The Horror Nerve

We have all read, seen or even experienced horror.  No one on this planet can say a story, a movie or a book has never frightened them, but if it didn’t leave you breathless, ready to get back on the roller coaster for another go-round, then it wasn’t really horror, was it? 

We’re talking about that silly little nerve that most of us have, which leaves us with pumping hearts and sweaty palms after it has been tickled.  I like to call it: The Horror Nerve.

It works fast.  Within moments of starting a book or film dubbed ‘horror’, we know if it has the goods, or not.  Nothing burns my back pockets like a bad excuse for a story that is simply put: not as scary as advertised.  And, almost daily, there are literally thousands of us out there trying to come up with, or even claiming that we have come up with the next 'scariest-thing-you-ever-saw' piece of work.

I hate to sit down and scan my Netflix list, trying to find something from the horror genre.   There's not much that I haven’t seen before.  A lot of it I just know is going to be awful, based on reviews and comments.  Bad enough for film to be that way, but books are even more frustrating. 

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough Hitchcocks or Poes and we can’t all be a King, or a Rice.  Somewhere along the line, if this genre is going to continue to exist at all, we story-tellers are going to have to bend the edges more and dial into those aspects that we, ourselves wish someone else would treat us with. 

There’s the challenge… What’s NEW out there, that we can make go bump in the night?  Do I re-invent the wheel? Or, is there something that I'm missing?

In my new novel "Tormenta",  I used just about all the typical horror maneuvers but found fresh ways to reveal them.

Frustrated with one attempt after another, I simply stopped trying to develop new concepts of horror, and worked on controlling elements we are all familiar with; those tried and true, steadfast staples: ghosts, witches, curses and the blackest of voodoo's hoodoo-magic; zombies, vengeance and dark secrets, mired in moldy family history, forgotten, to everyone's eventual dread. Open your mind up to them and you'll marvel at the number of ways our predecessors played with 'The Horror Nerve'.

When a writer stops to consider, they could find that all those that have come before them have left behind a treasure trove of material.   With it, today’s writer can use the former to make new ripples and folds in their own work.

Remember though, today’s audience is not what it was…

Our readers no longer have the time for long, detailed descriptions.   They don’t want to be bogged down, they want to fly through a story, capture its elements and digest them before the alarm clock goes off, or the kids start whining, or lunch-break is over and the real world, with all its horrors, comes rushing back.