- Supernatural element . - Main character . - Problem / need

- Supernatural element

First thing if you’re writing supernatural horror story (no all of them are) you’ve got to make that supernatural element believable. Strategies to do that:

- Introduce the scientific or skeptical character. (Dracula, Arachnophobia, Jaws, Exorcist, Frankenstein, X-Files) The trick here is that he is even more skeptical than the audience is.

- Start story in an alter culture. (Dracula, Arachnophobia, Exorcist, Hellraiser)

- Main character

Since we going to watch the hero be reduced start the hero at as higher point as we can. Go from highest high to the lowest low.

§ For example, main hero might be the great thinker. Great-souled man, the character who wants to move mankind itself to a higher level. The hero who wants to create the Neitzschean overman. The irony is he reducing that man (Frankenstein, Fly, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Invisible man)

§ Start with very average person, but good. He stumbles into a terrifying phenomenon. (Pet cemetery, Arachnophobia, Jaws, Exorcist, Psycho). We must spend a lot of time at the beginning, making this character intensely human. We wanna to get to know this person and take time to show that he is kind, have family, is leader of the community.

- Problem / need

Common mistake in area of problem need: characters are divided simply by good and evil and the hero is simply good. This essentially meaningless concepts give you no sense of motif.

Other way is to show light side and the dark side of the character. This is closer to what we need. Horror stories deal with human beings at the edge. It’s the most psychological of all the forms. Therefore, the key is that we wanna create duality in a mind of the character. (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) It means that the character is hiding something from himself. It’s so horrible, he can’t face it. It means his mind is ready to crack.

You’ve got to be very specific about dark side. This dark side is the aspect of the self that likes to feel power, that likes to inflict pain, that likes to do what is not allowed. In other words, we can call it an animalistic side.

Horror stories focuses on creating live and destroying life (different extreme kinds of power). To make this work we’’ve got to go to a taboo, find a taboo that’s going to be the heart of the problem.

Some of the different taboos:

§ Different aspect of sex

§ Death

§ Disease

§ Incest

§ Mariticide

§ Patricide

Others, that not thought of as taboo but can be:

§ Failure

§ Mindlessness – living a life of quiet desperation. (Stepford wives, Night of living dead, Invasion of the body snatchers)

Problem in this area: nowadays there is very little duality left. There are very few taboo left. Everything is out on the surface now. Two key points to make this work:

1) Show the pleasure of the dark side. Show someone actually enjoying the power that they have. How that gives a person the sense of liberation and breaking free.

2) Intensify the effort of the hero to suppress this dark side. Double struggle: it’s very pleasurable but we’re trying to suppress it. If the character does not try to repress this dark side, we don’t have a duality we don’t have the mind able to crack.

- Opponent

Character who invades the human community.

The opponent is the double of the hero. We must connect the opponent to the ghost.

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