Why do writers focus on 'areas of darkness' in the human psyche? What is the appeal of crime writing, boudoire noir, horror and the occult to many readers? This thread, started by HollyB and Hamburger Yogi explores the thrill of reading and writing dark tales, and the ethics of 'the darker side of creation'.

For me the thrill is like a kind of liberation to experiment with things in my dark side, mostly emanating from the unconscious. It also has a lot to do with ACCEPTING that one has a dark side and that one's shadow side needs the light of day to exorcise itself and turn into something new. At least 50% of my own fiction works like this and I guess it puts some people off. But I find that there are others who also enjoy excursions of this kind and that they too find reading and writing about darkness therapeutic - liberating even.

Hamburger Yogi

As joint instigator on this thread, I'd better add something soon!

For me, writing things on the dark side is a chance to be someone else for a while and to say/think things I (probably) wouldn't in my non-writing life - it's a chance to live another kind of life and, I think, also to live at a deeper level than modern life allows - such are the joys of writing!!

LoL

A
xxx

I see it as an opportunity to pull out repressed parts of oneself. Well, an opportunity to try. It's hard to dig deep!

Ani

I write darkly simply because that is what feels natural. I cannot write about happiness, fluffy bunnies or love without feeling disingenuine, contrite and more than a little foolish.

It is, perhaps, a reflection of myself. I resist happiness in all forms, and find cuteness to be a needless self-indulgence.

I am the hand of darkness, an embodiment of purest malevolence and the meaning behind your fear of shadows. And I will be heard.

Although I do believe that all those who write of dark things do so for their own reasons, and cannot be universally understood by definition.

I write the dark because the dark defines my own inner light. Horror is all about love.

JB

Or put it another way, there is drama in darkness and conflict. Where's the drama in the light and the fluffy?

Cas

Yes, HollyB, the chance to live another sort of life' is also how it is for me. However, I add the proviso that that other life is REAL to a much larger extent than we might think. For example, the emotions I feel when reading and writing dark stuff are VERY real and they way I modify bits of myself as a result of reading these things is also VERY real. Dracula, I reckon opened doors for me when I read it as a teenager - never been the same man since!

Yes, anisoara, it pulls out the repressed parts of yourself - that's for sure. But to what end? I get the feeling a lot of dark writers are disliked because many readers feel they are 'advocating' what they write. For example, many readers probably think Stephen King is a latent wierdo. But this would be entirely false because, as anybody can see who has read his book on writing, he is a great guy, very balanced and a helpful, benign sort of human being. Having said that I don't rule out the possibility of shadow archetypes taking over a writer's personality and what some think is dangerous actually turning out real. I think Yeats was bit distracted in that way, and Mervyn Peake (not really dark but definitely Gothic) went mad as a result of his obsessions. So how does that balance out?

I agree with insane bartender (love that name) and darkstar's comment about 'light and fluffy': that sort of writing bores the #$%& off me, but we have to admit that we live in a world favoured by many genres.

I was intrigued by Waxlyrical's comment 'horror is all about love'. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

Hamburger Yogi

The horror movies of the '50's were clearly intended for teenagers to have an excuse to huddle up in the back of the cinema. As a direct result of this sudden spate of human contanct, the sexual revolution of the '60's was born.

It wasn't just hippy music. It was horror films that changed the world and our social attitudes toward dating and sexuality. Horror films burnt down the walls of stuffy outdated modes and courtship rituals. Horror films changed how we see each other. Michael Jackson illustrates this point perfectly in his '80's video Thriller.

Ghost stories have always drawn people closer, around that fire, or that wavering candlelight. Horror makes people identify their common fears, and coming together, experience its opposite emotion - love.

Therefore, in my humble, slightly skewed opinion, horror is all about love.

JB

Horror is indeed about love, or a way of finding safety in the face of terror. I like the image of people huddling together in a primeval attempt to face the darkness and survive it. We can only enjoy the fear when we know we're safe eg one is only watching all those old movies, rather than actually experiencing them! Mind you, I'm not sure I'm able to watch horror films now - I still get too scared and can't sleep!!!

