-Is this the only genre you enjoy writing? If so, what makes it so special? Horror is a tool for understanding that evil can be defeated -- and it's also a tool for understanding that sometimes, bad things happen, and there are no solutions. People can't always be saved, and endings can't always be happy. Unfortunately, with the way life is, that's an important truth to learn. Horror isn't the only genre I write, though; I'm currently working on historical fiction -- a story that, actually, has the same "sometimes bad things happen and can't be fixed" central theme. -When did it dawn upon you that you wanted to be a writer? I've never not been a writer, in a sense; I made up stories before I could physically write. -What inspires you to write? …show more content…
(Note to other writers: don't go seeking out trauma to power your writing.) Strange Kingdom is the result of spending several years essentially trapped living in a certain U.S. city with a frightening real-life history and a callous modern-day heart. Living there was like having your soul slowly nibbled away by rats -- so, in self-defense, I made that place the city in the book. -How often do you write? Probably not as often as I should. -Do you set a plot or prefer going wherever an idea takes you? It depends on what I'm writing. Every story in Strange Kingdom was very much an exercise in "when the idea seizes you" - by the metaphorical throat, a lot of the time - encouraged by the history and current events of the city where I lived at the time. With historical fiction, the basic plot is set for me, but there's still room to embellish within that framework. -What, according to you, is the hardest thing about writing? Getting past the inertia to actually get started. I've compared it to jumping off a cliff. And I hate
The horror genre is synonymous with images of terror, violence and human carnage; the mere mention of horror movies evokes physical and psychological torture. As remarked by noted author Stephen King “the mythic horror movie…has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized.” (King, 786). At manageable intervals, we choose to live these horrific events vicariously through the characters in horror movies and books as a means of safely experiencing the “what if”. The horror genre allows us to explore our fears, be it spiders, vampires, loss of our identity, or death of a loved, under the most fantastic and horrible
Setting conventions play a huge part within the horror genre. Since horror first existed it has been set in ghostly abandoned castles with spooky dark dungeons, gloomy forests and spine-chilling secret passageways. Since these, settings in the horror genre has evolved into a more terrifying definition of scary. In horror movies today we mainly see old, haunted, broken down houses set in isolated forests exactly like the new house the family moves into in ‘The Conjuring’ or like in the horror movie ‘Halloween’, set in a neighbourhood during the night time. Horror has moved into these more sophisticated ideas of creepy and scary as the setting is more relatable to everyday life, and takes a toll on the audience's psychological mind set to start
Come to find out we as humans do have a dark side to our personality. In fact, our brains make imaginary monsters, demons, witches, and other crazy scary figures you can think of. We are all plugged in with the positives and negatives. In why we crave horror Stephen King is correct because he states that humans crave horror to face our fears; however, he is also wrong by claiming that we as humans crave horror to establish our feelings of normalcy and to experience a peculiar way of fun.
Which is the next thing that Steven King says horror films does for us. As he says, "When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theatre showing a horror movie we are daring the nightmare."(443).As to say that we are challenging are fear, to say yah I beat it I beat the monster. When I watch a horror film I feel unprotected, isolated, and
I have wanted to be a writer since before I could read. As a child, I copied picture books out onto sheets of paper, with the illustrations and all of the letters, before I could even put
What is a horror? What does it mean to be terrified? The definition of a horror fiction is "fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the reader." Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror" (Wikipedia) . "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a great example of a story on the basic level of a gothic horror, in which the element of fear is evoked in its highest form. There are many different elements, such as setting, feelings, themes, and characters, that play an essential role in suggesting this.
The horror genre has held a prominent position in culture for most of history. Beginning in folklore, used as a device to scare children into good behaviors (e.g. The Grimm Brother’s Fairy Tales), horror has integrated its way into the 21st century through film, and in recent years even video games. Yearly, primarily during the fall when the leaves start to brown and the natural eerie sense of fear fills the air around Halloween, the film industry likes to fill in the holes between its major grossing seasons by filling the audience with fear. However, it was Christmas of 1973 that defined the new age of Horror, when William Friedkin released The Exorcist. According to Julia Heimerdinger of Academia’s online journal, Horror, as a whole, can
Human craves horror to face our fears and experience an adrenaline.Not everyone enjoys being afraid, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that no one wants to experience a truly life-threatening situation,But there are those of us who really enjoy the experience.After all, anyone who has heard of Stephen King will automatically know that reading one of his stories may result in a thrill. Most of us spend our entire lives avoiding our “hysterical fear” of death, and allowing us to read such a description really is “daring [our] nightmares” everybody has different emotions and feels a different way when it comes to scary, or horror movies. Some people watch them to reveal their not scared or afraid no more. I feel like when people are able to watch the movies and read the stories , they define the realness of them, and are able to be themselves.
