Filling in the dark room: perception in horror

When I graduated from college four years ago, I started working in Washington DC. Some of you know where, but since they instilled a healthy love of discretion in me, I won't name them here. But like most government facilities, the building was steeped in history. In the time I worked there, I heard all the stories, the WWII-era legends, the rumors of tragic artifacts supposedly still on-site somewhere. And of course, I heard the ghost stories.

Our facility was a cavernous compound, made up of two buildings. One was sterile, functional, built to hold our various offices and nothing more. The second was older, more ornate; when this particular institution was first built, it was both a residence and a central hub. Now it housed a few departments, but otherwise was used mostly for events. The easiest way to go from one building to the other was to walk through the gardens outside, but the two were also connected through the basement.

The basement under the newer building held the chauffeurs' breakroom, and a hard-to-find ping-pong table, but was otherwise a quiet, unused maze of hallways with dozens of doors that led to nowhere. The basement under the older building was always darker, chillier. It had, at one time, been the home of some staffers, and you could find the closet-sized dorms if you went in deep enough

This is where all the stories were set, of course.

As a staffer, I went down to the basement a handful of times. The first few times, the older staffers served as tour guides. But after a while, a few of us had the confidence to start taking tours of our own. Without a natural leader, there was a bit of hesitance when it came to who should walk down those dark hallways first. And more often than not, it ended up being me.

Being a horror writer doesn't mean the usual tropes won't scare you. The stairways-to-nowhere and the rusty bathtubs always gave me the shivers. But much like Mad-Eye Moody, I'm all about constant vigilance. I've always had an overdeveloped sense of whether I have company or not - and I was always sure, on those basement tours, that I didn't.

The only time I was less-than-sure, I was in that older building, but I was two floors up from the basement, in the kitchen and in broad daylight. I was standing beside two of my friends, listening to instructions, when I felt the friend next to me, S, take a step back toward the cutting boards, covered in veggies for our event. I heard the rustling of the plastic bag covering the tomatoes, I heard someone moving around - everything in my spatial awareness was telling me that S was behind me, preparing the vegetables.

Then I glanced to the side, and S was where she had been the entire time: right next to me.

If you asked me now, my best guess is that the rustling came from a mouse trying to get at the veggies - though I suppose you can guess for yourself. But if it was a rat, what about the other sounds? Did I really feel S take a step back before the rustling started, and did I really hear footsteps? Or did my brain pencil those details in based on what I assumed was happening?

While working on my last project, I texted a brilliant neuroscientist friend for help with a scene, as you do when you are a writer and have amazingly patient friends who don't mind out-of-context questions. She explained the concept of 'filling in': that there is a blind spot on our retinas without photoreceptors where the optic nerve meets the eye, and the brain fills in the missing information based on context clues.

We can't perceive everything at every second, but most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about those gaps. We have ways to compensate. Writing horror means trusting that, and leaving space for it. Fear is personal and specific from person to person. And if someone hears a sound behind them in a dark room, chances are their mind will fill in the thing they want least to be there.

And if your reader can't rely on your main character's perception - or their own - that puts them on unsteady ground. And if they're reading horror, that's exactly where they want to be.

Here's hoping your Halloween isn't too creepy. (Or here's hoping it is, if that's what you're into!)

Dark YA Blogfest Week Three: Soundtrack

Good morning, everyone!

I was really looking forward to this week. I may not be terribly on top of things when it comes to the music scene (I rely on my more savvy friends to recommend things to me), but music is a huge part of my writing process. Sometimes I find music that's specific to characters and stories, but generally I stock up on mood music for writing different tones and genres. And as y'all might have guessed, I have a lot of horror-writing music!

So today, I am going to raid my playlist and put together an awesome soundtrack for you to listen to while you read stories of the creepy persuasion. And since I just read (and adored) ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD, I should note that these songs make for a pretty good accompaniment!

(To learn more about the Dark YA Blogfest, go here!)

1. Howl - Florence and the Machine

I love the way this song escalates, especially with the drumming. There's a reason it's my HUNGRY GROUND theme song!

2. Haunted - Poe

I love Poe, and this song in particular is awesomely eerie. The disoriented feel makes it an especially good fit for Anna, what with the warped reality she has to deal with in the house.

