Sonar4 Science Fiction and Horror Ezine August 2009

Carve That Frown Upside Down

"Horror and Comedy are two sides of the same coin. Both rely on shock, or surprise, and the suffering of others."

~Ray Garton

The good horror story is intense. Emotions are provoked and continually stimulated. Fears permeate your thoughts and the atmosphere becomes constricting and claustrophobic. In a short story, and possibly even a novella, a writer can get away with the overwhelming dread trapped in the words, waiting for a willing mind to posses. But I would say that whatever length the story, you need a tool to help ease the dramatic and emotional tension of a story. Not completely, but enough that the reader isn't afflict with the same amount of emotional torment as your characters.

This is where humor can play a vital role.

It seems antithetical, humor in a horror story. I even know people that aren't sure what to do when they come across humor in a horror story, unless it is within the context of the relatively normal aspects of the character's life. Usually, when I talk about humor in horror, I get questions like, "How are disemboweled corpses funny," or "You're sick to laugh at the horrific things [insert antagonist] does in [insert book title]." Now, there is a whole sub genre of humorous horror, but that is another column for another day, and where I think people get confused with humors relation to horror.

Take the recent release of Drag Me to Hell. When I went to see the midnight premiere, there were a number of people making comments using "colorful metaphors," as Spock once said, that broke down to the fact that they expect blood, guts, and demons and not so much slapstick, gross outs, and reactionary humor. That is why it is humorous horror. Because of stories like this, you tend to see a lot of horror writers pull back on the humor, because they are afraid it might break the understood contract of reader and writer that the story is supposed to terrify, not make you giggle. So, they go for really depressive stories that, while still chilling, also feel like you need to off yourself, bundles of sex, or toning back the atmosphere that can, at times, ruin the story because it is too light to be seen as scary. Now, don't get me wrong, these things can work in the writer story in the hands of the right author. But call me old fashioned, a good one liner can free up the space on the page that a good sex scene takes up and be just as influencing emotionally.

Also, I think it is hard for writers to write humor, because they think it is hard. And it really isn't. All you need to do is find the weird, absurd, even optimistic angle on a horrific moment. Sometimes it will just be a line of dialogue said in a conversation between characters:

"Christ, what happened to his head?"
"Looks like what ever attacked the other victims couldn't help itself."
"But the eyes, look what it did to them."
"You did the same thing to my wife's deviled eggs, I told you not to have them."

Or a twist in the prose:

You would have thought a whole person exploded in the room. Bone slivers and organ chunks caked the walls, ceiling, and furniture. At least it was an improvement over the horrid seventies decor.

See how in just those small moments, a little bit of the tension the reader experiences is eased? And there is a benefit to that. If you ease the tension, you have more room and tolerance towards the further pushing of their limits of fear from not only horror readers, but all readers. Think of it as a mental free weight exercise. You want to push those feelings to maximum and hold it. Then ease up and repeat. That is tension. That is drama. Even Hamlet had jokes.

Everyone has his or her own brand of humor. You can tell when someone has made something up on their own and when they are just repeating what they heard. That is where the artistry is needed. You have to make sure that your humor also fits in the moment you wish to use it. Bad jokes are one thing, some can be so bad they are funny and are in a way self-repairing. A joke in bad taste, though, is a sure way to make a reader to put the book down and never pick it back up.

In the end, humor has to be treated like anything else in a story, with pacing in careful amounts. Too much can over take the story and it becomes an absurd Kids in the Hall skit. To little and you could hear back that readers wished there was more or that it wasn't there at all. Always keep humor next to atmosphere and style in your writer's toolkit. It is a valuable tool in the creation of realism.

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