Question regarding HOPE WITHIN HORROR: I'm learning that a lot of readers seek out a sense of hope within their horror, but I'm personally struggling to write from a place of hope within my horror... What if there's no hope? How does that affect the reading? Where do we find hope these days? Horror?
Comments
Write what feels true and real and raw and the value will reveal itself.
There is no hope.
Obviously not what you're asking, but a thematic perspective.
I just ran into this with my upcoming series 😮💨
Write what you feel, not what the readers seek.
- by making me feel less alone in bleak/dark thoughts
- by reminding me that sometimes survival is enough
- by showing me persistence against evils, both within and without, no matter how immortal they are or seem
Personally, I find the concept of reaching for hope in horror, at all costs, to be disingenuous. Sometimes there isn’t hope, & that’s the most horrifying thing of all.
Anyway, happy Monday! 🌈
His chilling short-short Fun With Your New Head is available online. His longer story Descending is peerless.
Then there are the novels...
I think of classic Outer Limits eps like Corpus Earthling, where the protag may 'escape' but have lost everything. Or where the only possib victory is defiance
Even the most pessimistic horror stories create an outlet for our anxieties. Hope isn't the right word. Catharsis? Release? Regardless, it's nice.
Is that media or horror of a word upside down. Of slaughter of innocents. Of real-politics
Which is like Friedrich Nietzsche's: He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how
It would be a comfort if an ancient evil was pulling the strings, but likely there isn’t a bottom to human depravity.
And if you lean into what's real for you, you may find a surprising and more genuine path toward hopefulness.
I think it all depends on what we are wanting the reader to experience when they
I also think that what scares us is often the negative photocopy of what we put our hope in.
Both with no hopeful ending, but the story preceding didn’t lead you to think there would be. But there are some I appreciate the characters overcame the issues they were facing.
As happens in real life with tragedies.
It's fine for the reader to know it's bleak, but the characters hope is the real knife twist
woe, and sorrow- not
for happy endings or a heroes tale. altho those have their place as well.
Horror itself is familiar, therefore just knowing someone sees the world the way I do is a comfort.
I'm on my 6th pilgrimage to the Dark Tower and without spoiling anything for anyone: sometimes things aren't going to get better and you can't avoid the pain, but there is always the end of it.
That dark hope that surely nothing can go on forever, not even pain.
A lot of folks feel hopeless right now. I think, psychologically, we benefit from exploring that through fiction. Leaning ONLY into the hopeful seems a bit like avoidance, imo.
IMO no life is absent suffering or evades death, so hope is found in the choice to be kind *in spite* of life’s violence.
but for me the text itself should be gleefully bleak
That said, it doesn't end hopeful in a character sense. It couldn't. That would be to deny the struggle of my existence.
Hope is found in many places--birth, nature, the creative process, and spirituality.
Our lives aren't filled with happy endings. Horror cuts through the fabrication that everything will be all right, and, to me, it feels like it cuts closer to the truth of life and living.
Horror isn't lying and telling me that I am safe no matter what.
That matters. I feel seen in that space.
Schindler, Carl Lutz, Irena Sendler…The list goes on and on.
You need to start with bravery. That will lead to hope. 💙
It seems like the focus on “getting through” often misses that it continues from where you are.
I think about films like The Wailing or I Saw the Devil and the hopelessness makes it powerful.