3. Apres Moi - Regina Spektor

I just love the moodiness of this song, with all the deep piano notes, and the line "I'm not my own/it's not my choice." It's another great Anna song.

4. They - Jem

Another eerie, atmospheric song. The slightly off-kilter chanting in the background feels very haunted house to me!

5. Violet Hill - Coldplay

I felt like I had to get some dude singers on this list!  This is very different from their usual fare, and tonally I think it's a good match for the story.


Enjoy! And go read ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD if you haven't already!

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween, guys! Sorry I have been so scarce lately - I've been rewriting like a machine. I'm here to close out my October Horror Blogfest with a treat for all of you... a creepy writing prompt!

Write about what's at the top of these stairs.

(I almost went down into my workplace's super-creepy basement to take a prompt photo, but I wasn't sure what I was more afraid of: running into a ghost, or running into one of the janitors and then having to explain why I was taking pictures in the basement.)

Enjoy! And if you do end up writing something, I'd love to see it!

Horror and storytelling

Good morning, y'all! You know what's awesome? Taking a couple days just to lay around and recharge. Of course, now I'm going "WHY DID I DO THAT I'M SO BEHIND ON REVISIONS/BLOGS/EVERYTHIIIIIING," so there's also that. So I thought I'd get the October Horror Blogfest back on track by talking about the relationship between horror and verbal storytelling.

I've always loved scary stories, but until recently I was hesitant to label myself as a horror fan. The word 'horror' these days makes people think of slasher movies and the Saw franchise, and I'm not big on those at all. But horror, to me, conjures up a different image: a simple story told out loud in a dark, dark room.

Everywhere you go, there's usually some sort of tradition built around telling scary stories. Like many kids in the US, I spent most of my sleepovers listening to stories about Bloody Mary, the girl with the green ribbon around her neck, and other such traumatizing things. When I lived in Tokyo, I learned about a game called Hyaku Monogatari, or One-Hundred Stories. It was traditionally played with one-hundred people, but these days it can be played by a group of any size: the group sits in a dark room with one candle per person, and they tell a ghost story. When each person finishes their story, they blow out their candle. When everyone is finished, the group counts up to however many people in the room... and it's said that another voice will chime in to count itself.

Yeah, I've never played that game. I may be a horror fan, but you won't see me tempting fate!

Those days of telling ghost stories at sleepovers are pretty far behind me, but I've found that a great horror novel is basically a high-concept version of a creepy campfire story - just with more complex characters and plot points. So how can writers capture that same feeling of dread?

I wrote a little about rhythm in horror a while ago, which is a big one, and Hart Johnson made a great observation in the comments about The Shining and "red rum." It reminded me of another great storytelling tool: repetition. One of my creepiest childhood horror stories was about a young girl lying in bed while a disembodied voice comes closer and closer. "Mary, I am coming up the stairs. Mary, I am on the first step. Mary, I am on the second step." Good, creepy repetition works the best when the repeated line ramps up the tension.

The other big one is simplicity. The scariest lines tend to be short and subtle. In Rick Yancey's Monstrumologist series, one of my favorite lines in the third book comes at the end of a creepy, tension-filled scene: "I turned back." The reader knows, at this point, that the protagonist is going to find something terrifying behind him, but this short, ambiguous sentence lets the reader's imagination kick in. And our imaginations paint the scariest picture of all.

And for those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, here's a perfect example of all of the above: Face All Red, a short webcomic by Emily Carroll. The comic uses rhythm, repetition, and simple but powerful sentences to an absolutely chilling effect. It's like a campfire story with illustrations. If you want some Halloween night chills, this is the one for you.

Did you tell scary stories as a kid? What was your favorite?

The rhythm of writing

Good morning, all!

As I prepare for my holiday weekend excursion (off to Boston, hell yeah!) I am trying to get ahead on my rewriting. It's going pretty well so far: normally I revise very quickly, but I'm retyping almost everything to imbue the narrative with a little more voice. I just finished chapter four rewrites, and I'm happy, even though I'm sure I'll make more tweaks on my second pass. Since I've spent most of my time so far expanding the beginning, I'm just now getting to some of the creepier scenes in the story, which comes with all sorts of fun new challenges.

