{"id":1235,"date":"2015-10-30T08:01:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T14:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/?p=1235"},"modified":"2016-01-08T16:41:09","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T22:41:09","slug":"the-horror-you-cant-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travisheermann.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/30\/the-horror-you-cant-see\/","title":{"rendered":"The Horror You Can’t See"},"content":{"rendered":"
{Just in time for Halloween, this article has been reprinted from The Fictorians, Oct 23, 2015.}<\/a><\/em><\/h6>\n

As a writer who gravitates to the dark and desolate and desperate, I often inject a syringe full of horror into my stories. \u201cYou got your horror in my fantasy!\u201d \u201cOh, yeah? You got your fantasy in my horror!\u201d<\/p>\n

This month, I\u2019m going to talk about a technique that the best horror writers and filmmakers use masterfully\u2014leaving things off-screen.<\/em><\/p>\n

So before this wild assertion spurs someone to argue with me, someone whose tastes prefer everything upfront and in one\u2019s face, let me say that I enjoy strategic splatter.<\/p>\n

The human mind\u2014especially that of a hard-core reader\u2014possesses prodigious powers of imagination. I was reminded of this when I was writing Sword of the Ronin<\/em>, the second book of my historical fantasy trilogy. A number of beta readers expressed some difficulty at getting through a scene where the hero, who has been tortured and imprisoned for some time, has no choice but to witness the execution of a fellow prisoner. My wife read that scene and told me that it was one of the most excruciating things she has ever read. She was quite surprised when I pointed out to her that everything in that scene had happened off-screen<\/em>, so she went back and looked at it again. None of what happens in that scene is visible. The protagonist only hears things and sees indirect evidence of what\u2019s happening. Nevertheless, it is a scene that sticks with a great many readers.<\/p>\n

H.P. Lovecraft said, \u201cThe oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.\u201d His essay \u201cSupernatural Horror in Literature\u201d is where this quote appears, and is absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to write scary stuff. He used this technique over and over again. So many of his most memorable beasties are terrifying because we can\u2019t quite<\/em> see them. In \u201cThe Dunwich Horror,\u201d the creature is invisible.<\/em> Ghosts scare us worst when we know<\/em> they\u2019re there, but we can\u2019t see <\/em>them. The monster in the shadows. The strange sounds in the night. The serial killer hiding among us. The guy next door keeping someone chained up in his basement.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t want to use the clich\u00e9d, cheap jump from the cat jumping out the cupboard. You want the kind of tension that lets the audience keep squirming in their seats.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that we\u2019re more afraid of what we can\u2019t see than what we can. In the aftermath of a great horror book or movie, we remember the fear we felt during the experience, but don\u2019t find the monster as scary anymore\u2014because we\u2019ve seen<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

Should you keep everything off-screen? You certainly can. It\u2019s an artistic choice; some audiences prefer their horror a bit more sedate. But you don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

Allow me to point toward one of the most effective horror movies of recent years, The Descent, <\/em>which tells the story of six women exploring an unmapped cave. This movie is an incredible mix of both on-screen and off-screen horror. First of all, it\u2019s in a cave, so unless the flashlights are on, the screen is pitch black. On top of the incredibly claustrophobic environment (it was often a wonder to me how this was filmed), tension is built by half-glimpsed somethings at the edge of the light, or by strange sounds in pitch blackness. Throughout much of the film the horror is barely glimpsed, suggested, implied. But then at a certain point, the flood-gates open, the gloves come off, and we are drenched in blood, ichor, and violence. It was one of those movies that\u2019s so effective at what it set out to do that I don\u2019t think I want to see it again.<\/p>\n

Like all tools\u2014from paintbrushes to tack hammers to prepositional phrases\u2014it\u2019s the artist\u2019s craft that decides when to use it to achieve the desired effect. Sometimes you need the splatter, the dripping fangs, all eight of the giant spider\u2019s luminous eyes in hairy close-up. But those are often best used as part of the Big Reveal, the Climax, the Gruesome Finale. Sometimes, you need the shadows, the invisible threat, the last glimpse of a foot being dragged around a corner, the knife that wasn\u2019t where you left it, the sound of something slithering through underbrush, to crank up the tension. Prime the audience with unrelenting tension so that the Big Reveal produces an audible gasp.<\/p>\n\n\n