Okay, you might be saying, “That’s all well and good, but how do you avoid the pitfall of exploitation, being gruesome simply for its own sake?” The genre is often dismissed, by those who don’t read it, as mere indecency. First, I think that’s insulting to indecency, which has its place, and second, horror becomes truly effective only when the freedom, that permission I mentioned, is paired with a deep and relatable, emotional core.
Venture Further: Describe the greatest fear of the narrator of your story, essay, or poem. What form does this fear take in the world around them? What would this fear look like if it were to manifest in something unnatural? {read}