Writing The Uncanny - Essays on Crafting Strange Fiction edited by Dan Coxon and Richard V Hirst
Publisher – Dead Ink Books
Published – Out Now
Price – £9.99 paperback
From M.R. James to Shirley Jackson, the Uncanny has long provided fertile ground for writers – and recent years have seen a notable resurgence in both literature and film. But how does the Uncanny work? What can a writer do to ensure their fiction haunts the reader’s imagination? Writing the Uncanny sees some of the best contemporary authors explain what drew them to horror, ghost stories, folklore and beyond, and reveal how to craft unsettling fiction which resonates. Authors such as Jeremy Dyson, Alison Moore, Jenn Ashworth and Catriona Ward share their insights on psychogeography, fairy tales, cultural tradition and the supernatural, and offer practical advice on their different approaches to the genre. Writing the Uncanny is an essential guide for both the casual reader and the aspiring writer of strange tales.
Horror is we should remember ultimately a reaction. It can be fantastical, in space or the neighbours next door announcing year long building work. We often think of the word in genre connected with slashers, blood and gore but it’s also a sense of the weird, the strange and the unsettling – sometimes you can do that without any outright horror appearing at all just the unnerving sense that things aren’t quite right. In the non-fiction collection Writing the Uncanny – Essays on Crafting Strange Fiction the editors Dan Coxon and Richard V Hirst bring together a host of writers to give their perspectives on what exactly is the Uncanny and it delivers a very fascinating and thoughtful set of ideas to aid writers and readers navigate these strange waters.
This collection tackles the question of what does uncanny mean? This is divided into a few sections. The first ‘Approaching the Uncanny’ explores how writers tackle this. This starts with a really authoritative essay ‘Negative Spaces and Ambiguity: A Toolkit For Writing Uncanny Fiction’ by Lucie McKnight Hardy. This explores the sense that the strange comes out of liminal spaces not just the real ones we may find as we wander the streets but out of writing that leaves gaps our minds brings in its own images that do not reassure. Hardy explores how negative space creeps us out. How writers make choices about what they do and do not tell the reader and often the latter is more important to our reactions. The exploration how this also leads to Unreliable Narrators who make us aware that the reader gets most worried when our storyteller themselves is found out to be lying to us. It’s a really useful exploration of the mechanics of how readers and writers have a symbiosis that a skilled writers can manipulate their partner to experience many unusual things and for me sets up the wider essays to come.
In Michele Roberts’ more personal ‘A Many Storied House’ we get a journey about how Roberts experienced the strange from religious upbringing; teenage reading choices and how then in university the ideas of Freud (who write about the Uncanny many years from a psychological perspective). It nicely lines up with Hardy’s essay about how the hidden spaces in life and people’s thoughts lead to the Uncanny and influenced Roberts’ later works with a focus on the unconscious and how it influences us. Here we get to see the writer in motion. I found the most impactful (and again plays aligns with Hardy’s essay) was Robert Shearman’s ‘Finding the Comedy In The Blatantly Unfunny: A personal Journey Through three and A Half Tales of Unease’ – this is mischievous in the way we soon realise Shearman’s allegedly true tale is actually showing us some of the ways the sense of unease is generated. The joke that isn’t something we should laugh at; when a joke appears much less funny than those saying it seem to think and it has got several of those ways Hardy earlier mentioned to wrongfoot us as to what is or is not real. I felt this was clever combination of essay and writing experiment that explains a lot more about this approach than a more dryer academic style may have delivered.
The collection moves into exploring some of the best writers of strange fiction in ‘Spotlight on Shirley Jackson – personal experience in the Uncanny’ where Alison Moore skilfully tells us about Jacson’s life and work to illuminate how one may have influenced the other. Moore also shows the influence Jackson has had on their own work to highlight how influential Jackson continues to be. A really interesting piece of history. A little later Jeremy Dyson explores a big influence on their own work via ‘ Spotlight on Robert Aickman – Seeing By the moonlight, Thoughts on The Hospice and Robert Aickman’ here we get a very personal walk through how Dyson found this author and it inspired their own reading and later own work. We also get Dyson unpeeling one short story ‘The Hospice’ that manages to be extremely unsettling without ever going full on horror. A really useful deconstruction of how the effects for the reader are being made.
In the section titled Land and Lore we explore how landscapes shape the Uncanny. I really enjoyed Gary Budden’s ‘Half Concealed Places, or A Particularly Humdrum Uncanny’. Here the argument is that weird fiction is less effective in a haunted castle or mysterious forest (they’re always eerie) but in more normal places that somehow seem off from empty city streets to supermarket carparks. At times these places can suddenly turn stranger and more eerie because ‘normal’ spaces are not supposed to get weird - back to the idea of a liminal space. The examples quotes are all very interesting to ponder. Up against this we have ‘Beach Reading’ where Nicholas Royle explores the power of the beach and the seaside to disquiet us – another of those liminal places that Hardy mentions. Slightly more of a list of articles exploring how the setting is played with but still quite informative.
Our definitions of the Uncanny shift and cultures also shape what we think is unusual. This gets explored in Chikodili Emelumadu’s ‘Potluck: Making the Most of Your little Horrors’ as well as giving the collection a wider international perspective the reader gets a set of exercises posed to consider how fiction can be made into the weird. The mix of real-life examples and works of fiction helps show the balance of reality and the fantastical that help create this unusual atmosphere. Very thought provoking!
Claire Dean tackles the strangeness of fairy tales in ‘In The Forest, Stories Grow: Writing Uncanny fiction with Fairy Tales’ here the interesting argument is how a fairy tale is so unreal it tends not to frighten us but the bones of fairy tale to help inspire later adult fiction that makes us feel much more worried about the story It’s a fascinating look at how the imbalances of our youth and adult selves can create interesting reactions.
The section The Ghost in The Machine should not surprise us as one of the best weird fiction traditions the ghost story. Jenn Ashworth in ‘Seeing Things And Saing things: Writing The Ghost’ tackles the various types of ghost we see in fiction often how each example is while a dead person ultimately telling the reader a lot more about life itself. I really found this quite an impressive section of ideas to keep an eye out for. The acclaimed author Catriona Ward takes a trip through ghost stories in ‘Haunting The text: Housing Ghosts In Fiction’ that starts off with The haunting og Hill House and takes us through history and future of tales that classic tale riffs off and plays with ideas on the Gothic. A really entertaining thoughtful piece of history is explained. While concluding this is Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s ‘All You have To Do is Die’ which bookends nicely with Ashworth’s piece as to a series of questions you can use to create your own ghost and what it says about humanity. Quite thoughtful and I suspect would aid many a writer!
Finally to wrap things up we have Timothy J Jarvis putting a spotlight on Freud with ‘You Must All Be Very Worried’: Freud’s Uncanny and Hoffman’s ‘ The Sandman’’ Here Jarvis explores how The Uncanny took its place in the spotlight referencing a particular essay Freud write with that titles and ETA’s short story The Sadman being How Freud explores the psychological power of what sounds a pretty disturbing tale. Jarvis mixes in Freud’s life, the mechanics of writing and a suitably weird offshoot idea that neatly mirrors the core discussion.
Writers of the weird will I think find this quite inspiring as will readers and of course reviewers. There is even a very helpful top 50 of Uncanny Short stories and 100 short fiction pieces covering a huge time period to give you further challenges. I found this useful, thoughtful and very persuasive particularly for the next time you want to unpick those feelings that fiction can create., Highly recommended!
