How gruesome is too gruesome?

Horror-writing tips

by

Mary Twomey

In my opinion, if the horror serves a purpose, then it’s the right amount. If you’re just being gross to shock us, let’s get real for a minute. We live in the post-Tarantino era. Most of us just sigh at the tedium of violence for shock value.

How can you tell the difference? Ask yourself the following questions: Does the vicious bloodbath serve a purpose? Is it there to move the plot forward? Does it give us a greater insight into our hero or our villain? If the answer to at least one of these questions is yes, then the gore serves a purpose, and therefore, should not be cut. So long as your novel or movie has the appropriate filters attached (i.e. – “contains adult content”), then censoring yourself will do your audience a disservice. There is a big difference between gore implied and horrors witnessed.

It’s important to keep your reader in the moment. That’s why I try to avoid flashbacks and past tenses in my more disturbing scenes. Let them experience the terror as your characters do. The best horror books, in my opinion, spend equal amounts of time describing the blood and guts as they do the emotional reaction to the crime scene. If it’s all action and no heart, eventually we will grow numb to the thrill of the scare. If you plant a visceral response by letting us in on how your characters are negatively affected by every slash, then you’ve got both a visual and an emotional story. In my book, that adds up to a home run.

One of my main characters is a man named Baird. For me, it was important to make Baird unbearably cruel, while placing him in an impossible situation. I don’t want a character everyone hates without question. That’s too easy. I want my Severus Snape – someone the reader feels torn about. Baird is responsible for raising his sister in an incredibly violent and racially tense environment. To keep her safe, he turns her into a serial killer so they can pick off the bad ones before an attack comes upon them. He trades in her childhood so that she has the possibility of living to adulthood. Baird is unmerciful and unkind in every circumstance, but there’s always the lingering thought that he’s doing all of it to keep his sister alive. The death scenes are gory, but to truly hate the monster that Baird is, they must be brutal. The horrific ways he teaches his sister to murder cements his “no apologies” policy. In the end, the battle becomes not to stay alive, but to hold onto the shreds of their humanity as they turn into unflinching killers.

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