Hello everyone! I apologize for the rather lengthy absence from this column, but I’ve finally gotten around to another entry. Here’s a pretty cool question from another one of my fellow writer followers on Twitter.

@_carmenadams_: Here’s a question: what is a genre that you don’t normally write in but would like to experiment with one day?

This is very interesting, and tough to answer without writing a whole novel on the subject because I’d ideally want to end up being able to write any genre you could name. That to me would make me a pretty accomplished writer, and I feel like one of my eventual goals in being a creative. But to give a shorter answer, one genre in particular that I’d really like to experiment with, and have thought a lot about, is that of horror.

One of my all-time writing idols is Stephen King, and as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you all, he’s one of the masters of the horror genre. I really admire the skill it takes to create stories like he does that spook and scare people in that way, and that explore such morbidly fascinating topics like death, psychology of a mind falling apart, and the destructive and self-undermining nature of humans and their relationships. In fairness, I also find his books very entertaining in addition to scary, and I’ve never been so frightened that I have to put one of his books down (unlike my parents!). I’m sort of proud of that fact. I’ve tried to adapt that sense of attitude into some of my own works, with mixed but I think mostly positive results.

That said, true full-on horror is something I’m not sure I completely have a handle on. I’ve more recently become somewhat educated in the genre of transgressive fiction thanks to some fellow writer friends, and have learned that the horror genre is substantially more diverse than I had previously believed. But what scares people is much more difficult to determine, I find, than what makes them laugh or have fun, for example. The wild variation in what people find frightening, plus the elements of horror that can violate the norms of most other fiction, is something I find interesting and yet highly challenging. I’m truly intrigued, especially considering that some of my favorite movies of all time–The Shining, Alien, The Thing, and others all fall within the umbrella of horror. A much more recent example would be the film Annihilation, where the point isn’t so much outright scaring people as making them uncomfortable and disturbed. The fright is much more low-key and slow to build rather than blood and guts and random jump scares (which I find somewhat tacky, to be honest), and I’d like to be able to construct something like that.

I actually have had an idea for a horror story in the back of my mind for some time, but just haven’t been able or ready to act on it. I read a medical article at one point speculating about the possibility of a head transplant–that is, taking a living person’s head, brain and all, and transplanting it onto a new body if their current one is dying from a disease or other damage. I was really creeped out by the thought of sticking a head on a new body, a la Frankenstein, and how some thought that was medically advisable when others clearly did not. I’m not sure if I made it up or actually read it n reference to that story, but I remember seeing something where someone said such a transplant could create a madness in the mind the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Just think about it: your brain having to adjust to controlling a new body that has its own systems, sensations, and possible issues, and the extremely unlikely (but fictionally fascinating) possibility of some kind of lingering soul in the body fighting with the new mind attached to it. There’s a lot of ways you could go with this, including just sticking to factual medical problems or some kind of spiritual crisis or psychosis, and I find the whole concept really interesting. But as I said, I haven’t felt confident enough to act on it yet.

In addition, and upcoming work of mine that’s sci-fi based could also have some degree of horror involved in it. As part of the world-building for that novel, I’ve been considering the creation of fictional alien species and trying to make them as antithetical to everything we would consider normal, functional life as possible to make them truly alien and, well, a bit frightening. I suppose some horror techniques could come in handy in writing that story, so I’m open to learning more.

In conclusion, I’d love at some point to attempt to write a horror story, even if it’s just a short story (which I have separate troubles actually making happen), and it’s on my short list for sure! And I continue to be grateful to my awesome writer friends who have shared their thoughts on the techniques involved and further my education in the genre.