A Quote by Dan Chaon
I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage.
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When you read a supernatural suspense story or a ghost story, or a horror story, the evil at play is something that you can dismiss. And I wonder if, in this time, if people really want to be sitting on the subway reading a book about someone releasing a dirty bomb on the subway.
I wanted to write a balls-to-the-wall supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in a long time.
I never actually wanted to write horror, oddly enough. It was a kind of misnomer, because I didn't ever actually write horror in the sense of the genre known for it. It was more a type of pigeon-holing in bookshops.
There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though - ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature - and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away. Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story. And it’s the most popular book on the planet.
I have always loved westerns... supernatural westerns in particular. One of my first professional short story sales was a horror/western story. It wasn't so great, though, so I'm glad the magazine folded before it saw print.
I thought I was going to be a horror story writer. My influences were horror writers, like Rich Matheson, Ray Bradbury and Bram Stoker.
It's only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and I. The alphabet of my DNA shapes certain words, but the story is not told. I have to tell it myself. What is it that I have to tell myself again and again? That there is always a new beginning, a different end. I can change the story. I am the story. Begin.
I've wanted to write a ghost story for years, and my main aim was to write the most frightening ghost story that I could think of.
I read a lot of ghost stories because I was writing a ghost story. I didn't think at all I was writing a horror or a thriller or whatever because it is about a ghost, whereas a horror film can be about aliens or things that rise out of the marsh that have no human shape.
I had always loved horror films, so I wanted to do something in the horror genre but wanted it to be sweet and charming at the same time. Because there's a difference between watching horror, where you can leave it behind, and writing horror, where you have to live in it for months and months at a time.
The definition of horror is pretty broad. What causes us "horror" is actually a many splendored thing (laughs). It can be hard to make horror accessible, and that's what I think Silence of the Lambs did so brilliantly - it was an accessible horror story, the villain was a monster, and the protagonist was pure of heart and upstanding so it had all of these great iconographic elements of classic storytelling. It was perceived less as a horror movie than an effective thriller, but make no mistake, it was a horror movie and was sort of sneaky that way.
Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel.
Horror is a reaction; it's not a genre. Somebody's life would have to be in danger for it [story] to be a horror story.
Horror used to be one thing, and I think that's starting to broaden - there can have subgenres, and other things can be going on in a horror story. In comics, you'll never get the 'Boo' effect in a comic; you can go for mood, atmosphere and personal tragedy to build the horror elements and sense of dread.
Rather than a horror film, a ghost story is different because a ghost is what you can't quite see.
I have never read horror, nor do I consider The Exorcist to be such, but rather as a suspenseful supernatural detective story, or paranormal police procedural.
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