People do write some pretty sick stuff, but is there an invisible line of some kind that producers won't cross? A line which, if it's perceived you've crossed it, will get you blackballed as a weirdo or sick person as a writer instead of praised as a horror visionary?
I mean supposedly the idea is to go as out there as far as you can go to horrify people. But is that encouraged, really? (And I'm not talking about, like, showing someone torturing babies or something... no children as victims because that's a line I do know exists. I'm talking about other than that one.) Where is the line between innovative horror and horrible profanity?
I ask because I have long kept a certain aspect of my imagination firmly in check, because I've always instinctively felt that if I let it go, it could be very unhealthy psychologically. Yes, scenes and stories of horror can be let loose in my mind if I let them, but I never really have, out of instinct... knowing that one shouldn't want to give way to that kind of vision too casually, lest it poison the everyday consciousness.
Or does one, if they are a writer?
With writing horror, one is encouraged to go into those realms, stay a while, and bring things back to entertain people. Now I can do that, and am starting to want to do that, but I actually worry that the things I will come up with might be a little TOO sick. But---they also might be right on the money, great original stuff. I've always suspected that good horror writers are not so much in a "writing" mode when they access that material, but rather, tapping into a deeply disturbed subconscious. I believe I have one of those types of imaginations, but haven't really faced until just now that I'm a bit frightened of what's in there, and how people might see me if I were to reveal some of it in the form of "fiction" (I wouldn't dare reveal it under any other circumstance).
In other words, I'm wondering now if an ability that all my life I always kept shoved to the back of my consciousness, locked in a strongbox, out of fear about what it said about me psychologically, is actually something that I should cultivate so that it might take care of me now that I realize that it could be a source for good horror material.
I mean supposedly the idea is to go as out there as far as you can go to horrify people. But is that encouraged, really? (And I'm not talking about, like, showing someone torturing babies or something... no children as victims because that's a line I do know exists. I'm talking about other than that one.) Where is the line between innovative horror and horrible profanity?
I ask because I have long kept a certain aspect of my imagination firmly in check, because I've always instinctively felt that if I let it go, it could be very unhealthy psychologically. Yes, scenes and stories of horror can be let loose in my mind if I let them, but I never really have, out of instinct... knowing that one shouldn't want to give way to that kind of vision too casually, lest it poison the everyday consciousness.
Or does one, if they are a writer?
With writing horror, one is encouraged to go into those realms, stay a while, and bring things back to entertain people. Now I can do that, and am starting to want to do that, but I actually worry that the things I will come up with might be a little TOO sick. But---they also might be right on the money, great original stuff. I've always suspected that good horror writers are not so much in a "writing" mode when they access that material, but rather, tapping into a deeply disturbed subconscious. I believe I have one of those types of imaginations, but haven't really faced until just now that I'm a bit frightened of what's in there, and how people might see me if I were to reveal some of it in the form of "fiction" (I wouldn't dare reveal it under any other circumstance).
In other words, I'm wondering now if an ability that all my life I always kept shoved to the back of my consciousness, locked in a strongbox, out of fear about what it said about me psychologically, is actually something that I should cultivate so that it might take care of me now that I realize that it could be a source for good horror material.
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