But maybe there's something carthartic in the darkness, in the same way that there is when you watch Shakespearian tragedy? - you have to go through that valley and experience those emotions in order to conquer them, even vicariously. Onward and upward through the mire, or something similar!!...

LoL

A
xxx

My entire first novel was a cathartic experience (my editor pointed out that I actually wrote carthorses in the original text - damn spellchecker!). I've heard many writers talk of their pain ending once a thing was written down - written out so to speak, and I certainly agree.

By the time my novel was finished, the heartbreak that inspired it was completely over. The best medicine, so Holly, your comments are spot on.

JB

Hi Frankensteiners,

Okay, I get the love connection here.

Yes, yes, catharsis absolutely, and that is what I write for often - to live out the consequences of something I have only 'dreamt up'. And conquering those emotions, the negative ones, too. Getting used to them, 'living with your demons'. I love all that. And suddenly horror disappears and becomes art. (Didn't Aristotle say something about that if I remember?)

I wonder if the love connection applies to an audience that reacts to horror by finding comfort within themselves in that they are totally other than what they are experiencing (presumably identification with the horrific aspects would be more like gratifying), or something like that.

I have never experienced horror that way though. For me it is more like a dare taken up or an adventure into the unknown in experience (again with the proviso that we are safe and free from consequences as a reader/writer).

I had a conversation with my English students today about thunderstorms and they all agreed they were frightening and to be avoided.

I told them I enjoyed thunderstorms and often risked myself by standing close by to watch. I said, 'But don't you see the beauty in thunderstorms?'

'What do you mean?'

I said, 'In a thunderstorm God has taken over and humans just have to wait it out. Nature reminds us she is supreme and in command. This is beauty and it is a chance for us to find our way back to the heart of things.' I felt a lump in my throat as I said this.

It seems to me that God is the fountain of all evil as well as all good (take 'God' to mean whatever you want.) And that for God to display destructiveness and even to revel in the tensions in human breasts as they fight these things through seems to me a wonderful cosmic drama. I guess I must be fairly pagan - I have never gone for God as being only good. How could evil exist at all if he were?

My students could not fathom what I was talking about.

Hamburger Yogi

The 'dark side' of personality cannot be defined in a few simple words for there are many explanations as to what this can mean.

However we do know what is meant when we read the question posed by H.Y...concerning the 'thrill' of reading and writing horror in its many forms. Perhaps 'thrill' in this context describes the heightening of that inherent reaction of self-preservation.

I subscribe to the view that Man is a pleasure-seeking creature, with the need to stimulate the very many aspects that make up 'personality' and the specific aspects that mark us as having individual psyches.

There is a streak of masochism within us all, almost an element of self-torture that is necessary in order to provide the contrast understanding of what makes us feel comfortable/safe/happy/contented and so on.
It is no surprise therefore that we can gain pleasure from exposing these 'darker' (or more frightening) aspects through writing or reading or even hiding behind the sofa when the 'scary bits' come onto the TV screen.

Len

Human being are capable of both the highest and lowest forms of behaviour. These extremes are a source of fascination for us and sometimes entwined. Take 'Schindler's list' for example (not sure if I spelled that right).

I'm going to cause trouble by questioning the original basis of the thread.

crime writing, boudoire noir, horror and the occult

Does crime writing really belong lumped in with horror & the occult? I'd say there's a world of difference between a Kathy Reichs novel and a Richard Layman bloodfest, especially if we're focussing on the 'dark side' of writing. OK, Reichs writes about crime and some pretty horrific murders but they are 'real life' and for me at least the attraction of her writing is not that it is in any way 'dark' but more that it is a detective novel.

Given that in any Waterstones it is sometimes difficult to even find the horror section, let alone explore it, is it accurate to say that writers focus on this area?

<Retires to safe distance> (I feel obliged to point out that I say this as a horror fan with many hundreds of horror books).

Jon