Tag: horror writing

Are Writing No-Nos Really as Bad as They Say?

mjmarsauthor

Recently, I was scrolling through an interesting thread on a bookish Facebook page. The OP had asked what tropes or events in a book would cause you to stop reading in frustration. The answers were pretty surprising.

It wasn’t necessarily the answers themselves that interested me, but the response to the answers. For every person naming a certain pet-peeve as a reader, there were multiple responses stating “Oh, I don’t mind that at all, but I really hate it when…”.

As a fairly neurotic writer, I opened the post comments wondering if I should read it at all. I was afraid that the first 5 responses would list 5 of the things that I most definitely used in my upcoming book, The Suffering, and that I would cringe and sweat and quiver inside a little, wondering whether everyone would instantly see me for the big fat writing fraud that my brain insists that I am. But the responses were immediately comforting.

It was great to see the sheer spectrum of loves in comparison to the personal grievances of the reading community, and for just as many readers to reply and state that a particular trope or writing “faux-pas” is something they actively seek in a book, and get pleasure from when they see it.

Because it’s impossible to please everyone. There is not a chance in hell that you can write a book or create a piece of art that everyone will enjoy. Pleasure is unequivocally, beautifully subjective.

Just for fun, here are some of the ‘hated’ tropes or writing mishaps that were listed, followed by some of the rebuttals (although they are in speech marks, they are summarized from the answers given and are not direct quotes):

  • Spelling mistakes or grammatical errors (naturally – we need to make sure there are as few as possible!). But here’s what a few of the readers said: “I find it kind of comforting when there’s a mistake in a book. It shows that the writer is human, too.”
  • Writing a character’s accent within the speech patterns. (And if you’re looking for an example of this, think about all the recent Benoit Blanc memes for reference!) For all those who listed this as a gripe, others said: “I love it when a character has an obvious accent, especially when it’s familiar to the area I’m from. If it’s done well, I can hear it in my head, and I instantly warm to the character.”
  • A main character who vehemently dislikes someone, only for them to end up falling in love a few chapters later. While a lot of readers agreed that this was annoying and unrealistic, there were plenty who disagreed. “This is my favourite kind of tension in a book! The ‘will they/won’t they’ keeps me turning the pages until I get a definitive answer, and I love it when they finally get together. I don’t care how many times I read it, the characters are always different, so it doesn’t matter to me.” While another said, “This is how I met my partner – I hated their guts. It always feels realistic to me. We’re married now!”
  • The baddy becomes the goody or the goody becomes the baddy. While some readers find the switch utterly frustrating, others couldn’t disagree more. “Character development is the best part of reading for me. I put this in the same category. If the character changes dramatically, I can only see it as a good thing.” Another mentioned that they had been a bit of a bully in school and managed to turn it around. Reading a bad character turn good always felt familiar to them, affirming their choice to make the switch all those years ago.
  • Writers going into detail about the food the character is eating. This one surprised me, as I’ve always enjoyed a good food description in a book, and find it really puts me in the scene (Richard Laymon’s hotdog descriptions in Funland and The Midnight Tour, anyone?!). And let’s not forget about Hemingway. This was one of the most divisive topics. You either love it or hate it. But, like all good foods, perhaps moderation is key to this bug-bear. As one reader stated, “If it went on for pages and pages of description then, absolutely. But I like to experience the food along with the character if it’s within reason.”
  • Characters referencing pop-culture such as real-life movies, or using social media apps like TikTok or Instagram. This one intrigued me as some of my characters (students in 2016) actively use social media apps in the story. I felt the same way as many of the people responding to the contrary – “We aren’t living in the 1950s. If it’s a contemporary book about young characters, chances are they spend a lot of time on their phones, so it adds to realistic world-building.”
  • Finally, one of the readers (who was also a writer, I’m assuming!) hated the question itself. Why? Because there is no one-size-fits-all way of writing, and so she found the question frustratingly irrelevant.

I guess my summary here is drawing the same conclusion, but unlike the final reader’s response, I’m glad the question was asked. It reminded me that even if you accidentally (or intentionally) include a reader’s most hated trope or writer mistake in your work, there WILL be another reader who appreciates it.

