Fear & Fiction

So...a ghost story, huh? Occasionally that's the sort of reaction I get when I tell people about the new book. What I get from this is a question: "Why would you want to write about that?" There's probably an underlying assumption about the value of the horror genre (among other assumptions). I want to explore briefly here the place fear has in our culture and the horror genre as a means to express that fear.

Real Bad Stuff

Let's make no mistake: there are fearful and terrible things in our world. The recent tragedy in Norway is a clear-faced example. A deranged person goes on a rampage and ends over 90 lives. There is radical evil at work.

The scary thing is that "evil" is not completely "out there" somewhere but also "in here," in us, in me. I/we share responsibility for the very real, very bad stuff that happens in our world. We make choices every day about how we interact with people face to face, on a message board and when someone we're talking about isn't around at all. And not all of these choices contribute to the wellness of others. Do they?

And it's not just people. I am one among many who believe there are real and dark spiritual forces at work in the world. evil must be understood holistically (in both it's visible & invisible forms) if it is truly to be reckoned with.

When contact with this sort of terror sits inside us should we be surprised that it seeks to come out somehow?

Output

Now, humanity is designed, engineered to be creative. We seek multiple forms of expression. We generate new ways of communicating our emotions, experiences, rationalizations, thoughts ... including the fearful ones.

"Horror," "Supernatural Thriller," "Paranormal Fiction" or whatever category you want to use are valid expressions of the fear which sits on a cultural throne. And this fear must be expressed.

Why? Because if we are not honest about fear and simply supress it we will find that farther down the road our fears will have grown and it will be much harder to cope with them.

Healing always requires honesty. The truth must be named and called out before it can be fully played out in us.

Separating the Good Bad from the Bad Bad.

Are there ways of expressing this that are unhealthy? You bet. As in any form of expression, any use of a genre of storytelling or poetry or whatever there are excesses which are just un-helpful.

What is the goal? Is it to get as much atrocious activity on the screen or on the page? Does there need to be buckets of blood and gore? See, I don't think so. As a matter of fact when we inundate ourselves with these they lose their meaning, their power to express fear.

When I started writing "A Ghost of Fire" and to plan for the subsequent volumes I chose to write in such a way that relied more on tension and suspense rather than on simple atrocity. Is there blood in the book? Yes, but it's strategically used. It's not, "Oh, we've gone two more pages, let's get some gore in there."

The Fate of Fear

Will fear always reign? No. Fear has had its dark night to do what it wants. But remember this. Never forget this: "There is no love in fear. Perfect love drives out fear" (1 John 4:18).

Take that, fear.