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Horror Author Roundtable
7.
AOTW: Are there any subjects you would not write about in a horror novel? If so, what are the subjects, and why won't you write about them?
Michael Norman: I can't think of any.
Geoffrey Huntington: Nothing is off limits. You just have to know your audience.
Suzy McKee Charnas: I don't generally write about extended torture of characters, in particular female characters, for the delectation of the reader. There are authors who indulge in this sort of thing, I think, to an extreme degree. Again this is something I tend to skim over in others' books, in part because it's usually quite clear where the story is going --- where the characters must cross paths again in order to provide the Big Climax --- and I'd rather get there to see what happens rather than wallow in a lot of gore and screaming in what is usually just page-filler material on the way to the inevitable Big Climax. And I have no patience at all with reusing the ancient and insulting trope of the victimized and shrieking heroine dragged out for the delectation of readers with a sadistic or masochistic streak.
Of course this is pretty silly of me; fiction tends to be an exercise in deliberately delayed gratification, with the whole middle section a lot of more or less clever diversion to keep the reader diverted until the climax heaves into view at long last. I grew up on adventure tales in which the diversion was provided more by exotic detail and surprising encounters than by, oh, you know, the interrogation scene, or the racing around in the locked space pursued by demons/ghosts/nasty spiders/ blah blah blah; and what I don't care to read, I certainly don't spend my time writing. Big spider, ugh, yup, now can we get on with the story?
F. Paul Wilson: I won't write about something I'm not familiar with, otherwise everything is fair game. Obviously you don't want to upset your readers to the point where they all slam the book closed and toss it in the garbage. If that happens you've failed at your job of engaging readers and compelling them to follow you through to the end. I believe that if you adjust the style to the material, you can tackle anything. You may have to take an oblique, from-the-corner-of-the-eye approach, but do it properly and the reader, though disturbed and even repulsed, will stay with you.
Gregory Maguire: I don't know that I will ever write a horror novel again --- we'll see --- but I certainly would never write overtly about the torture of children --- and indeed, in Wicked, I only alluded to the torture and murder of others, I never showed it.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: There may be, but I haven't found it yet. Personally, I don't like romanticizing violence --- that is, making it Byronically attractive --- but that's more a personal aversion than something that would keep me from writing about violence.
Fred Saberhagen: I don't think there are any subjects I would not write about, if what I considered a great story idea came to me and required that subject as its setting.
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