The Horror of Truth and Half-Truths

At some point today, I'll be dropping by the Thriller Roundtable to answer the question, “What can thriller writers learn from the horror genre?”

I've had a very strange relationship with horror and every year for the past 11 years Brian has tried to get me to agree to a month of horror in October - primarily watching horror movies.

And every year I've refused.

Until this year.

Why now?

Well, one of the things I needed to understand about my relationship with horror was that it was shaped by the wrong strand of horror. As a teen in the 80s, I grew up when slasher flicks like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street were big.

And slasher flicks are definitely not my thing. 

However, there is something very appealing about horror that eluded me until I had a broader exposure to the genre. Horror - like police procedurals and thrillers - strives for the restoration of order. In horror, a protagonist or group of key characters face threat of death from all manner of evil creatures (be it a person who's lost their humanity or some sort of monster or something else) and triumphs. It may not feel like much of a triumph, depending on what they've lost along the way, but they find a way to survive.

What's really interesting is that some prominent horror offerings have recently addressed the fact that at the end of that part of the story, there really isn't a return to order. The life of the protagonist or lives of the core group have been permanently altered.

From the new Halloween movie to The Haunting of Hill House, horror is expanding its reach and exploring the trauma that victims of horror endure.

No matter how many ghosts, goblins, vampires or other types of monsters or fictional beings you throw at them, trauma is very real world. And perhaps by taking a person out of the context of real, day to day normalcy, it's easier to explore. 

As part of our horror marathon, we watched the new Hill House series. I'm not going to give anything away in saying this - it's episode 1 reality.

The older brother, Steve, is an author. And he writes about hauntings ... including what happened at Hill House when he was a child.

And he really pisses the family off by doing so.

...is anything real before you write it...? The things you write about are real,  those people are real their feelings are real,  their pain is real,  but not to you,  is it? Not until you chew it up and you digest it and you've shit it out on a piece of paper,  and even then its a pale imitation at best. 

You take other peoples lives and love and loss and pain and you eat it...  You are an eater. You eat it and you shit it out and then, and only then, is it real for you. 

I found myself thinking about this a lot. Most of his family is so angry with him because of his book. He took something so personal and put it out into the world.

This is often what writers do. They put their truths into stories. And that's often what editors and agents want to see. One of the increasingly common requests I've seen for queries lately is, "Tell me why you're the person to write this story." They want to see that there's a personal connection. They don't mean, "Because I earned an MFA and know how to construct a grammatically correct sentence." They mean, "Because I survived sexual assault" or "Because I grew up with divorced parents" or "Because I have experienced racism" - they're looking for the personal connection to your story. 

There are two things that are more likely to happen when the writer has a personal connection. One is that they may more effectively convey appropriate emotions in the story and a sense of realism that readers connect to. The other is that they're more likely to have topics they can talk about to promote their book.

Now, Steve's story wasn't the most compelling one for me, out of all the survivors, but I did appreciate how the story looked at the personal implications of sharing your truth.

And, however the events of Hill House changed how Steve perceived the events from his childhood, he had written what he believed. 

It was not how others in the family saw things. As we all learned when Robin Williams' character challenged the young men in Dead Poet's Society to stand on their desks, the world looks different when you look at things from a different perspective.

As writers, we face the peculiar balancing act of sharing what is personal and considering how others might feel about those revelations or even if they believe or agree with those alleged truths.

Everything we experience, every relationship we have, are potentially opposing truths. 

Sometimes, those opposing perspectives are the result of listening to lies or suppressing events or knowledge because of an inability to cope with what happened. Sometimes it really is a difference in perspective.

And sometimes, we all say or type things that come off as more of an absolute than we intend, or have an inference that was unintended. I had that experience recently on Facebook, with Brian pointing out to me one single line in a post and its relationship to one specific perspective on the issue. It prompted me to make an amendment.

We don't always get a chance to take things back. Sometimes, we have to leave ourselves room for another person's perspective to alter our own. 

