Dear Haly,
I’ve had a haunted moment in beginning this response. My keyboard started typing gibberish all on its own, interrupted only by a transparent mauve text message on my screen and the warning—We’re updating Microsoft Teams, please be patient.
It reminds me of one universal fear that you missed, and I did quite appreciate your focus on the universal, and that’s the fear of being out of control. I feel it now, and I come to you with apologizes. You want this written after coffee, when I’m able to be gently humorous and not so brutal. You want to be roasted not burned. You want the response focused on openings you’ve provided, but that’s not what this is. I’m sorry. It’s out of my control.
There will be blood, not much, but someone should get a tissue before it stains.
If seeing someone publicly flogged by their editor isn’t to your taste, this is your warning. and if you haven’t read Haly’s essay on adding a touch of horror to your non-horror writing, this is your opportunity.
First, your essay does well to help us see the universal fears, and if we’re adding a touch of the joy of negative emotions to a piece that’s not really horror, it’s a great way to do it. You left me some easy openings to roast, like examples that have lost the point. The Velma illustration is cute and only looses relevance because the real point is in what the reader can’t see. That’s why Velma losing her glasses isn’t scary. However, the reference to It is completely off your point—and I suspect intentionally so.
You really want a safe roasting, but it has to be real if it’s to mean anything.
My first editorial concern is about knowing your reader and not being locked into an instructional style. Last week, our play ended when you challenged my instructional style. I mistook it for trolling, but I understand where you were coming from better, now that I’ve read this. You asked me why I bothered writing the essay if I wasn’t going to provide certain standards of instruction, like examples of how to employ a technique in a reader’s own work. It’s a really a bit of a balancing act and an art, knowing what instruction is needed and what isn’t. We’ll get it wrong at times. In my essay on in medias res, I explained what it was and how that defined its use. That’s all I felt the reader needed.
You’re holding to certain tropes of instruction whether needed or not, at least to my taste; every writer and every reader will be different. I can’t roast you on being wrong on this point because it’s impossible to be right or wrong. It’s just different. I would have cut out sooner and moved on the points I wish you’d made—the points you should have made based on your expertise.
I would burn you to the ground right here by thoroughly covering the points I feel you should have made, but, luckily for you, they’re your expertise, not mine. I’ll give it my best effort, and if you feel inspired, maybe we’ll be lucky enough to get a sequel to your essay.
In a work from Haly about adding a touch of horror to our stories, I expected to see how that applied to worldbuilding. There the deep instruction would have meant more. That’s your expertise. If I want to know how to deepen my world or keep things interconnected, you’re where I begin. Yet, somehow, that wasn’t touched on. It’s far too early in the morning to hit me with that kind of disappointment.
I should have started with my coffee.
_______, _________, the unknown, and the feeling of being out of control—these are universal fears. (Read Haly’s piece to fill in the blanks on what she covered.)
In creating a story about a small town, I can think of one rudimentary place to begin. I won’t talk about how to implement the universal fears you listed, but for the unknown, there’s a section of town that’s been fenced off by authorities. Warning signs are posted but no one knows why. At night, a soft rumble stirs people from their sleep. They can feel it in their bones, and it didn’t use to be there.
Normally, that suggests a story where whatever is over the gate is the focus of the plot, but if those spooky details fit thematically, that need not be the case. Our story can be fully told on one side of the fence with that bit of worldbuilding acting as a metaphor. For example, the main character’s father could be closed off in ways he never was before. He’s inaccessible, and sometimes its not the distant rumblings but something closer to home that wakes the child in the night.
That’s what I want explored more and what I felt was missing. It was like reading a few good pointers on romantic comedy from Stephen King.
And I know—you love the spooky stuff. You are speaking to us from one of your strengths, but not from people’s expectations. Stephen King may have a lot to say about romantic comedy, but the disappointment of expectation remains.
Plus, horror in worldbuilding is just an awesome topic, and I’d love to see more from someone who knows her stuff.
— Thaddeus Thomas
Update: Haly has responded.
"Roasted not burned" I fucking love this.
As someone who used to run coaching circles for reporters, providing concrete examples of how a writer can apply a technique to their specific work is thankless 99 percent of the time. They usually say that’s not what they’re going for. But if you wait a couple of days, the story comes in changed in the same general way you suggested 98 percent of the time.