: I don't know if this will help you or not, but here are some insights I've picked up from reading material that has tried to do (and in some cases done it by accident) what you are trying

@Margaret427

I don't know if this will help you or not, but here are some insights I've picked up from reading material that has tried to do (and in some cases done it by accident) what you are trying to do. Let's start with real life insanity that led to incredible literary work;

Phillip K Dick.

This is a man who struggled his entire life to get out of what he thought was a low form of the literary art - science fiction. The trouble was, he was too good at it and wasn't much good at anything else, including life. He was the epitome of a tortured writer. His last works were called the Valis Trilogy and ironically enough were the first of his books I ever read (I've now read most of them). This series of novels shows a steady descent into madness in a way that you really don't want to emulate - he was struggling with mental health at the time. You can actually see that in the writing, but the truth of the matter is that just reading the novels does give you some idea of how to approach your topic.

Secondly, I want to point out something I've noticed about good horror novels. No, this isn't an oxymoron; some of them are quite well constructed although I'm the first to admit that I'm generally not a fan. But, the writing style employed by the best in this genre is... well, basic. I wondered why at first. Most writers in this genre use simple sentences and simple words to describe some of the most horrific scenes imaginable like it was making coffee with breakfast and I didn't get it until I realised something; it's the simple language; the consignment of this horrific scene to the commonplace, that adds so much emotional horror to the scene itself. It's one thing to describe something as out of the ordinary and use the language that expresses that - the reader gets the sense of perspective and (IMO) it would act as a cushion to the nerves. Sure, it's horrific, but it's supposed to be, right? But expressing it in the language of the everyday, the commonplace; that makes it all the more divorced from what the reader is expecting from the tone and therefore actually enhances the horror.

So, my advice; start out with language that is appropriate to the sense of the uncommon for what your protagonist is experiencing, but dial back the intensity of the language as you write, while dialling up the intensity of the experiences being described. Basically you want to go from


Oh my God! The toaster caught on fire!


to;


That demon was calling me names again while it stopped me from taking the toast out of the toaster again. It's bad enough having to eat burnt toast without being insulted by a demon throwing little pieces of my brother at me while I'm trying to eat.


Just how quickly you get between these points depends on how much you want to draw it out, but basically the rule of thumb (as best I can express it) is that your language should get more commonplace as the content you describe gets more bizarre. This not only adds to the sense of horror, but also shows that your character is having more and more of a struggle to differentiate between the ordinary and the bizarre over time.

Vote Up Vote Down

0 Reactions   React

Replies (0) Report

Login to post a comment!