03 February 2025
|
We’re delighted to bring you a recap of one of the standout moments from the event, as Lou Cary generously takes us through her five highlights from the Winter Haunts 2024 workshops.
-
The scariest moments in horror are the ones we’re not certain happened at all
In their excellent workshop, ‘Did You See That? Ambiguous Sightings by Unreliable Narrators’, author E. Saxey put their finger on a key ingredient in truly unsettling horror—and highlighted a shot in Midsommar that we’ve all been missing.
The most spine-tingling horror often springs from the subtlest moments—something terrifying glimpsed for an instant out of the corner of your eye. Ari Aster’s Midsommar is full of these moments, including a shot during one of the ritual processions where the face of Dani’s dead sister is superimposed over the trees in the background—something that most people don’t spot the first time around!
These blink-and-you’d-miss-it scares are harder to capture in writing in some ways, but Saxey explained how a similar atmosphere can be created through a combination of unearned certainty and unsettling doubt: an unreliable narrator who is overconfident in their perception of the world, coupled with instances of the unseen and the ambiguous that throw everything they’re so sure of into question. They gave the timeless example of The Turning of the Screw as a perfect illustration of this style of writing.
-
How to write the domestic gothic
In ‘Ghosts by Gaslight: Writing the Domestic Gothic’, Georgina Bruce told us all about the subgenre’s history and themes. Domestic gothic stories take place in domestic settings, like kitchens and nurseries, and focus on the experiences—and the fears—of female protagonists, centring themes such as sex, marriage, childbirth, and women’s rights.
In her fascinating and insightful talk, Bruce gave us some pointers on how to introduce elements of the domestic gothic into our own writing, for example by using a close third or first person point of view to filter the reader’s access to the story through the perspective of a single, possibly unreliable, narrator. Pairing this with an ambiguous presentation of any supernatural elements is a classic hallmark of the domestic gothic, where potentially supernatural events—which only seem to happen to the protagonist when she’s alone—are often dismissed by other characters as nothing more than female ‘hysteria’ or insanity. This approach creates a horrible sense of claustrophobia and self-doubt for both gaslit heroines and readers alike!
-
The secret sauce of horror is the uncanny
Kerry Hadley-Pryce delivered a gripping workshop on the uncanny, the key component in so many horror stories that really get under our skin. She talked us through the uncanny’s origins in the work of Sigmund Freud, who referred to it as the unheimliche, or ‘unhomely’—an eerie sensation that is hard to pin down, but which we all know when we feel it!
Hadley-Pryce defines the uncanny as ‘things that are familiarly unfamiliar or unfamiliarly familiar’. Uncanny writing is packed with details that are just not quite right—elements that deviate from what is normal or expected in small and unsettling ways.
-
How to find horror anywhere
Horror author Simon Bestwick’s workshop focused on the endless possibilities of horror. He considers horror to be the least limiting of all genres because of its ability to infiltrate any time, place, context—and even other genres. Horror can take place absolutely anywhere, from outer space to the local supermarket, and it’s often the most mundane settings and events that prove the most fertile ground for the truly terrifying.
Bestwick explained how horror is not a matter of setting or period, but rather a mode of storytelling—one that dwells on the unexplained, the unsettling, the frightening and the weird. With that in mind, he drew a fascinating distinction between horror that intrudes into a story, creeping into a different genre, setting, or set of expectations—and horror that emerges from a story, developing organically from that story’s inherent themes and ideas. This is an interesting and fruitful distinction to bear in mind in our own writing, and one that can influence how we plan and tell our stories, whatever genre we’re writing in.
-
Ghosts can be characters too!
In her workshop ‘The Haunters and the Haunted: Developing Characters in Ghost Stories’, Lucie McKnight Hardy explored how to write nuanced and well-rounded characters in ghost stories. McKnight Hardy recommended that writers think about more than just the fear factor when crafting their ghosts, inviting us to consider our ghosts’ own characters, and the motivations behind their behaviour. Are the spirits in your haunted house seeking vengeance, trying to pass on a message to the land of the living, or simply reenacting past traumas? The answers to these questions can give our fictional hauntings much greater depth and nuance.
Thinking carefully about the character of the ghost can also allow us to forge connections between ghosts and the people they haunt, making our stories richer and more rewarding in the process. We can form these connections in our own fiction in one of two ways: either by beginning with the ghost, and exploring what is causing them to haunt a place or person—or by beginning with the person who sees the ghost, and considering what is causing them to perceive the supernatural presence in the first place. Perhaps haunter and hauntee share an objective, or are linked by a particular fear or traumatic experience.
That’s all for the workshops thread of Winter Haunts, and if you missed out this year hopefully we’ll see you at Spring Haunts 2025!
About Spring Haunts
Spring Haunts returns to York for a second year in 2025, serving up a weekend of Gothic Fiction and ghost stories in one of the UK’s spookiest cities! We’ll be presenting two days of unmissable and immersive workshops with a range of guest authors, led and hosted by acclaimed writing tutor and Writing Magazine regular contributor Alex Davis. We’ll also have booksales throughout the event, and a special author event with Andrew Michael Hurley for Saturday night.
The event will be held at the York Explore and facilitated by lecturer, workshopper and Writing Magazine regular contributor Alex Davis.
Plus, join one of this generation’s most acclaimed folk horror authors for an evening interview, Q+A and booksales in the haunted city of York!
Andrew Michael Hurley burst onto the scene with his first novel The Loney in 2014, which won The Costa First Novel Award as well as the British Book Industry award for best debut. Since then he has written Devil’s Day and Starve Acre, recently adapted into a film starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark. His latest book, Barrowbeck, is a collection of short stories.