Writing something scary can be so tricky, because horror is such a visual genre. You don't have a lot of the same tricks that, say, moviemakers do: you can't show the reader the terrifying face of your monster, you can't really make the reader jump, and you can't add a creepy score to the scene. The best horror novels I've read rely instead on a steadily building tension throughout the story. One way they build this tension is through rhythm.

It's hard to describe what a talented writer can do with this technique, but when they pull it off, it's amazing. It's like the text itself is imitating the protagonist's heartbeat. These scenes start off slow, normal, and innocuous enough. As the readers start to get hints that something is wrong here, the scene starts to pick up, move faster. The sentences might get wild and breathless or choppy and frantic, but either way, the readers find themselves tearing through the scene because they can't stand not knowing what happens. Finally, when the tension reaches unbearable levels, it breaks, usually with what TV Tropes would call a 'Wham Line.' (Which is pretty much just how it sounds: a line of text or dialogue, usually a single sentence, that reaches out and smacks you in the face.)

This is, of course, a lot harder than it sounds, but I am practicing in the hopes that I'll get better at it. When I write a scary scene, I try to imagine the 'beats,' like a drum that starts off steady and even and gets wilder and quicker with every sentence. I can't say if it's working or not, but I really, really hope it does!

Do you incorporate rhythm into your writing?

Welcome to the October Horror-Blogging Extravaganza

... or something like that! As I mentioned a few posts ago, I will be blogging about things of the spine-tingling variety at least once a week this month. Besides talking about the process of horror-writing (and possibly including some flash-fiction in there), I wanted to talk about one of my favorite things: ghosts and monsters in classic Japanese folklore. Not only are they really interesting, cool, and creepy, but they are so much fun to write about! I will do a "spotlight" on a different monster for every post.


But first, some vocabulary to know! I will write the term in Japanese, then the romanized pronunciation, then the translation.

あやかし - Ayakashi - A catch-all term for something strange and unexplainable 

幽霊 - Yuurei - Ghost

 妖怪 - Youkai - Demon

化け物 - Bakemono - Monster

お化け屋敷 - Obake yashiki - Haunted house

怪談 - Kaidan - Ghost story

***

And now, for the star of our post...

 怨霊 -  Onryou - The Vengeful Female Spirit

I picked the onryou to go first because I'm willing to bet that all of you know this one, even if you're giving me a blank look right now. If you've seen The Ring or The Grudge - if you've even seen a commercial for either of those films - you know what an onryou is. The onryou is easily the most popular mythological character in Japanese horror today. 

The onryou is a spirit, almost always female, in the grip of powerful rage or sadness. She died an unhappy death, and she wants everyone around her to pay for it. Unlike most Western ghost stories, there is no 'unfinished business' to take care of here: an onryou's desire for vengeance is never sated. She won't stop, even after the one who wronged her is long dead.

The image we are familiar with from recent movies became popular through kabuki. In order to make the onryou characters in these plays stand out, there would be three simple visual cues: a white burial kimono, stringy black hair, and a bluish tinge to their skin. 

The most famous onryou character is Oiwa from Yotsuya Kaidan, or A Yotsuya Ghost Story. (Yotsuya is a district of Tokyo.) Oiwa was disfigured by a poison and cast aside by her husband, Iemon. She dies shortly after and becomes an onryou, annihilating the family who disfigured her and psychologically torturing her husband until he ruins his own life. As you will quickly find, Japanese ghost stories don't tend to end happily.

Also, random fact: when I studied in Tokyo, my university was in Yotsuya, and my apartment was in Nerima, where The Grudge films take place. Thankfully I didn't run into any onryou while I was there. It's a good thing, too! Out of all the ghosts and monsters from Japanese folklore, the onryou has to be the worst one you could run into. The comforting thing about our own ghost stories is that the ghost's motives make sense, but the onryou's do not. No matter what you do, it won't matter. Once you cross her path, she won't stop until she has you. But like I said, I managed to avoid her, so I should be--

-- she's standing right behind me, isn't she.

Upcoming: Paranormal/Horror Month!

I had a longer post in mind for today, but then it didn't end up making any sense. Instead, I am going to announce my new blog project!

As some of you may know, I love creepy things. (I know. I'm not very subtle about it.) As you may have guessed from my love-of-creepy-things, October is one of my favorite months ever. So throughout the month of October, at least once a week, I will be posting material of the Paranormal or Horror persuasion!