So the old adage that you should write the book that you always wanted to read really is true. If you like it, chances are there will be many more who feel the same way. And don’t be disheartened if you get bad feedback. Sometimes, the ones who don’t like what you do are the ones who shout loudest, or take the time to voice their opinions. In the background, there may be 10 more people for every 1 of the ones who don’t like it just quietly thinking how much they love what you do. Don’t fixate on that negative opinion because it looms largest.

As with all things, you just have to find your audience.

Found Footage Horror Writing

mjmarsauthor

After a crazy few months, I’m finally settling back into my old writing routine, working on getting my horror novel finished and sent out for trad pub later this year. With everything that’s been going on, I did slip into one of those distracted, disinterested phases where I was into pretty much everything but working on my novel.

For example, I completed a Cryptozoology diploma – if you were wondering just how much of a massive geek I really am, that should give you all the information you need, am I right?! While I knew I should have been working on The Suffering, it was kind of fun to step away and shake it off for a few weeks. The only problem with doing that, as most of you writers will know, is dragging yourself back to your original project and hitting the ground running where you veered off course in the first place.

The last few days I’ve returned to one of my all time horror loves – Found Footage movies. Now, hear me out. I know it’s a divisive subject. I know the prospect of watching a shaking, grainy Go-Pro and listening to the person behind the camera panting and screaming while they thrash through forests isn’t everyone’s idea of a great time. But FF movies immerse me in the moment like no Hollywood production ever could. Not even when Patrick Wilson’s on screen (and boy, do I love it when Patrick Wilson’s on screen….but, I digress). I never fall in love with the characters the way I do with FF movies. I never root for them and think of them as buddies I’m tagging along with the way I do with FF.

An example from this week – my all time favourite horror movie, hands down, is Hell House LLC. I just get fireworks of horror-induced joy whenever I watch it and its sequels. I NEED the Hell House sweatshirt that Sara wears in the movie. Clowns don’t usually freak me out, but the clowns in Hell House? Fuck, yeah!! That’s true horror, and I love it so much. It reminds me of why horror has always given me something that no other genre can. A decent horror gives me that crazy, life-affirming confirmation that I’m alive, that life is exciting, and that if I can use that passion in a writing project then that’s exactly what I need to be doing with my life. The director and cast of the first movie posted a Zoom chat on their Facebook page this week and hearing their behind the scenes recollections and discussions about how the movie unfolded through improv and B-roll resonated with me. It made me want to run straight to my laptop and pick up The Suffering again. Because my characters are my cast, and when they run off with their own little camera in my mind and do their own thing, I watch it happen and hope I can type fast enough to keep up. When I’m passionate about the story I’m writing, it feels just like I’m watching a Found Footage movie. And that’s when I get that little horror-induced, chest firework, life-affirming buzz that I’m doing exactly what I need to be doing with my life.

If you haven’t got a clue what I mean by Found Footage, dive right in to Amazon Prime and run it through the search. Hell House LLC is on there, as is Survive the Hollow Shoals, which has jump-scares for days and literally made me throw my phone across the room when I was watching it while wearing headphones. Getting me to jump is no mean feat, I can tell you, so props to Jonathon Klimek for that one.

In other news, we were supposed to be at the Hella Mega Tour this week, watching Green Day, Fall Out Boy, and Weezer performing in the sunshine. I was pretty disappointed that it has obviously been cancelled because of the pandemic, even though drinking in the garden listening to their most recent live performances wasn’t the worst way to spend a day. Plus, I found out that Dark Peninsula Press had released Negative Space, featuring my survival horror short Six Weeks, which definitely cheered me up. Working on that project has been a joy from start to finish, and I really hope the publication is a huge success. You can check out the link in my publications list here.

Anyway, my characters are calling from the shaky, grainy recesses of my brain. I’d better go see what they’re up to…

Humour in Horror Writing

mjmarsauthor

Well, you guys, it’s been a while. And how things have changed since I last uploaded a blog post. I hope you are all keeping safe and managing through these bizarre times.

