Exploring the Vaporous Line Between Fear and Desire In Horror Writing

Lesson 7 of Writing Horror That Does More Than Just Scare

Mariam Chagelishvili is brilliant wow ↑

Lesson 7 of 8 - The Craft of Fear: Writing Horror That Does More Than Just Scare

Here is where I tell you my horror origin story.

For the longest time, I hated horror — or thought I did. I was a scared, anxious child, and the thought of watching or reading anything that was meant to make me scared and anxious was untenable. I feared movies and books that were not even supposed to be horror in the first place. Everything I didn’t fully understand scared me. And titillated me, too, but that scared me more.

It sometimes sounds like too perfect of a narrative to be true, but I promise you it is: When I came out as queer, I also embraced horror. These truths about me happened simultaneously. I was consciously suppressing any interest or curiosity I had about horror while subconsciously suppressing my truest queer desires. Then, when I came out, it was like flipping on a lightswitch. I could suddenly look directly at the things I had been afraid to look at — not because I had been a Scaredy Cat as I previously believed but because of my deeper truth, which was that not only did I want to look, but I desired it. The erotic and horror were all tangled up for me and still are. 

I teach an entire workshop called FEAR/DESIRE because of this history and ongoing relationship to the genre, and today’s lesson is sort of like a truncated version of it. We’re going to talk all about the erotic potential of horror and how to write horror that engages with pleasure, desire, and sex.

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