Technique Boo-sday #7: The Ghost Story Ingredient List, Pt.2
Tricks, Templates, & Tools
For a general user’s guide to these technique Tuesday posts, please refer back to Technique Tuesday #1 from a few months back. But this month, I’m devoting these Tuesdays specifically to the ghost/horror story, and so I’ll repost last week’s user’s guide to that here. For today’s new post, scroll down below the photo.
Here’s the reprinted user’s guide:
I’m using this month’s Tuesday posts to laying out the ingredients I always have at the ready when I set out to haunt. Please note that I am using the phrase ingredient list, not recipe. That is, I use most or all of these things every time I construct a spectral tale, and so do the writers of almost every spectral tale I love.
But how much of each? In what combinations or order? I’m afraid I’m going to leave that to you.
Not because I’m being coy.
Not because I’m conscious of the power of this spell (although it is a spell, and it does have power, and let’s be honest, I don’t really know most of you, do I?).
Not because I’m holding out in the hopes that a few more of you will find these posts so helpful that you’ll want to upgrade to a paid subscription (although I’d very much appreciate that).
Nope. I’m not going to tell you the precise proportions or combinations because I can’t. No one can.
Think of this as the Technical Challenge on The Great British Baking Show. You ‘ll find a lot of what you’ll need here. But what you do with it, and how liberally you sprinkle each thing…well, that’s to taste. Use wisely.
Or wildly.
I’ll be offering two new ingredients each week this month. In honor of the season.
Technique Boo-sday: The Ghost Story Ingredient List, Pt. 2
(note— I’m continuing my numbering from last week. Refer there for ingredients #1 & 2)
3. The Mixology Principle
I have a confession. A dangerous one for someone who considers ghost & horror stories a specialty, to the point where he presumes to have wisdom to impart about how to craft these things. Here goes.
I think fear on the page, by itself, is boring. Two reasons:
It’s a primary color emotion. Very possibly many of our first emotions, almost certainly one of our last. In one way or another, it’s always there. Not like breathing— it’s not something we do— but like skin. Or lungs. One of the essential things we breathe with and through. And therefore not that interesting or valuable or fun to amplify in and of itself.
Precisely because of the above, it’s just not a challenge to trigger. It doesn’t take my ingredient list or any particular writerly skill to scare somebody with words. I mean, just open your Twitter feed, and see if you can make it five tweets down without an involuntary shudder. And one of the reasons I write is for the challenge.
But. Fear in combination with other emotions…almost any other emotions…now we’re talking. Why? Because it’s a naturally occurring and savagely powerful catalyst. The reason paranormal romance remains an enduring and reliably popular genre is because that shiver of fear, handled properly, can intensify romance. Sad things get sadder. Pratfalls and witticisms get funnier. As Mark Twain purportedly put it, all real humor comes from pain. There are no jokes in heaven.
I’m not saying you need fear to evoke any of those other emotions in readers. But it can be a formidable tool.
So make sure your haunted house tale is also about the people (or supernatural entities) in it, not just the house and whatever shenanigans it gets up to.
Then make sure those shenanigans are good and creepy.
4. Take Your Time
It’s a hidden secret of all those Halloween Horror Nights staged at amusement parks or abandoned buildings near you (or of any rollercoaster worth the nausea, or any public speaking event you suddenly realize you accidentally agreed to, or…): Those endless, tedious lines you wait in? The no-sleep nights beforehand, or the wait backstage? The sounds of screaming just over that fence or behind the hedge?
They’re not what comes before the scare; they’re an essential piece of it. Because, as with so many things in life, the anticipation is part of the experience. Maybe the best part.
It’s also a crucial ingredient in making experiences matter. If you’re just walking down the street and something furry jumps out and snarls at you…yep, sure, that might be scary. But not art-scary. Not scary that lingers, crawls up inside you, and, in some weird way none of us can explain, adds joy to nights.
Once again, I’m going to refer to a John Carpenter movie— the original “Halloween”, this time— because that guy so completely understands and intuits how all these ingredients work and what they’re for. I consider him the Paul Hollywood of my month-long ghost story Baking Show.
(Which makes me…Noel? I mean, I love Noel, but now I think I really am afraid…)
Anyway, about “Halloween”: go back and take a look sometime. Everyone focuses in on the Michael Myers mask. On Donald Pleasance doing the mythbuilding thing we talked about in last week’s post and assuring us that what he saw in that kid’s “blank, pale, emotionless face” was “…the blackest eyes. The Devil’s eyes…”. And then intoning the word “evil” like it was always meant to be intoned. Like no one has intoned it since.
But Michael Myers hardly appears in that movie. He is in fact credited as The Shape. The actual deaths— even the moments of stalking— take up mere moments. For most of the film, no one talks at all. A huge percentage of the screen time is pictures of stairwells. Backyards in shadow. Hedges you can’t quite see through. A lone streetlight down the block. Dewed grass winking in the dark.
I don’t think Michael Myers has much to do with why people love that movie. I think the keys are Donald Pleasance weaving myth, and Jamie Lee Curtis’s grounded, sensible Laurie Strode feeling alone and apart and yet comfortable in herself in a way that feels memorable long before she confronts the monster (see note on combining elements above). Plus the evocation of that town (I’ll say more about ghost story atmosphere next week).
And then those stairwells. Those carefully mown yards. Those places we see every day, but in different light now, and from a perspective just skewed enough to change our perception of what they promise us.