Lockdown has given me invaluable time in front of the computer screen working on my horror novel. It got me to thinking about the relationship between humour and horror, and about how the two tend to meet. It’s a fine balance – make horror too funny and it seems silly and loses its tension. Make horror too serious and, for me, it loses an edge that a well-crafted story with elements of both will undoubtedly demonstrate.

Some of my writing heroes excel at this technique. The League of Gentlemen (Reece Shearsmith, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, and Jeremy Dyson), inspired me when I was a school kid. Their eponymous television show was like nothing I had ever seen before. Their skill at writing comedy immersed in horror, full of sympathetic characters and humanistic struggles, has stayed with me ever since. Pemberton and Shearsmith’s Inside No.9 continues to surprise me, a television experience that my husband pointed out is no mean feat! When chatting about the show to a work colleague, he stated, “It’s the only TV show that ever surprises MJ. Because she’s a writer, she always guesses what’s going to happen or what the twist in a show will be. With Inside No.9, she’s always just as surprised as the rest of us, so she actually gets to enjoy it!” I hadn’t thought about it until he pointed it out, but it’s so true!

And that’s what you can do with horror. Truly take people by surprise and thrill them, more than any other genre. It’s something that I am trying to focus on as I push on through this novel, working on balancing truly fiendish characters and events with personable humour and empathy. I am trying to learn from the masters – after all, I have been following them for about 25 years now.

The horror/humour balance can never be more topical than at a time of crisis. It’s important to laugh, even when the world around us seems to be falling apart. And it’s okay to find humour in the madness. In fact, there is nothing more human.

Stay safe my friends, and seek out a little humour where you can.

Inspired to write in Copenhagen

mjmarsauthor

I love city breaks. For me, the perfect holiday involves endless sights, peculiar statues, and oddities galore. When I first looked at Copenhagen I was surprised to find only a handful of myths and legends discussed online. When I asked the locals about this I was informed that the Danish are proud to be practical, and that many of the local tales of the paranormal were phased out over the years.

I admire the scientific approach, and take as much pleasure from discovering that a peculiar event has been debunked as I do from my imagination running wild at tales of ghouls and monsters. But the horror writer in me will always seek out the weird and will take solace in the fact that there are some things in our hustle-and-bustle world that can’t be easily explained away.

I ended up downloading a Monsters and Myths private walking tour on my phone and set out to discover the paranormal delights of the city. With the crisp blue January sky above me I loved hearing about the trolls, mermaids, and ghosts of Copenhagen’s past. Granted, the mermaid turned out to be a giant squid, the troll an explanation for the glacial stones in the countryside, and ghosts…well, the devil appearing in Laksegade in the 1800s and throwing belongings into the street was certainly a great tale.

For me, though, the true horror story was one experienced by Hans Christian Andersen, and documented in his diaries. Witnessing a boy plagued by epileptic fits, the cure at the time was thought to be drinking the blood of a corpse. Andersen was mesmerised by the potential power of the macabre treatment, and, because the fit passed over as the blood was administered, believed in its wonders.

As a horror writer, it is important to consider the human condition and the reasons for our superstitions, paranoia, and neurosis. Seeking out myths, legends, and ghost stories helps me to understand the mindset of those who had no access to scientific textbooks. It is the basis of human fear. And, in my opinion, it makes it more real than anything Hollywood’s scare fests can throw at us.

I often wonder how to balance the fantastical with the real in order to tell a convincing story. Copenhagen allowed me to consider the horrific with a practical mind, and I hope I can apply that to my writing in future. That’s not to say that I don’t believe that there may be some oddities and monsters out there that can’t be explained away by science! I love to keep an open mind. I don’t believe the human race can possibly know all there is to know.

Where would be the fun in that?

Who’s afraid of the big bad edits?

mjmarsauthor

A few weeks ago I received a rejection email with a twist. On this occasion I was fortunate enough to have the editor come back to me with my story marked, suggesting that if I make some changes he would reconsider the submission. I was blown away by this opportunity, as I know how rare it is to get a second chance when it comes to submissions!

