The Lessons of Horror Writing
How reading outside what you write can be the medicine for new ideas
Never been much of a reader of horror or psychological thrillers. Certainly not the writer of such. Don’t think I would be skilled enough to write with what it takes to do it well. Although, I admire those who have done it brilliantly and still do. There are many, some I’m unfamiliar with, I’m sure. But I certainly know the classic “horror” writers and their books—Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker.
What I don’t like are the gratuitously violent stories—books, TV or movies. First, I find them uninteresting, secondly, they’re many times offensive. But a good horror story, told with skill and even a sense of grace can be a story that lingers for a very long time.
At the college where I reach, a colleague of mine—author Sam Weller, the official biographer of the great Ray Bradbury—has written a marvelous book of horror and psychological stories. In the very first story in Dark Black, the reader goes along with a struggling writer who rents the In Cold Blood home in Kansas, the house where a family was murdered in the late 1950s, an unspeakable crime, the home and the true crime story that author Truman Capote made both infamous and famous. Weller’s story is magnificent in its pacing and its lingering impact. This is tremendous horror writing. Sam is the…
