How exactly can a writer write a horror story without making it so scary to the point where it's actually hard to read or watch?
I've recently started getting into horror lately and trying to learn how all of the genre works so that maybe I myself can write good horror. But there's been one thing on my mind that's been bothering me a lot about horror. I don't know that while writing horror, what's going way too far and what's crossing the line.
What I'm mainly saying is that horror to me personally doesn't seem like a very easy genre to write. It really does seem like a very difficult and delicate genre of speculative fiction that all authors need to be careful with. Like horror authors need to make sure that the horror stories they're writing (whether it be for movies, TV shows, video games, etc.) are actually good and actually not too disturbing to the point where it's actually hard to watch.
I know I may be sounding all concerned about this but can you really blame me? If I ever do decide to become a writer, I really don't wanna create something that's hard to watch but when you make something hard to watch, that really does that sound like you ultimately failed in every way with your own writing piece. You ruined said piece forever. It really does sound like an objectively bad mistake that all writers (as well as all artists in general) should attempt to avoid at all costs. I know art itself is subjective and all but there really are some objective rules about all of it in order to make it actually good and teach aspiring artists about how certain types of art actually works.
So if any of you would politely ask me what are some of the things that do in fact make any type of horror story hard to watch and how I can try my very best to tame them all, that would be extremely awesome. I would highly thank you for your great advice because I know that a horror story is trying to be scary, but I think the only tone it's supposed to avoid is being hard to watch. I really do think there's a difference between both tones.
Please keep in mind that I'm not saying no horror stories should have any unhappy endings, any innocents getting killed or any blood or gore or anything. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that I really wanna know how I can make those things scary but not too scary to the point where it's hard to watch. Like I said, that really does seem like the kind of tone you're trying to avoid when writing good horror. If any horror experts out there can give some good advice on writing horror itself then that would be awesome!
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1 answer
I think you need to make a distinction between horror, which runs largely on anticipation (like every other genre) and splatter porn (which relies on the perverse titillation that some people feel when regarding scenes of gore, torture, etc.).
If you are writing splatter porn, you probably can't go too far, but the audience is (I hope to God) small.
If you are writing conventional horror, you don't have to go all that far at all. What you have to do is to build and sustain an ever heightening anticipation of an event. In other words, the core of horror is watching the cheerleader going down the steps of the basement where you know the killer is hiding. It is not in watching said cheerleader getting dismembered in grisy detail.
The better you get at building anticipation, the less gory you have to be to move the reader. Sometimes just jumping out from behind a tree a shouting boo is enough if you set things up correctly.
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