A Roundtable Discussion on British Short Horror Fiction

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Thanks to the contributors to Close to Midnight: New Horror Short Stories, edited by Mark Morris, for sending some thoughts on short form horror to the CrimeReads inbox. Close to Midnight is now available from Flame Tree Press. 

What does the short story form bring to horror?

Charles Hughes: It means there is nowhere to hide. Fiction which unsettles, terrifies or shocks needs to touch core human instincts. Telling a horror story in a few thousand words disciplines writers to focus on those core elements. Horror short stories can still be complex and ambitious, but, when done well, they also pack a punch which is often lost in the longer form.

Mark Morris: Short fiction allows writers to be more experimental, more ambiguous, more outrageous in their ideas than might be the case when writing novels, where commercial considerations often demand a more considered and accessible approach. Short fiction is all about intensity, and pushing the boundaries, and trying new things. Short fiction is where the cutting edge of the genre is at its sharpest.

Steve Rasnic Tem: The power of the short story is that it can focus a huge amount of character information into only a few well-written scenes. This enables the author to present emotions in their purest, rawest form. In a short story you can sometimes devastate the reader with a single line. The short story form is also a great platform for growth and experimentation. The author can try out fictional approaches, tones, and odd points of view which might not be sustainable at a longer length. I’ve sometimes used short stories to try out ideas which I later developed more fully in novelettes, novellas, and novels.

Ramsey Campbell: The short story can distil horror (which ranges from the psychological through the uncanny to the monstrous and the cosmic) into its purest and most intense form (whereas the novel tends to have a greater range, and its own merits). Poe in America and Le Fanu in Britain developed the refinement of the Gothic that Mary Shelley had begun, and created the tradition contemporary horror fiction still draws on, the short form (including the novella) in particular. Horror doesn’t necessarily depend on unity of effect, but this has certainly produced many great examples. It’s worth noting that few writers of adult short fiction haven’t written at least one tale that can be classed as horror, and a significant number are remembered mainly or even only for those stories.

Carl Tait: A horror short story can be an effective vehicle for a single uneasy idea; a specific terror. The short form does not imply a reliance on cheap, easy scares: “Up pops Frankenstein with a butcher knife!” Instead, many of the best stories open with a mood of vague disquiet, then drift slowly into overt horror.

Philip Fracassi: The word that comes to mind for me is Experimentation. I think that a novel-length piece of fiction must abide by certain, basic ground rules. Novels are made for mainstream readers, mass market consumption, and are the bread and butter of publishing houses, so they need to fulfill a certain expectancy for readers when it comes to structure, characterization, and (albeit to a lesser degree) style. Short stories, on the other hand, can be wild and different. They can be entire stories or fragments of a scene, they can be told in unique ways, using unique perspectives, or an experimental style. What this brings to horror, as far as the reader is concerned, is the possibility of an original, first-time experience. The short form can offer up something terrifying and unexplained, told in a way that exhilarates and, perhaps, confounds expectation. Short stories are the breaking surf at the edge of an ocean of horror fiction, and often the best way to dip your toes in the water.

Evelyn Teng: To me, a major contributor to a horror atmosphere is the sense of mystery. When we don’t know exactly why an incident occurred or how it will ultimately conclude, it allows the imagination to come up with scenarios worse than any writer could dream of. It’s true that longer stories and novels give the writer room to create a deep atmosphere but they also make it easier to overexplain, which takes away from the mystery that I find so critical to horror. By necessity, short stories curtail a great deal of explanation, and thus allow the reader’s imagination to terrify itself.

Alison Littlewood: Horror is the only genre defined in terms of an emotion, and short stories are perfect for encapsulating the feeling attached to a particular moment or event. So the form is especially appropriate for horror – I often start writing a short story with little more than a sense of what I want the reader to feel at the end of it.

Carole Johnstone: The short story is able to explore and experiment with horror fiction in a way that the longer form is slower to do. Short form can take bigger risks in terms of genre crossover and plot diversity, and it’s a fantastic medium in which to both test and push boundaries in horror fiction.

Horror fiction is booming. Why do you think that is?

Charles Hughes: Honestly, I don’t think it ever went away, there are just times when we’re more explicit with the packaging. To me, Silence of the Lambs and Game of Thrones are horror, but you won’t find them in the horror section of a bookshop. We’ll always need these stories because they help us to understand the (sometimes horrific) world we live in.

Mark Morris: We live in particularly troubled and uncertain times, and horror fiction always does well in adversity. Not only does it reflect current concerns – about the environment, about our physical vulnerability as a species, about identity and mental well-being – but in a strange way, it also often harkens back to something more fundamental and perhaps reassuring: to folklore, history, tradition, superstition and faith.

Steve Rasnic Tem: Horror tends to do well during times of national and international upheaval. It takes the stresses we all feel, but sometimes cannot verbalize clearly, and turns them into more palatable and understandable myths and fables. I’m almost 72, and I can’t think of a time when I was aware of more stressful concerns: climate change, gun violence, political division, a general lack of empathy among some groups, pandemics. Any of these elements could bring about a disastrous change in our world. Horror reflects that anxiety.

Ramsey Campbell: I believe the genre is enjoying a new golden age. There’s a huge amount of talent apparent in the latest generation of writers, which is growing ever more diverse. They’re at least the equal of any previous generation in the field. I’d say also that there’s plainly an audience for the kind of horror fiction that reflects the nightmare many folk are presently living, and also for stories that lift the imagination towards the uncanny or something larger still – larger than the narrative can directly define, perhaps.

