Researching the Archives
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
I have always loved this quote by Stephen King, as it is honestly the truest thing I have found as a horror writer. What is meant by “read a lot” though does not just mean looking into the horror section and reading every book you can get your hands on, though that does help. Think of all the things that have inspired you as a writer. What was the story that made you want to be a writer? What novels or books give you the most ideas for future plots or subplots? Who have you learned the most from, good or bad, because of their work? There are a lot of different questions to poke through on this topic and I won’t get to all of them in this post, that is certain. Yet this will give you an idea of what to start reading, even if you think you’ve read everything.
As horror writers, we need to be able to pull from a variety of references, folklore, mythologies, and styles in order to get our point fully across. For one, it helps us explore concepts together with the reader. I like to think that my readers are not stupid, that they can make conclusions based on what I give them in my writing. If you know the tropes, the themes, the imagery, and trust your audience to have read some of it too, you can leave more room for descriptions over exposition, which is a lot easier in my opinion. Also the more exposure to different styles and ideas, I find leads to different ideas that you may not have thought of. For example, I once focused on learning about how to throw knives so I could write for a character in a better fashion. It was a skill I have never tried, but by taking that little bit of time to look over how knife throwing is done, it made my writing of her all the more realistic. It made her into a real person more than she already felt to me. A deep background knowledge in a variety of things leads to so much more depth in your writing.
So where does one find such background knowledge? Where does it live and what do you need to improve it? Outside of specific information that you can just research on the fly with the internet being the archive of knowledge it is, where can you find horror inspiration and ideas without just reading every book in the horror section? Well, first place I would recommend is children’s fantasy. Harry Potter, Coraline, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and plenty of other fantasy novels aimed at children are plenty terrifying. As pointed out by J.K. Rowling once during an interview, her books start with a double murder having just taken place. Two people have died before the first chapter is done and left behind a defenseless baby. The war had finished but with terrible costs, and once the fourth book had appeared, the death toll was mounting again, singling a second equally cruel war on the horizon. If you want examples of horror in children’s fiction, the earlier Potter books are just as dark as the later ones. Especially the line from The Chamber of Secrets: “Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever” written in blood on a wall of the castle.
Another good place to look is the history section. War is hell as they say and there is a lot of hell within those old war books but there is plenty more within the day to day lives of people. Tragedies long since forgotten like the Triangle Waist T-Shirt Factory, which is the reason you cannot block a fire door in America or have poorly maintained fire escapes. For those who don’t know, it is a dark tale in America’s industrial past where young children worked in factories and bosses had people leave through only one exit so they can be certain that nothing was stolen. There is also the tale of Bath, Michigan, where a man who was angry for losing a local election and under a lot of financial stress decides to blow up the local school. Even despite the current amount of school shootings in the news, there is none that has topped what happened in Bath and I pray none never will. History is often cruel, bloody and unkind, but is also a grand inspiration for those of us who love to explore those cruel, dark events whose wounds have not healed.
Lastly, there is nothing like looking to the headlines for an idea. Reading the news can not only keep you informed of what is going on today, but also give you ideas for your next writing project. John Waters, a filmmaker known for his shocking movies like Pink Flamingos, stated during a stand up special that when he was starting out as a filmmaker, he would do literal ripped from the headlines stories. He would film a recreation of something that had just hit the newspapers and have it in the local midnight theatres by the end of the week as an exercise to improve his film making skills. While you don’t need to do that exactly, I think a variation of this could be valid. Take a recent horrible news segment and write it from the victim’s or the perpetrator’s perspective. If anything, it could make for an interesting story prompt for when you need to write but cannot think of what to write about.
Thank you all for indulging me in this trip down the resource section and tell me what you have been watching or reading right now. Currently reading Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix which tells the story of pulp horror novels of the 70s-90s and I just watched the 1963 version of the Haunting, which was surprisingly amazing. Lots of subtext that I liked and one special effect I just loved. Want to know what that effect was? I’ll give the answer on my Twitter account @Tchefette. Keep an eye out for that tweet and follow for more tweets about what I am up to and information on next posts. See you all next Food Thursday.
