Tuesday, 19 November 2013

The Art of Horror



From talk at The WriteIdea Festival at the IdeasStore, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets on Sunday Dec 17.
Posted in response to requests from members of the audience:

Why are we, and our children, so keen on being scared out of our minds?   Why are we so fascinated by horror - and the supernatural?   What's behind the apparently insatiable vampire craze?   Is it as one writer recently put it - porn for tweenagers - or is it some kind of substitute for religious belief?   Does horror have a purpose, besides that of scaring people? And - the thing that fascinates me most as a writer - what's the origin of this hunger for mystery, myth and magic?   And - from a more professional point of view - what can we learn from fairy tales, and how can we use them to construct our own plots?
Many of my own plots, and the techniques I use for making films, are based on fairy tales - in particular Little Red Riding Hood.   Deconstruct this story and you learn some of the basic tricks of the trade.

Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 'I became insane - with long intervals of horrible sanity'
 




 

“I became insane –
with long intervals of horrible sanity”
Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849

 

“I became insane –
with long intervals of horrible sanity”
Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849



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