Carl Tait: It is easy – and probably correct – to attribute some of the upswing to escapism from the real-world horror of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there has been a general and welcome enthusiasm for horror beyond the scary-monster variety. People seem to be discovering the psychological depth and genuinely disturbing nature of the best horror. Those of us who have always loved the genre are applauding with bloodstained hands.

Philip Fracassi: I believe horror is in a renaissance primarily due to the brilliant flood of new voices and perspectives to the field. Each generation of horror literature, going back to the earliest works of the 1800s, seems to have its own niche. The Gothic period of the 19th Century, the polite ghost stories of the mid-20th Century, the pulps of the 60s, the modernization of supernatural horror in the 80s, and the slashers of the 90s. But this current generation of horror (and horror writers) feels more broad, more expansive. There’s queer horror, body horror, quiet horror, literary horror, sociopolitical horror… there are so many more flavors for readers to sample and find their comfort zone with that it’s leading to a wider reach of the genre. There are more prominent female horror writers today than ever before, more writers of color and more horror coming from countries other than the Britain or the United States. All of this wonderful influx of voices and perspectives is creating a new global map of horror fiction, one that I hope will continue to grow and expand.

Evelyn Teng: Recent world events, such as the pandemic, have introduced a new source of anxiety, fear, and loss into many people’s lives. Though it may seem paradoxical, I think that horror stories actually help people process their feelings surrounding these events by enabling them to experience and overcome strange, terrifying situations in a safe environment. There’s a sense of coziness and security in reading a horror story and being terrified for the character, but then being able to put down the book and feel that you are more prepared for such situations, even if they won’t happen to you—probably.

Alison Littlewood: As a writer who very much developed within the genre I tend to be so immersed in it that I don’t think about wider market trends all that much. I’ve always known it to be a vibrant, varied, endlessly creative field that tackles the big questions about humanity and is often about love and empathy as much as fear and negative emotions. If a wider audience is discovering all that it has to offer, I’m happy!

Carole Johnstone: Horror fiction has, in recent years, become a much broader church than the male-dominated genre fiction of the late 20th century. The defining trait of horror fiction has always been that is a feeling, an emotion, a response – experienced by both the fictional characters in a story and by its readers. We live in dark and uncertain times, and horror fiction is perhaps the easiest and safest way to examine the worst of what we’re capable of, or the worst of what could happen to us, while exploring the ways in which these scenarios might be avoided or resolved. In that sense, though it might seem like a paradox, horror fiction can be both escapist and cathartic; it makes the unknown known. And often, that’s all most people want.

What defines the current British horror scene?

Charles Hughes: Horror is generally quite folky and realist at the moment and that’s bringing greater confidence and attention to British horror writers. I think our outlook means we’re well placed to do both. Established writers like Ramsey Campbell, Adam Nevill, Alison Littlewood and Andrew Michael Hurley continue to set a very high standard and there is new talent coming through all the time.

Mark Morris: A national identity perhaps. Stories rooted in the deeply-layered traditions and legends and folk tales of this ancient realm. Britain is a haunted isle, and it is steeped in bloodshed, and a great deal of that comes through in the stories that we tell.

Steve Rasnic Tem: I’m an American, and although I’m frequently published in British anthologies and magazines (and three of my novels have been published by Solaris), my view of British horror is basically that of an outsider. But what has always impressed me about British horror is that it has been quite effective at building on the foundations laid by past British writers and films. I can find technical echoes of writers like M.R. James in most contemporary authors of British horror. And the motifs of folk horror originating in British film, folklore, and landscape is a profound element in much of the newer British horror fiction and film I’ve experienced.

Ramsey Campbell: Different stories, different elements. We’re seeing the revival (or perhaps it had never really gone away) of the elegant classical story of supernatural horror (Reggie Oliver) and of a commitment to an intensity of spectral dread (Adam Nevill). Social observation and comment has become increasingly crucial to some writers in the field. As well as talking about how we live now, horror fiction has rediscovered an aspiration towards awe – the tradition of Blackwood and Machen and others – and indeed the two trends aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Not purely British, but always essential, is a care for structure and for modulation of language, not to mention an instinct for timing, as important to horror as it is to comedy or music.

Evelyn Teng: As someone living outside the UK, I’m not sure what distinguishes the British horror scene specifically. From a more general perspective, I’ve noticed an uptick in horror novels, stories, and movies that focus on psychological horror. Some of the more notable media I’ve seen in the last couple of years, such as the film His House, use horror to reflect upon the more somber human emotions of guilt, trauma, anxiety, and grief.

Alison Littlewood: I think of the scene in terms of the people in it. I always remember my first convention, where I met a lot of horror writers, and found myself thinking I’d found my tribe! People who don’t know the scene sometimes expect horror writers to be scary, but in my experience the opposite is true. I’ve continued to find the genre to be friendly, supportive and a whole lot of fun, and long may it remain so.

Carole Johnstone: Innovation and diversity. As horror has continued to expand outside genre and into the mainstream, it has grown many branches. Modern horror writers like C.J. Tudor, Sarah Pinborough, Catriona Ward, Muriel Gray, and Sue Rainsford have helped challenge how horror is defined by blending it with crime fiction, psychological suspense, the supernatural, and even fabulism. Historical and contemporary Gothic fiction is enjoying a renaissance, through the hugely inventive and diverse work of writers like Michelle Paver, Nuzo Onoh, Laura Purcell, C.J. Cooke, Stacey Halls, Francine Toon, Stuart Turton, and Helen Oyeyemi among many others. British horror has not only become more accessible and less easily defined, it has become vitally relevant in a rapidly changing world.

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