Morals about writing Horror

[highflyer]

Hello people and fellow writers, and Christians.

Where are the moral boundaries about writing horror scenes? I enjoy writing Fantasy, involving battles and axes and murderers and all sorts. But the better I get at the describing things and the more imaginative tools I use to recreate scenes, the more worried I am about whether this is OK.

Either you could say that it is purely fiction, meant only to reproduce an emotion in order to convey, without any risk to anyone, an event. You could say that it is only reflecting the brutalities of reality and you could even argue that it might serve as a warning not to wander the streets, or become a soldier, or start a war.

Or...you could say that it is obsessing about sin, focussing on violence and bloodshed and affecting the writer without him/her realising it, slowly eroding their moral boundaries until they are as bad as the people commiting these crimes.

Pretty extreme viewpoints. So where is the balance? I'd appreciate either general reponses or bibically based, specific guidelines. Any help, actually, merci bou coup.

 

[Tariel]

Well, I write fantasy as well, and actually I have been thinking many of the same things you described lately.

Writing is VERY emotional, and I don't think it is possible for a witer to write without the writing affecting him/her. But I don't believe that that is a good reason not to write a horror scene.

Be careful, and realize that this is affecting you. I have written a few highly emotional suicide scenes, and some brutal torture scenes. Both leave me physically and emotionally drained, and often I need to do something lighthearted and simple to help relieve myself. I actually enjoy it.

Writing is the act of portraying drama onto the page...and fantasy opens some of the harshest doors. But sometimes writing about something gets the feelings out without causing anybody harm (except those poor characters).

My biggest piece of advice would be to be aware, and maybe make sure that you have ice-cream on hand before starting an extreamly distressing scene.

Some questions to ask yourself:

Why is this scene in the story? Does is serve a particular purpose? Or is it just for horror? If it does not have a good reason to be in the story, I would strongly suggest thinking about cutting it out.

What reaction will the reader have to this? Is this the reaction you want? What reaction do you want the reader to have? Why?

How do you feel after writing it? Do you behave differently? Is it negatively affecting on those around you? Is it negatively affecting you? How long do the feelings last? Are they easy to overcome? If you are finding yourself depressed or having other problems and are finding that it is difficult to get away from them, it is probably a bad idea to continue writing those scenes.

On the other side, are you finding yourself enjoying these scenes? I don't mean the satisfaction of writing a truely effective scene. Do you find pleasure in the suffering of the characters? Do you find yourself writing utterly pointless violent scenes just because they're fun (even if you don't include them in the story)? If you like the violence too much, it is probably not a good idea to continue.

I'm not trying to tell you what to write, or try to tell you how emotionally fit you are to be writing these scenes...but I strongly encourage you to think about these things, and to pray about it. Then see what you think.

 

[Windlord]

Hello people and fellow writers, and Christians.

Where are the moral boundaries about writing horror scenes? I enjoy writing Fantasy, involving battles and axes and murderers and all sorts. But the better I get at the describing things and the more imaginative tools I use to recreate scenes, the more worried I am about whether this is OK.

Either you could say that it is purely fiction, meant only to reproduce an emotion in order to convey, without any risk to anyone, an event. You could say that it is only reflecting the brutalities of reality and you could even argue that it might serve as a warning not to wander the streets, or become a soldier, or start a war.

Or...you could say that it is obsessing about sin, focussing on violence and bloodshed and affecting the writer without him/her realising it, slowly eroding their moral boundaries until they are as bad as the people commiting these crimes.

Pretty extreme viewpoints. So where is the balance? I'd appreciate either general reponses or bibically based, specific guidelines. Any help, actually, merci bou coup.

In the end, you have to make your own decision, but I will just make two points.

The First point is that, in both Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and Lewis' Narnia books; Extreme Violence takes a backburner. The Lord of the Rings has very little actual describing of bloody battle scenes, despite the fact that it very accurately portrays the way in which wars happen (Tolkien was a soldier in WW1 after all). An the LLW in the Chronicles? The final battle covered a whole of two pages out of the book. So you clearly do not need extreme Violence to make Fantasy interesting (I would assume it might be the same with Horror, but I don't know. I've never written or read it.)

But, on the other hand,

Violence isn't really a problem for Christians to write about I would think. The Bible itself describes death, sometimes in very gory detail. Absolem hanging from a tree by his neck and having several spears thrown into him. Judas' guts spilling onto the ground as he hangs himself, exc...


But, go with what you feel makes your story better. You don't have to stick with the norms, it is your story write it how you want to.

Peace,

Windlord.

 

[thenightmarehero]

Using sin to overcome sin is a virtue, therefore when you portray any sin being committed in your stories, make sure that at the end you have rightousness (righteous wrath overcomes unjust wrath for example ) as the end result of that sin. When someone murders someone, make sure the murder is avenged by the hero, save in the exception of historical dramas where this does not always happen.

Other than that, if what you write is done out of selfishness, meaning you are only pleasing yourself and not the majority, then it is best that you remove the offending passages. Think of these two quotes when you write for a general audience:

"If I can't please God I can't please anybody."
"The majority is God."