The art of scripting fear

Darryl Jones thoroughly enjoys teaching and researching 19th century novels, particularly the work of Jane Austen. The dean of faculty of arts, humanities and social sciences at the Trinity College, Dublin also has an interesting resume, that boasts of PhD topics like menstruation and female blood in horror fiction and film, postmodern vampires, 1950s’ nuclear novels, amongst others. In India to host a workshop on writing horror for Tata Literature Live, we caught up with Darryl for a quick chat on all things scary.

As an author, do you think there are clichés that should be done away with from the horror genre?
There’s no excuse for clichéd writing, at the level of the sentence. I’m afraid too much in genre fiction is badly written. This may, in turn, be a response to the perceived stylistic preciousness of ‘literary’ fiction, if we can allow for such distinction. Formula, however, is very important for fiction. There’s a great pleasure in having your expectations precisely fulfilled. Rooted as it tends to be in the ‘make it new’ ideologies of Modernism, this is something literary aesthetics tend to overlook. We tend to value shock, experimentation, difficulty and difference. There’s an element of participatory ritual to certain aspects of popular culture — we’re all part of an experience, whose rules and parameters we understand intimately.

Go on…
I also worry that while online writing and self-publishing have opened up writing to a much larger number of practitioners — and we need to applaud that — it has also done away with some elements of quality control. One of the things I know as a professor of literature is that not everybody can write; I’m not always sure I can write myself!

Stephen King usually introduces a problem and then adds to it to build on the suspense. Are there any other methods one can construct suspense?
Never reveal too much. Ghost stories are often very conventional, because that works. The atmosphere is all-important. A writer like H.P. Lovecraft can get away with crazy exposition and rhetorical flights, with telling you everything in lurid, purple prose. But Lovecraft is unique and he only just gets away with it. He’s a very bad writer, but the force of his energy, the very badness, is what carries you along. He’s a very bad model. We can’t all be M.R. James, but I think this kind of sophisticated, suggested horror, strongly rooted in a sense of place is what really works.

Supernatural elements, blind faith, witchcraft and voodoo have a huge say in building orthodox horror plots. How do you harness these best?
The uncanny is your friend. The irruption of supernatural disorder into a meticulously rendered realist world can be brilliant. I have issues with King, who is far too much of an American cultural imperialist for my liking, but that’s where he succeeds brilliantly. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in the literal existence of the supernatural or whether your audience does. In fact, it might be better if all concerned do not believe. The willing suspension of disbelief is real and amazingly powerful. But use it sparingly and sceptically!

What’s your personal modus operandi while writing stories as far as setting deadlines go?
Every serious writer I’ve known — from best-selling novelists to Pulitzer Prize winners, to successful scholars and critics — all have the same approach. You can’t write in the interstices of your life; you have to set times. This generally means waking up early and forcing yourself to sit and write. Discipline is important here. When I’m writing, I’m at my desk by about 8.30 am, and I sit there until I’ve written a thousand words. That’s my daily limit. Writing is a job.

Any tips for budding authors?
Discipline, firstly. Remember, all serious writers are also serious readers, and not just of fiction. Read the canon — read Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, D.H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf. Go back to the origins of the modern genre fiction in the late 19th century. Read Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, R.L. Stevenson, Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard.

Are there any Indian authors you enjoy reading?
I think answering that question would open up the enormous portal of my ignorance!