I went back to him asking for a latest date that he would expect me to return the altered manuscript, stating that I knew that this was no guarantee that I would make it into the anthology even after the edits, and thanking him for the opportunity to try again. He then wrote back to me thanking me for my response to his suggestions, stating that not all writers take the offer of edits quite so well.

This struck me as crazy! Here was a professional, who whilst considering my story had made edits in track changes, without me paying him a thing, and had offered me a second chance at publication if only I follow his advice. For a story that I wrote for his anthology. Who in their right mind wouldn’t snap his hand off, I wondered?! I mean, I know that your own writing is precious, and that having someone turn around asking for changes is like someone saying your baby would be cute if only it had brown eyes and curly hair. But I know I would have had to have paid a fortune sending it off to an editing company for the same pleasure. And his suggestions were completely valid: There was too much description before the action began. There were too many characters for a short story, and some of them had to go. I did need to ramp up the connection between the two main characters, and – damnit – the ending would be better if the narrator actually made it to safety!!

So I sat down to work through the changes, taking each point and scrutinising how to make the edits successful without losing my voice and my original intentions. Sometimes it’s difficult to take criticism, but thankfully this editor made both positive and negative comments with a considered, encouraging tone. I’ve received other edits by more brutal readers in the past, and this was a cake-walk in terms of bruised ego aftereffects! I was dreading making the edits, because I do hate editing. But this was kind of a fun experience, much to my surprise. I learned more from his suggestions that I ever have from courses or classes. I am grateful to him, and glad I learned a while ago to keep an open mind and listen to the experts (probably the most difficult but most important step in my writing career).

All I can say is, no matter how much it hurts, if someone offers you the chance to make edits to improve your story to their publishing standard, don’t let your pride get in the way. You’ll become a better writer from it. Fast-forward a month and I’ve made it into the publication! I am over the moon about it and can’t wait to see the book published. So, here’s to second chances, and expert advice.

Unexpected Writing Inspiration

mjmarsauthor

One of the main things that I love about writing is its unpredictability. You might have a set plan, and you may be productive in your routine for a while, but in the world of writing it doesn’t always work out that way.

I mainly write horror shorts when I sit down at my desk. However, this year I branched out a little and began to write a young adult fantasy novel. I was inspired by the writing community on social media, and had a few ideas about my own little bunch of budding heroes, traversing adolescence whilst dealing with their new powers. It was fun. It was exciting and, being someone who struggled through my own childhood with the X-Men permanently reminding me that it was okay to be different, it was relevant. So, 60,000 words in with only a few lingering chapter inserts, fillers, and a final edit remaining, it should be ready to roll on to the next stage. Only, it’s not happened that way. I’ve completely shelved it. I think about it often. I occasionally make an insert or an edit here and there, but I have lost that spark of inspired joy that I usually need to complete a project. This has left me with two options. One; slog on and finish it anyway. Or, two; leave it and move on to a new book. For me, these are both equally impossible without the right kind of inspiration. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

Then, this morning as I was walking to the supermarket in the sunshine, a song came on my iPod that I hadn’t heard in ages. It was Coheed and Cambria’s The Suffering, and I loved it. I stuck it on repeat, and pretty much listened to it constantly as I walked the length of St George’s Quay to town. A thought popped into my head: “The Suffering. That would be a cool title for a horror short.” As I walked the rest of the way, the story ideas began to flow. Once I had the title (thanks Coheed and Cambria!), the plot followed, and I knew that the story will be perfect to submit to the upcoming Horroraddicts.net ‘Dark Divinations’ Victorian horror submission call. And that wasn’t all, my friends! I realised that the short story would make a cool origins tale for a full-length horror story set in modern times. So, that’s what I’m going to do next. Get the Victorian short story locked down, then use it as the origins tale for a modern full length horror.

That’s not to say I’ll never return to my fantasy wip. I’ve put many hours into it after all, and I love the characters. But right now I guess it’s important to work on what feels right. Two beautiful things about writing, then. It’s ever-changing. Never set in stone. The possibilities are endless. And you can find sudden inspiration anywhere – even when you’re walking to the shops.