It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Japanese horror stories. They are profoundly effective. Until recently, I, like many, couldn’t really put my finger on exactly why that was. That is to say I never really took the time to read and watch it like a writer. That’s easy to do with good storytelling, especially of the grit of some of the books/movies that are out there. We tend to give in fully and suspend our disbelief.
Well, recently I became interested and decided to do a search online and came across this pair of blog posts by a gentleman by the name of Rudy Barrett: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-horror-structure/ & https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-horror-emotions/
The first is an interesting dive into the skeletal structure of Japanese horror fiction and how it differentiates from that to which we are all much more accustomed, western storytelling. After doing a quick check of the accompanying figures it started to click as to exactly what it was that was different. The next link was his follow-up to the structure where he discusses the specific emotions and their implications on Japanese horror. We use most of these in our fiction as well and in the hands of a good writer they are just as effective. I think it’s the pace and the structure that makes it all so damned intense.
This got me wondering just how to take a story I’m working on and subvert the genre by re-plotting it to better fit into Japanese structure. It is amazing how much work it takes. It seemed simple at first but I learned quickly that it isn’t. I used a short story I have entitled “Balefire” that is set in early twentieth century America where a priest is a killer. That’s a rather simplistic view, of course, but it’s a dark, violent, horrific piece that I had written but never submitted for a Halloween anthology last year.
I’ve used a line from the original article by Barrett in this blog post’s title as that is the small thread I kept referring to while re-purposing my original story. It made some of the steps easier. Now that I am looking at all that I need to change and rolling over and over in my mind just how that might read I wonder if this is something that western audiences will get or not?
The bottom line? This is what we do as writers, right? We rush down caverns and filter ideas always seeking something that is fresh. I think a mash-up of Japanese horror structure with western characters might be just that but I guess I’ll never know until I try. It’s time to get to the typewriter and give it a shot.