Willravel

I've been trying desperately to write a fantasy/horror story lately and found myself listing out motif after motif, theme after theme. After trying to apply them to the storyline I was constructing, I found that some were really quite engaging on a visceral level as well as an intellectual level, which is absolutely necessary when trying to evoke fear.

Obviously, everything starts with the unknown; it's the source of everything we fear. In any great, thrilling tale, there is something great and unknown. It's Pandora's Box, it's something hunting you; it's something for which there isn't necessarily reason or obvious motive. But from this there springs a well of different possible themes that can be used as tools to help weave a story.

Themes that I'm currently trying to use are death and rebirth, impure religion, mistrust of authority, and drug use. I'm also tossing around the theme of identity, what makes someone a unique individual.

What are your favorite horror motifs and themes? How do you think they've been best applied? Have you ever used them in your own writing?

Thanks!

Oh, and BOO!

Baraka_Guru

Among my favourite motifs include the use of space.

The use of great and/or open spaces is a classic one. Think Frankenstein or Lord of the Rings, with their sweeping and inhospitable terrain.

What may be more difficult to pull off, but is highly effective, is the use of closed-off, isolated, and unknown spaces. Think classic gothic, with dark hallways and unknown (and rather forbidden) rooms in big houses or castles. Jane Eyre is a good example of the unknown and forbidden. And in more modern fantasy, Gormenghast is a good example of isolation.

You can weave mysterious histories into these spaces and can really play with the readers' knowledge of setting by only revealing the detail needed to see what's going on (no matter how obscure). It makes it quite frightening if you let it be known that the antagonist(s) is at home or well-acclimatized in these spaces, giving them an advantage over the protagonist(s).

The key to using space is to set it up as there being no alternative but to traverse the space...the consequence being that to do otherwise if a far worse fate.

You can play with space as symbolic or metaphoric. Different spaces can represent different moods or personalities of characters. The halls of an old mansion can reflect the twisted tormented mind of the protagonist. The barren wasteland that stretches for unknown miles can represent the mindset of the antagonist after he had lost his love, his everything.... the possibilities are endless.

I could go on, but maybe it would be best to have others comment on this.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

Excellent. So your discussion about open space is about something being vast and unknown. I never read TLOTR like that, though. To me, it seemed more like exploration and establishing setting, along with the whole "funny named places and monsters" fantasy thing.

The Forbidden Zone in the Planet of the Apes comes to mind so far as vastness being associated with the unknown, but the most obvious example is outer space. Outer Space is the ultimate vastness and it can simultaneously be used for crushing claustrophobia. That can be fun to play with.