Innovation

Apr 06, 2010 21:39

I recently got a rejection letter saying one of my stories was predictable. This stabbed deep into my insides, curdling a puddle of paranoia and wound licking. Reading Jeanne Cavelos’ “Innovation into Horror”, one of the chapters in On Writing Horror, I started to panic a bit more, reading entirely too much into the quote “If you don’t have a powerful, significant difference to offer in your story, then you probably shouldn’t write it” (Castle 110). I spiraled into a brief, melodramatic funk about the fact that I would never in a million years write anything original that anyone would want to read.
Then, of course, my ego came back, and I felt better.
I really enjoy the parts of Cavelos’ essay that don’t make me shiver with inadequacy. She stresses reading, both in the genre and out of it, which I absolutely agree with. And her representation of the generic horror plot is dead on (I’m looking at you, Dean Koontz).
Horror is a very fluid genre, as Cavelos points out. Mystery needs a mystery, Romance needs a romance, but the horror you need to warrant a slot in the horror genre can be anything. From snuff films to Cthulhu, from epidemics to the apocalypse. A whole wide world of revulsion, chills and splatter lies at our fingertips.
But I do worry, deep down inside, that I’m not clever enough to come up with anything new enough or cool enough to warrant its existence. I think that’s the biggest fear I have as a writer, that the ideas just aren’t there.



I Googled "Innovation" to find a picture. That's pretty horrifying for that poor fish, don't you think?!
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