Before learning how to write a horror novel we should consider why.
Why write a horror novel? Why write any novel for that matter? At AlliedWriters.com they believe that we write to express ourselves, create something meaningful, help others, to entertain one another, or to achieve a goal of some sort.
Of course, we can have more than one reason.
I like to express myself, create something meaningful, and entertain my readers.
Entertainment is key. It doesn’t matter what we’re trying to say if we bore people. They’ll just tune us out. We have to get their attention before we can express ourselves.
But if we’re just monkeying for attention then we have to be King Kong to build an audience. But unless we’re shock jocks we have to provide something meaningful if we want them to keep coming back.
Meaning is conflict with purpose. It answers the questions:
- Why this story?
- Why these characters?
- Why should I care about this now?
How do we create meaning? The first “how to” book I explored after Stracyznski was another one I found in the same public library. It was called The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in Creative Interpretation of Human Motives by Lajos Egri.
“Examining a play from the inside out, Egri starts with the heart of any drama: its characters. All good dramatic writing hinges on people and their relationships, which serve to move the story forward and give it life, as well as an understanding of human motives – why people act the way that they do.” (Goodreads)
“Lajos Egri, in his book The Art of Dramatic Writing, argues for a structured relationship between value and a predictive form of theme he calls the premise. A premise, in Egri’s formation, is a statement of belief about what will result from a particular universal value placed into conflict.” (Screenplayology)
If we want to write meaningful horror stories we have to start with a theme we want to explore and a character that will guide us. The Final Girl is usually the only character with depth in most horror stories. We see that Laurie Strode is pure and innocent, a teenager that loves her family, while her friends are promiscuous cardboard cutouts because it reinforces our cultural norms of the late 1970’s regarding teenage sexuality.
Character is what separates a good story from a forgettable one. Character in horror is what separates a Stephen King from an H.P. Lovecraft. That’s right. I’m a fan of both, but Lovecraft’s best known creations – Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Shubb-Niggurath, Yog Sothoth, et al are mysterious entities. We barely remember the characters they drive insane. Lovecraft is best remembered for his mythology that inspired countless other authors like myself.
However, Carrie White, Jack Torrance, Father Callahan, Stu Redman, and The Loser’s Club, are just some of the examples of deep, three-dimensional characters that we remember decades after their debut. They are what elevated Stephen KIng to the modern master of horror and still today we struggle to find a worthy successor.
But how do we create such characters?
Next week I’ll use Jill Chamberlain’s The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting to show how we build a protagonist that will take us to the heights of comedy or the depths of tragedy in order to understand our themes. We’ll look at the wants, strengths, and flaws of a character in order to understand how they’ll build the initial sketch of our story. Then we’ll tackle the major beats that create our framework.
In the mean time…
Be of service, kill your heroes, and eat the rich.