Depending on how ambitious/busy I am that particular week, this may include:
- Reviews of awesomely scary books on Afterglow
- A post about my process for writing creepy scenes
- An introduction to classic Japanese ghosts and monsters (which are INCREDIBLY COOL)
- Possible flash-fiction for Halloween night?
- And whatever else comes to mind

What do you guys think? Is there anything you'd like to see? Do any of the above sound particularly appealing to you?

Writing primal fears

Have you seen the trailer from the upcoming movie Are You Afraid of the Dark yet?

I wasn't aware of it until the other night, when I had the TV on while typing up a scene I wrote at work. I was really just using the TV for background music, and I wasn't paying very close attention. At that point, a truncated version of this trailer came on. (Or maybe the rest of the trailer played and I just didn't notice it? It wouldn't be terribly surprising.)

Anyway, I saw the last 30 seconds or so of this trailer here, where the young protagonist is crawling under her bed, you see her pushing her way through the sheets, and... well, after that, I was definitely paying attention. My mom and I actually texted each other at the same time to say, "Uh, did you see that?"

It all made sense when I saw that Guillermo del Toro had a hand in it. The horror auteur is best known for nightmare-inducing movies like The Orphanage, The Devil's Backbone, and of course, Pan's Labyrinth. But it got me thinking about writing horror.

Of all fiction, I think horror is the most subjective, because fear is one of the most subjective emotions there is. As a lover of all things creepy, I can't tell you how many times I've watched/read a scary story and thought, "I wish there was more of [this] and less of [that]." I complain about it so often that when I got that reaction to my own manuscript recently, it made me laugh. It's karma!

But there's a vein of horror that runs through almost everyone: primal fears. Stories that tap into the nightmares of our childhoods and bring them back in full force. A primal fear turns the familiar into the unfamiliar, and turns our safe places into the most dangerous. Here are some of my favorite uses in books and movies. (Beware of spoilers!)

Coraline: The entire premise, full stop. The most terrifying thing about the world behind the door is that it's so similar to Coraline's own, even better - but the sinister undercurrent runs through the story from the beginning. The movie is great for the chilling visuals, but I love the tension in Gaiman's rich prose.

Ju-on/The Grudge: This movie scared me so badly in high school, I watched it over and over to inoculate myself to it. Nowadays I generally just torture people by imitating the onryo-style death rattle, but there's one sequence that I still admire for how thoroughly it terrifies people. One of the characters is chased home by the vengeful ghost, and to calm herself down, she climbs into bed and turns on the TV. The news reporter's face slowly distorts into a twisted, horrific image, and when the character hides under the covers, she finds the ghost in her bed with her. I feel like every other J-horror movie is just trying to recreate this scene.

The Monkey's Paw: In this classic short story, the main characters come by a talisman that grants their wishes in all the wrong ways. When one wish takes the life of their son, the mother wishes him back to life, but the father, knowing that their son has come back wrong, uses their last wish to send him back. There are two things about this that still make me shiver: the idea that someone you know and love can be changed that way, and the fact that the protagonists never see their 'resurrected' son. It's really no wonder that the climactic scene has inspired so many homages, including a Buffy episode.

The Orphanage: On the whole, I find this movie more sad than scary, but it has a few classic scares (read: Tomas in general, my God.) But I think my favorite part is when the protagonist plays Red Light Green Light with the spirits of the orphans. Childhood games in general are a goldmine for traumatic scares - especially since so many of them have darker undertones.

Lake Mungo: This littler-known Australian horror film is much more low-key than the others on this list. The focus of the faux-documentary is mostly on the grief of a middle-class family after their daughter drowns. But the movie's implication that death is something that follows you stayed with me much more effectively than any scene in Final Destination ever did. And the personification of death... I won't spoil it, but it's a perfect example of the familiar turned unfamiliar.

The Shining: If you're about to tell me that you can turn a corner in a quiet hotel without hesitating a little, you are such a liar. "Come play with us, Danny. Forever... and ever... and ever..."

Oops - that got long. As you can see, I'm a little passionate about horror! If any of you are still with me, what are some of your favorite primal fear-related scares in fiction?