FABRIC AND WEAVE, ELEMENTS OF HORROR AND THE CONVERGING TRILOGY

FABRIC AND WEAVE, ELEMENTS OF HORROR AND THE CONVERGING TRILOGY

All occupations have their obligatory tools…for carpenters, these might include the saw and the hammer…for writers there are the old faithful standards…metaphor and analogy, among others. For the duration of this piece it is my intention to wield both…liberally. When one turns to the tedious (and often difficult) task of subdivision…the pigeon-holing of works of fiction into genres, I liken the exercise to laying out pieces of fabric. Employing both intent and creativity, the writer then sets about embossing a pattern on said fabric to create a story. Each genre is a different type of fabric and those who work with this fabric learn to impose their own design on this distinct material…with varying degrees of success, depending upon their skill. If one was to try to associate a fabric with the genre of horror, the material conjured would be undoubtedly rich and dark.

The challenge for the horror author is to weave a pattern that respects the fabric into which it is being woven while displaying a creativity that is unique to the creator.

This could well be horror’s biggest failing…though I will qualify that statement by saying that this is especially true of the cinema…more so than written horror. Continuing with the fabric analogy, most screen efforts offer the fabric and neglect the weave. Is this a failure of skill or intent? The precise answer is difficult to discern, but the end result is brutally clear…gore-spattered products lacking both depth and content that rely almost exclusively on special effects to entice audiences to part with their hard-earned nickel. The proliferation of this type of horror offering has alienated many from even considering horror as genre worthy of consideration. I tend to think that intent is often the culprit…If my approach to weaving the pattern is merely repulse, then the weave (and thus, the appeal) of the end product can only be simplistic. This is very much like the definition of pornography…to my mind, something is pornographic only if its intent is strictly to display sexual activity where character, plot and all other traditional aspects are merely incidental. The prime ingredient necessary to creating an enduring horror story (or any story, for that matter) is often the most conspicuously absent in horror films…character empathy. Horror is not the only genre guilty of this transgression of course…North American cinema is replete with movies that are all flash and bang and no content. The fault lies as much with the consumers as it does with the producers…there are many who regard plot and character development as the boring fillers between action scenes.

When writing my own horror trilogy, The Converging, I strove mightily to avoid this pitfall. The series is rooted firmly in the dark soil of the horror genre, but in weaving the pattern, I set out to inculcate strong dramatic elements into the fabric. The tone of the three segments is unrelentingly serious and intense…conspicuously absent are the clichéd one-liners and sophomoric witticism that have come to be stock in trade for many protagonists today. When confronted with the terrifying realities of the novel, the primary characters feel fear that is near-paralyzing in its intensity…where simple movement becomes an act of heroism in itself. I’ve also expended a great deal of effort in defining the characters who populate the novels (both good and bad) so the reader might come to gain an understanding of what motivates them to do the things they do over the course of the three volumes. To my mind, creating character empathy allows for a more atavistic understanding of the horror to which a character is being subjected. In the end, this horror trilogy stands as a dramatic recounting of one woman’s thirty-five year struggle to overcome the cataclysmic event that destroyed the foundations of her life…if I’ve done my job with any degree of skill, the fact that these cataclysmic events were woven on the fabric of the horror genre should matter not a whit.