And perhaps we need to take a look at the dust or cracks on our lenses that may be marring or limiting our view and understanding. 

Perhaps that's a caution to us all to be careful what we write on social media and elsewhere. Perhaps most of all it's an opening to talk about something we rarely tackle. As writers, we often process our feelings on the page and that can be therapeutic. However, it can also have a cost ... and we must always remember that things that are not known to us can change our understanding of ourselves and others and things we've experienced.

And sometimes, the popular consensus just boils down to who is more popular. You could be absolutely right and honest in a position or perspective but be ridiculed as a liar if your view opposes someone with a big platform and popularity. And many people are like Steve - they don't really want truth. They just don't want anyone to contradict their interpretation of events.

Be absolutely honest for yourself ... and remember that not everyone may thank you for it.

Emotional Truth

I go on weird show binging streaks that fall outside the scope of what everyone else around here watches. During the puppy training phase of sleeping on the couch every night I let CSI run because it's a show I still essentially enjoy that I can sleep to. It doesn't get too loud or too bright and it worked for me to nap between puppy potty episodes with that show on.

Recently, I started a new show for my new stage of intermittent insomnia. Empire. I'd heard about Empire, and what's not to love about Terrence Howard, who was deliciously evil in Wayward Pines, and brings the bad and the nasty to his performance as Lucious Lyon? Or Taraji P. Henson, who was the moral compass of Person of Interest, and is the somewhat immoral instigator in Empire?

I was just about to delve into a round of manuscript edits, and I had some notes to work off of, and I was trying to work out a solution to one of the key points. I found myself halfway through the manuscript, and I felt like something hadn't quite clicked into place.

Then I had Empire on, and between all the soap hip-hop-era that drives the drama in that show there are these creative moments, when they get talking about the music, and there was an admonition to "put your truth" in the music.



 That's when I started to realize what wasn't quite coming into focus in the manuscript. I was holding back on the emotional side of things. I'll be honest; I think that's much harder to deal with when you're writing a female protagonist. Oh, but women are more emotional than men? It should be easier?

No, it isn't. When we read about a male character who is confronted by how he feels about a situation and processes it, it's seen as growth. He's really evolving, isn't he? Being affected by emotions he can't process, or processing them in a way that drives the plot grabs people, because there's this sudden hope that he'll heal or come to terms with whatever.

When women get emotional it doesn't seem all that special, because they're viewed as being more emotional. And when women get emotional it's easy for that to slip into seeming whiny or, in some cases, bitchy.  I certainly know that when my sleep level is low or I'm sick or I'm just in a mood I can be unpleasant. My husband would never come on here and tell you that, but I know he knows its true. He just happens to be very forgiving.

He will tell you that a lot of the music in Empire is not the type of music I listen to. Yet I've been drawn right into this hip-hop/rap/pop world.




I set myself a specific challenge with the last manuscript; I wrote it from one POV only, instead of my usual multiple protagonist approach.

And that one POV character is a woman.

I'd been holding back on the emotions, and it wasn't entirely unreasonable. The thing is, there are some reasons why this character keeps her feelings to herself and tries not to dwell on them. She's been pretty shut off as a way of surviving for a long time.

However, she'd been on the verge of finally addressing the issue that contributed to that emotional suppression, and her hope for resolution is snatched from her. Although she was practiced at keeping her feelings buried deep, in this situation they would undoubtedly start to surface.


 It was a delicate balance, but I thought about the scenes I was watching with Empire. I know it's just a show, and it's fiction, but they illustrated how getting in touch with your truth and putting that into the music took the music to a deeper level.

Why would I want to write a book that didn't peel all the layers back and really expose what was already brewing beneath the surface?

I went back to page one. The manuscript grew, but I believe then end result is a version that's not only longer than the original in word count, but deeper in character development, and a richer story for it.

Fingers crossed.




PS: I'd venture to say that part of the reason I feel Jamal Lyon's songs are superior to his brother's is because he'd gone through the challenge of coming out and being rejected by his father because of his sexual orientation. His truth ran deeper because he'd been on a harder path.

