Pulling Writing Inspiration From Real-Life Strangeness | Mastering Restraint and Ambiguity
Lesson 2 of Writing Horror That Does More Than Just Scare
Now that I’ve (hopefully) successfully convinced you that everyone should try their hand at writing horror, we can start zooming in on specific horror devices. Today, we’re going to be talking about two concepts: ambivalence and curses. Literal curses! Like when a witch is like you and everyone in your bloodline will never experience love again — you know, fun stuff like that!
Today’s emphasis is on restraint and ambiguity. Resist the urge to perfectly or neatly explain everything. Embrace uncertainty, multiple meanings, and the unknown!
How can employing ambivalence strengthen our writing?
I love ambivalence and uncertainty in horror writing and fiction in general. When done well, it doesn’t feel like the reader is being manipulated or purposefully kept in the dark. Ambivalence can often lead to even more complex and evocative emotionality and stakes in your work than telling the reader exactly what’s going on.
Ambivalence makes your reader ask: wait, is this really happening? What is real and what is not? What is REALLY going on here? And these questions can be powerful tools for building suspense and unease in your writing.
I turn to film and television a lot when talking about the craft of writing fiction, and the example I like to use when discussing ambivalence in the television show Yellowjackets. Yellowjackets follows a group of teen girls on a soccer team whose plane crashes and who have to survive in the woods, eventually turning to ritualistic cannibalism to survive. There’s significant uncertainty as to whether something supernatural is occurring or if the intersecting forces of trauma, paranoia, adolescence, and additional real-life factors are shaping these experiences. To me, the most interesting thing about Yellowjackets’ ambivalence is not trying to figure out if the supernatural forces are “really” happening or what they’re caused by but rather the actual uncertainty of it all. It feels less like a puzzle to be solved and more like an ocean to submerge in — full of the strange and the unknown.
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