Despite the fact that the format in which a story is told can create a plethora of differences, the genre can link stories together across medium. Horror has ties to stories that date back hundreds of years and use similar conventions which allow one to classify these stories together in the horror genre. Part of what makes a classical horror story is some form of a supernatural element that tends to focus on either life or death however since the introduction of visual media certain stylistic conventions have been adopted in order to create an emotional effect in the audience. Although the genre tends to link together stories from medium such as film and video games there are still drastic differences between them due to core differences in their functionality that are able to change the way in which one receives the story.
Joel Delp Mrs. Dutcher English 11 4 December 2015 Poe vs. King The three things that make a horror story is the suspense, the psychological feeling, and the grotesque parts that are in the story. The suspense gives an anxious and intrigued feeling when you are reading the story. The psychological aspect messes with your mind in a way that you don’t know what is going to happen or what is happening. And the grotesque part of the story tells you about the ugly and bad things that have started to happen in the story.
When I entered high school I focused mainly on short stories, and worked heavily on improving the believability of my character's dialogue and the impact the plot had on who they were. I discovered a fan community online for my favorite TV show, created a playbook for a 32 chapter monster of a story, and set to work. To this day, Closer Proximity, is still a work in progress, 30,000 words in, 12 chapters completed, whenever I have a spare moment I work on it. I have written a lot of derivative literature bar my short stories, and a lot of great works of literature come from the inspiration an author takes from another literary work. However, when I revisited my critique of the subpar Vampire fiction Twilight inspired in the tenth grade I found that it was pretty misogynistic, the characters were 2D props secondary to the message I was trying to get across, and that the message wasn't so much as an undertone but rather loudly shouted at the reader almost incessantly. CHEESY VAMPIRE ROMANCE IS STUPID HERE IS AN ANGSTY STORY ABOUT WHAT THE VAMPIRE SUBGENRE WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE IF IT WAS STIFLINGLY SARCASTIC AND ATTEMPTED TO INVERT EVERY SINGLE LITERARY TROPE. Instead of deciding it was time to take my story out back and shoot it like I did with Wakanda, I sat down and applied everything I had learned over the years into reworking. The plot points remained largely the same but the end
I learned how to write stories when i was a little kid. As I grew up and got older I got better and better. I learned
I think The definition of scary would fit this story I'm about to tell you. On a dark and cold winter night, I got up for just a simple drink of water. I gently tiptoed down the hallway, I creeped into my parent's bed room and saw that they were both there, I walked into the kitchen Opened the cabinets,got a glass, I leaned it on the water dispenser so I wouldn't have to hold it there for ever. I heard tiny little scratches on our hardwood floor slowly getting closer to me, then my dog marley came around the coroner. I sighed in relieve. I then heard footsteps coming from my basement. In fact, I always have thought that the basement had a creepy vibe to it as it was unfinished, and always has been. I grabbed my water and rushed to my room as
The horror today would be things like Paranormal activity such as ghosts, hauntings, and demonic activity. Thankfully none of that paranormal stuff hasnt happend to me but I do believe in it. Murder and kidnapping are some of the things people today describe as horror also. Today some people are even afraid of zombies and aliens.
The horror genre has been around for over a century and horror novels have been around for awhile longer. Many people try to comprehend why people subject themselves to onscreen terrors considering people get get scared by a good amount of movies with pop out scenes or are left wanting to triple check lock and sprint out of the dark. The reason people watch horror movies is because they want to experience firsthand fear and become more physically aware without being in danger. Every person is different though, my reasoning for watching and loving horror films is based off of personal experiences, other peoples could be because of the different sub genres in horror or or more psychological because it triggers a memory for them, there is also