I touched yesterday on the difference between natural and supernatural approaches when it comes to a scary tale.
This seems pretty clear cut; the dread conjured by a thought of a nuclear strike as opposed to the fear that a scaly leviathan will rise from the sea and swallow your house whole in the dead of night.
There is another axis on which to ponder though, that of rationality.
When I was a boy I had a fear that if I closed my eyes to sleep, somewhere in the world a vampire would restart a slow walk towards my location - and would stop if I opened my eyes. My friend Ed has a mortal fear of chewing ice lolly sticks and of fish swimming towards him.
My fear whilst supernatural could be said to be rational, as being stalked by a vampire would be something to be feared.
Ed's whilst naturally occurring could be said to be irrational, since I suspect death by lolly stick may not feature highly in the NHS mortuary records. This is of course the definition of phobia.
Yet both fears were and are true and real.
There is an authentic source to both rational and irrational fear. In order for us to have become scared of something, regardless of what it is, it has to have triggered a response deep within us.
That's the nub of the art for me, and that's the challenge in the Campaign for Real Fear.
For me the master of this trigger was M.R. James (1862-1936)
His classic tales such as Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to you My Lad or Casting the Runes inch along, describing innocuous but (when combined) sinister little details. All the time the author was priming your heart, flicking little trip-switches of dread. Then the final reveal hauled up the curtain like a magician's prestige on the true terror the reader had almost unknowingly constructed.
A masterful approach, and subtle skill, and he was able to fire these cumulative inner horrors in the reader whether writing about something rational or irrational.
For me this is the approach to the craft I'd like to attempt to adopt.
CAMRF now open! 16th April deadline.
I think a discussion on fear would only be further improved by a moment of thought for George Orwell who used it beautifully in 1984, to give Room 101 its devastatingly simple but effective methods. Beautifully engaged the reader in the self realisation that we all have one deep entrenched fear, that if delivered appropriately, will force us to release every secret of our life and betray everyone we love.
ReplyDeleteWe are all flawed, they will always win, there is no escape, was the power of the Totalitarian state.
....mines a being submersed in a tank of inquisitive fish....
Ed