We Are Not Alone

By Russel D McLean

Writing is something that is done – for me, at least – in solitude. My dear friend, Rebecca, gets very fed up with people saying to her, “You know a writer? Isn’t he an exciting person?” In fact she gets so fed with people saying this to her that she now has a catch-all response:

“You want to know the truth? Russel spends all day* sitting in front of a computer in a dressing gown and slippers that could walk around on their own, swearing to himself and occasionally tapping things on a keyboard.”

And it’s a joke, but its also quite true – the life of a writer is hardly glitz and glamour. The movies make us look like tormented geniuses and the montages of writing make it seem like such a natural and smooth and terrifically momentum-fuelled process that, you know, there’s something pretty sexy about it – particularly since writing seems to be a process of doing things out in the real world while doing a voice over.

But more often than not, we’re just people, sitting in a room thinking, “what the hell do I write next?”

I mention this because one of the most important things to have around you as a writer is a support network. Often this can be a spouse or partner. I don’t really, at this time, have anyone like that. But I do have friends. And my mum and dad, who have been very supportive of my choice to try and write for a living (even if mum dissaproves of some of my swearing!). I have very good friends both within and without the writing community. And all of these people are hugely important to me. For one thing, they force me out of the house to occasionally interact with the real world. This is a good thing because, given my personality, I could quite easily sit in this tatty dressing gown and squelch in these slippers and not notice the apocalypse occurring in the world outside so intent would I be on trying to perfect a piece of work that I never really see as finished**

And that’s the thing: a writer – even a pulpy writer like myself – needs to engage with the world. To be part of it. You cannot write in isolation. Stuck inside all day with those voices in your head? You’d go mad. Well, I certainly would.

So my friends – both those that write and those that don’t – provide a necessary relief. They are my connection to the real world. They keep grounded. And they keep me sane. And some of them even ensure that I remember to wear clothes when I leave the deepest, darkest shadows of my abode.

Because of these people – because of their support – I feel like perhaps they make me a better writer. Not by offering advice or assisting professionally (although some of them do) but by simply being my friends, by being there to arse around with or talk to.

So while the act of writing is by necessity a solitary activity (even when you’re writing in tandem, I think there is some element of solitude that must come between collaborators, but then I’ve never really collaborated, so what do I know?) I do believe that any book owes its genesis as much to those around the writer as it does to the writer themselves. Not in a direct fashion, perhaps, but without the support network that friends, family and colleagues provide, I don’t know how anyone could do this crazy gig and come out the other side with anything like their best work.

In short, this week’s post is dedicated to those people in my life. I think you all know who you are.

I just want to say thank you.



*Not entirely true – I do occasionally get dressed and go to a day job.
**Perhaps that’s another post – but here’s why deadlines are important for someone like me: I can never see a work as finished until they pry it from my cold dead, keyboard. There’s always something else in the text I could be fiddling with.

Emotional Readers

I've been watching the Little League World Series. I always tune in every year and watch a few innings here or there. The play isn't great, but it's fun to watch. The thing that sticks with me, though, is the end of the games.

The kids jumping up and down, excited to win.

And, of course, the kids on the losing side crying.

Now the cynic in me says these kids have watched enough TV to know how to get on a SportsCenter highlight. But my heart says most of these emotions are true. They feel right.

And, to me, that's the key part in writing a novel. Getting to the true emotions of the characters.

You can't write how you think they're going to feel. You can't have someone crying just because they SHOULD cry in that situation. A good reader isn't going to buy that. It's going to take them right out of the book.

No, you have to figure who you character really is. And once you figure that out, you can figure out how he or she is going to react in certain situations.

And if you bear down to a real emotion, if you get your reader to believe that's how your character is really going to react, it's going to make a story even stronger.

You can write a sad story and people don't have to cry, if that's who the characters are. You can write a happy story without having the characters jump up and down.

And, if you do it right, you might get your reader to cry.

Or jump up and down.