The Allure of Horror: A Personal Reflection on Writing for the Genre

This paper is a personal essay presenting the author's personal feelings on horror novels, the challenge they offer, and why s/he loves to write horror.

This is no fantasy. This is no fallacious delusion of a sick, twisted mind. This is the honest-to-God truth. I love horror novels. Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe are my idols. Perhaps having these two, demented madmen as my personal mentors sounds sick, but I tend to think as they do. Most of my writings are short stories of horror (usually about the length of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Masque of the Red Death").

My friends often ask me four questions: "Why do you not publish some of your work?" and "Where do you get your ideas from?" and "What is it like writing this horror stuff?" and "Why do you like writing horror stories?" First, I do not publish my work (although some writers at the Virginian Pilot newspaper feel I should) because it's mine.

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I know this sounds selfish, but I'm being honest. A part of my personality goes into my work and I feel if people read enough of my work, they will discover certain personal feelings I would prefer to keep private. Honesty Check...I also think my work sucks. As to where I get my ideas from for my sick excursions, I sincerely do not know. Like Stephen King (who got the idea to write IT when looking off of a bridge) I seem to receive my mad phantasms out of thin air.

For example, when I first began writing the first draft of this essay, I started out writing about writing horror stories and ended up writing a short story about a vampire in London. It is safe to say I get ideas out of thin air. When I do capture the intangible, I literally feel a rushing sensation in my head! I feel like a kid on a roller coaster. I feel astonished, excited, and hyper. Quite often my mother will stick her head into my room because she wants to find out what I'm giggling about. I usually tell her I'm thinking about a joke I heard on T.V. how can I tell my mother I'm laughing about a clever killing scene I've just visualized, or the thought of some damsel being chased by the bogeyman? After giving my mother further reason to worry about my sanity, I sit down and begin to type on my computer, usually until the first draft is finished editing and revising along the way. I take great care when writing my pieces of dementia as a cook would take care to consistently baste a turkey, less it becomes dry and unwanted. I usually have only two drafts per piece of work: the one and only, thus I usually have to create a draft for my composition classes, which require at least one draft before the final is done. After my short story of madness is done, I will usually read it about 20 times. If you are anything like me, you like to be scared. I love being in a arm, toasty bed with only the 15-watt, reading lamp on with a good horror novel in hand. I love the thrill generated by the expectations of something sinister happening on the next page. I love being on the edge of screaming. The funny thing is, when I do get to the juicy parts of a Stephen King novel, after I'm shivering from the emotional overload, I laugh as if it was the funniest thing on earth! Horror is my personal drug of choice. Since I love being scared, it is only natural that I love to scare others I guess misery really does like company. I love the thought of being able to plant a little seed of fear into my audience's mind and feed it little by little, until it burst sort of like the bean Jack planted to grow that big beanstalk. I want to take the readers past the point of mere fright to the point of hysteria. I want my readers to wake up in the middle of the night with the shivers and in a cold sweat. In a nutshell, I want to scare the living daylights out of people. The world of horror is not for the weak-of-heart. It is only for those few, brave souls who are willing to plummet head-first into the abyss of fear. There is an old japanese belief: "Only the warrior who is willing to die can overcome death...The warrior who clings onto life, not accepting death as a possibility, will surely die." Paraphrased: Unless you are willing to face your fear, you will never master it. Now that you know what horror is, the challenge it offers, and my personal feelings about horror, hopefully you can see why I love horror novels, and why I love to write horror.