Compass Points - Horror Upon Horror: A Step by Step Guide to Writing a Horror Novel: Researching and Writing the Horror Novel - Softcover

Ruthven, Suzanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178279266X ISBN 13: 9781782792666

Verlag: Compass Books, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

The horror novel has often been looked upon as the poor relation in the literary world, and yet some of our greatest writers have published novels under its banner. Horror writer (Whittlewood and The Wild Horseman) and former Gothic Society member, Suzanne Ruthven brings us a step-by-step guide to writing horror fiction.
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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

In addition to being the commissioning editor for Compass Books, Suzanne Ruthven is also editor of the popular quarterly creative writing magazine, The New Writer (which she produces in partnership with literary agent, and publisher, Merric Davidson). She lives in County Tipperary, Ireland.
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In addition to being the commissioning editor for Compass Books, Suzanne Ruthven is also editor of the popular quarterly creative writing magazine, The New Writer (which she produces in partnership with literary agent, and publisher, Merric Davidson). She lives in County Tipperary, Ireland.
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Compass Points Horror upon Horror

Researching and Writing the Horror Novel

By Suzanne Ruthven

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2013 Suzanne Ruthven
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78279-266-6

Contents

Chapter One: Tales of the Dead.............................................
1
Chapter Two: The Gothic Horror Show........................................
11
Chapter Three: The Vampyre.................................................
21
Chapter Four: Fakelore and Fantasy.........................................
30
Chapter Five: Chimera......................................................
45
Chapter Six: The Twilight World............................................
57
Chapter Seven: Nature's Own................................................
67
Cosmic Egg publisher's interview...........................................
79
Conclusion.................................................................
82

CHAPTER 1

Tales of the Dead

"The time has come to talk of terror and horror," observed theacademic authors of In Search of Dracula, Dr Raymond McNallyand Professor Radu Florescu. "Strictly speaking they are twodifferent things – but, of course, we seldom speak strictly! Bothare responses to the frightful thing, person, deed or circumstance.But terror is the extreme rational fear of some acceptedform of reality, whereas horror is extreme irrational fear of theutterly unnatural or the supernatural. Moreover, there is realistichorror – the unnatural or supernatural fright presented in theguise of the normal. Terror is also the dread of the use ofsystematic violence; horror the dread of something unpredictable,soothing that may have a potential for violence."

In many instances, however, our concept of a favourite horrorstory comes from a screenplay rather than the original novel,which is a completely different discipline. Many a reader hasreceived a shock when discovering that the novel (often readafter a cinema or television success), is a drastic departure fromthe film version. Characters are merged or omitted altogether;locations are altered; new scenes are invented for dramaticimpact; and in a large number of cases, the ending is nothing likethe novelist's conclusion to the story. Novels are frequentlyadapted for films and frequently include material that was notpart of the original narrative but a film is a film, and a novel is anovel – each being viewed as separate art forms. So, for the timebeing we must forget about the film versions and concentrate onwriting a novel.

To fully understand the horror novel, would-be novelists inthe genre are advised to familiarise themselves with the developmentof the style from the classic German Gespensterbuch to thecontemporary Twilight series, to see what makes the horror novelfan-base tick. The appeal of traditional ghost stories is probablyas old as the first time humans gathered together around a fire tolisten to tales of long-dead ancestors. The flickering shadows onthe walls, the enveloping darkness outside, and the sounds ofpredatory night creatures would have all added to the atmosphere.A log falling unexpectedly from the flames in a shower ofsparks would have sent shivers of fear along the spines of thelisteners as they hung on every word ...

... moving down through the ages we come to the famouscollection of ghost stories from the Villa Diadoti that inspired thecreators of the modern genre. Everyone is familiar with thehistory:

The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowdedaround a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves withsome German stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into ourhands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Twoother friends ... and myself agreed to write a story, founded on somesupernatural occurrence ...

So recorded Percy Shelley in the 'anonymous' preface to the firstedition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in 1818. Mary herselfrecalled the same collection when she came to write a preface forthe revised edition of her novel and although the stories made"so powerful an impression on Mary Shelley that she could recallincidents which occurred in them fifteen years later, no-one hasuntil now thought fit to reprint either the French or the Englisheditions," observed Dr Terry Hale of the Performance TranslationCentre at the University of Hull, in the 1992 translation publishedby the Gothic Society.

The original German collection, Gespensterbuch, first saw thelight of day between 1811 and 1815, with the French version,Fantasmagoriana published in 1812; and an English version, Talesof the Dead, appearing the following year. These German'shudder' stories had a tremendous influence on the developmentof the English Gothic literary genre and according to DrHale, "frequently employed traditional folk-motifs coupled withincreasingly sophisticated narrative techniques". A techniquethat is still highly identifiable in the genre in the twentiethcentury – but from that 'wet, ungenial summer' also sprung theindependent trains of thought that gave the world two of itsmost terrifying Gothic creations – Dr Frankenstein's monsterand, subsequently, the charismatic vampire, Count Dracula.

The traditional ghost story, however, is usually based on someform of revenge or retribution from beyond the grave, andwhereas contemporary writers have moved on from the classical'moaning in the passages' and 'clanking chains', the narrativemust still produce that involuntary 'shudder factor' in thereader. It is a scenario that bridges generations, just as the 1898novella, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James partly inspired thescreenplay for the psychological horror film The Others (2001). Itis also the one of the most 'respectable' elements of the horrorgenre in that ghost stories have graced the pages of the mostsurprising of mainstream magazines at one time or another,including an edition of Practical Fishkeeping!

By definition, however, a ghost story should be any piece offiction, ballad or drama, or an account of an experience, thatincludes a ghost, or simply has all the appearances of a haunting.Wikipedia, for example, tells us: "In a narrower sense, the ghoststory has been developed as a short story format, within genrefiction. It is a form of supernatural fiction and specifically ofweird fiction, and is often a horror story. While ghost stories areoften explicitly meant to be scary, they have been written to serveall sorts of purposes, from comedy to morality tales. Ghosts oftenappear in the narrative as sentinels or prophets of things tocome. Whatever their uses the ghost story is in some formatpresent in all cultures around the world, and may be passeddown orally or in written form."

Literary scholar and historian of the ghost story Jack Sullivan,observes that many literary experts claim a 'Golden Age of theGhost Story' existed between the decline of the Gothic novel inthe 1830s and the start of the First World War. Sullivan's opinionis that the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanuushered in the 'Golden Age' – but fails to acknowledge ArthurMachen's contribution to the genre, especially his ghostly tale ofThe Bowmen, that actually inspired the WWI legend of the Angelsof Mons. Sullivan is one of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Compass Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 178279266X
• ISBN 13: 9781782792666
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 90
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar