Horror Literacy: Why We Write the Stories that Scare Readers

Author(s)

Ashley SchweglerFollow

Major

Writing and Rhetoric

Second Major

Film Media

Advisor

Dyehouse, Jeremiah

Advisor Department

Writing & Rhetoric

Date

4-2020

Keywords

Horror, Creative Writing, Remix, Children's Literature

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Abstract

Children’s books often have animals as central characters with the animals displaying human traits in order to explore basic values in a general manner, or poke fun and invert values in order to provide gentle criticism and moral lessons. Seldom, if ever, do children’s books aim to scare readers or invert values and call them into question. In recent years, however, a few children’s books have begun to rewrite classics like Clifford The Big Red Dog in order to introduce elements through grotesque, irrelevant, cynicism, or horror. Such a rewriting is called a remix. It can be simply an inversion of techniques, an infusion of skeptical outlook, or an introduction of negative or horrifying possibilities. Among horror writers, few have the reputation for pessimism and nihilism as does H.P. Lovecraft. His pessimistic view of human progress and human history and his view that the whole of modern life rests on a grounding in ancient creatures who were overcome at one point but threaten modern values in human existence is unique. As one who studies horror writing and horror films as a genre, I wondered what horror writers and their techniques might do to guide a remix of a classic children’s book. The book I chose was Click Clack Moo by Doreen Cronin, an illustrated tale of barnyard animals who commandeer a typewriter and stage a rebellion against a farmer, demanding creature comforts such as electric blankets. Throughout my project, I created several remixes of Click Clack Moo. I rewrote this tale and altered the illustrations so I introduced elements of horror, and pessimistic points of view and behavior drawn loosely from Lovecraft’s works, especially “The Dunwich Horror ,” among others. The result is a remix called “Click Clack Cthulhu.” To accompany my research on horror writers, I created two additional remixes that highlighted horror writing with a female influence, as well as a male perspective. I accompanied this remix with interviews of female horror writers to probe the modern techniques of horror writing along with their motivations. From my research, I conclude that writers love to write horror as a way to write about personal traumatic events in order to gain control of them and bring order through personal hurt and chaos into literature. But also, horror writing is fun for the author and the reader.