooth to the touch. It doesn't even consume those negligible parts of you like some living creature might, it merely collects that dead matter on the outside of the tentacle's body as a trophy of its hard work done. And it most definitely deserves that bushy gray trophy. Do not take that dead gunk away from them, it's rightfully theirs. You won't make them give it up by drowning them in the faucet, that will make them all the more determined to keep it. You'd have to attack and steal from each tentacle individually and we all know that you're too impatient for that--we know everything about what goes on in that head of yours.
Anyway, you'd do well to continue your daily hair routine where you move these splendid tentacles across your scalp and into your blind spot where you cannot see what they are doing. And if you hear a crunch of something, that is the brush doing its job. You'd like it if the brush continued to do its job, wouldn't you?
This is amazing! Mind if I share it on my blog?
DeleteThank you! You more than welcome to share anything I give you in any way you want :)
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