Doctor Twisted: Or how I learned to stop procrastinating and love horror by Les Grice

Why have I written and am writing short horror stories?

Well to be truthful I don’t really watch or read horror, very rarely, though it depends how you define horror. One man’s horror is another man’s lifestyle. My idea of horror is something a little bit off-piste. I think the movie “Apocalypse Now” is horror, literally the last words are just that. Horror to me occurs when writers, film makers etc. take a subject that has some basis of truth in it, something we recognise and then manipulate it into something we don’t, something which disturbs us, something which heightens the story and takes it to a higher or perhaps a lower level. I know some folks will shudder when I reel off these films and say they are not classed as horror but to me Schindler’s List, Son of Saul and recently The Zone of Interest somehow are the cause of such horror, so perhaps a horror movie or story can be as much about the emotions it sets off in us as anything.

A few months ago, due to always having loved the book, I began writing a TV Series based on the book ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury, that’s science fiction. However I see it as horror, it fills me with horror, especially as 60 years after it was written I see signs that some societies may be heading down a path in which people are not suppressed so much as so entrenched are they and flooded with information they accept the lowest common denominator and believe only the information they are fed, ‘Amusing ourselves to Death as Neil Postman called one of his books. It’s a horror close to home.

However, despite my misgivings about my definition and having submitted stories for a previous Twisted book and having been included in it, and attending a party in London to celebrate it, I decided to take the plunge and try again and see where we go. 

I don’t know whether others will agree but my take on horror will be different from others, personally what I’ve tried to write so far seems to be reflecting things arising out of real life, I might call it a kind of magic-realism, or perhaps realistic-magic and somehow infuse some aspect of horror into the story. Something that I pick up on and explore and see if a story is there too, even a moral message, a happy ending maybe, a horror story I imagine can be just as flexible in its structure and its ending as any other film or story and one that may have a moral message or a theme too. I guess there’s no limits in art, only the ones we set for ourselves and then it’s up to us to stretch the boundaries of what’s possible.

At least one of the stories I’ve read on the Twisted site is very different (you’ll probably know it when you read it!) and it’s had some interesting reviews, even from folks who frankly took no pleasure from reading it, but then again, it caused them to read with horror, so perhaps that proves that we should not be limited no matter how much it might disturb others.

So, if you have seen the Twisted challenge and thought, I can’t write horror, think again, write what you know or love or hate and stick a knife into it and then twist it and see if you can scare yourself and fill yourself and others with horror!