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Work continues on the new sci-fi horror story. I’ve gotten to the meat of the book, in which characters start suffering and dying. This put in mind of an important part of storytelling that is often either overlooked or ignored. The Ancient Greeks, who invented a lot of our ideas of storytelling, had a very specific notion of the purpose of tragedy: catharsis. This term was never (as far as we know) really solidly defined. Instead, Greek critics gave examples and discussion. Thus, ideas have changed over the generations about what this term really means, and therefore, what the purpose of tragedy is. Since horror is the narratological offspring of tragedy, I think it’s important to have an idea of what catharsis is, since that will establish the point of your tragic story.

Put very simply, catharsis is empathy. Rather, it’s the end-result of empathy, its product. Empathy is becoming so invested in a character’s suffering that, when they suffer and/or die, we care. We feel the fear, the anger, and all the other emotions the characters are experiencing. The point of this empathy is to be purified of it. The Ancient Greeks believed that theatre was a religious experience. Plays were performed as part of larger festivals and spiritual observances. There was a feeling that everybody had these negative feelings: fear, hate, jealousy, etc. Watching a play, watching characters endure horrible experiences, allowed for the feeling, the expression of these negative emotions in a safe, contained space. The audience was supposed to have empathy for the characters as an outlet for all the feelings that we spend our daily lives trying to suppress.

The play Hadestown sort of captures this idea.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, the story is a retelling of Orpheus. He’s a poet/musician who falls in love, his wife dies, and he travels to the underworld to bring her back. Orpheus’s music is so powerful that he convinces Hades and Persephone to release the wife. The condition is that Orpheus and Eurydice (the wife) have to walk out of the Underworld and, during the trip, Orpheus can’t look back, he can’t check to make sure she’s still there. The tragedy of the play comes at the end: they make it all the way back. Orpheus sees the light of day ahead and calls back to Eurydice, but she doesn’t answer. Panicing, Orpheus glances back and gets one glimpse of his beloved wife before she’s snatched back into the underworld. We share (i.e. empathize) with Orpheus’s horror at losing his wife a second time and with his despair over failure. We purge these emotions (catharsis) when the story ends, thus becoming free of them. The story has been one of the most popular, most enduring of the Greek tragedies, and Hadestown taps into this history. The first and last song of the play specifically says that it’s a sad story, and one that keeps getting retold. It also asks the question why we do it. Why do we keep retelling the same story that makes us sad?

Do you have a favorite horror or just sad movie? Horror enthusiasts often get a little side-eye from the muggles. Why would you watch that? Why would you keep going back, again and again, to stories about human suffering? Empathy. The answer is empathy. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some sick a-holes out there who just enjoy watching others suffer (that’s called schadenfreude, btw). Horror fans are liberated, they are emotionally, psychologically healed by watching these painful movies. We are given a release for the darkness that lurks within us all.

Consider the monster/alien movies of the ‘50s and ‘60s. War of the Worlds is a good exemplar.

In the beginning, we’re introduced to Dr. Clayton Forrester, who is a stodgy intellectual. He spends most of the film trying to understand the Martians. He relys on his understanding to see them through one crisis after another. We also meet Sylvia Van Buren, a young woman who is calm and mild-mannered, but also strong, taking care of others.

She spend the film aiding the scientists, helping them and trusting in their work. By the end of the film, when the Martians are on the verge of wiping out humanity, these overt characteristics are stripped away. Van Buren flees to a church and waits for someone to find her, teetering on the edge of hopelessness. She has witnessed thousands of deaths and the destruction of entire cities. Forrester, ready to be evacuated with other scientists to continue the fight, abandons this effort to find Sylvia, wanting to be with her and comfort her in their last hours, rather than continue a pointless fight. Together, they have surrendered to the inevitable.

Now, the film takes a last-second turn, offering a happy ending, but the empathy and catharsis are still there. We have joined with Forrester and Van Buren as they watched the defeat of humanity. We feel their final despair. We are purified of these when the story ends.

Think also of the ‘80s slashers. A Nightmare on Elm Street offers a good exemplar of this genre. There’s a bit of a bait and switch as we’re initially shown Tina and made to think she’s our final girl, but then she gets the business end of Freddy’s knives.

Over the years, I’ve read quite a bit of analysis trying to explain the strength and/or weakness of this final girl bait-and-switch. In terms of empathy and catharsis, Tina’s role is essential. We get to know Tina. Unlike in most other horrors, whose first victims are little more than cardboard cutouts, we feel Tina’s fear as Freddy hunts her. Her death is impactful because we care about her. We wanted her to survive.

As the movie progresses, we mourn Tina. Nancy takes over as the final girl, and part of the reason we root for her is because we have shared in her loss, in the deaths of her friends. We have achieved empathy, not only with Tina, but with Nancy and all her friends (except Rod. Screw Rod). We share in their fear, their pain, their loss and suffering. Once Nancy defeats Freddy, we share in her catharsis, having been purified of these dark feelings.

Lastly, let’s look at the recent film, Obsession. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the movie, I laughed my ass off. In this film, we meet Bear. Initially, he presents himself as a lovable loser. He’s sympathetic as he’s in love with a girl who has entirely friendzoned him.

He gets a wish granted, making Nikki not only love him back, but become obsessed with him. As the wish (curse, really) unfolds and Nikki’s obsession becomes increasingly deranged, Bear learns that there’s only two ways to free her: someone else has to wish her release, or he has to die. In fairness, he tries the second wish approach, which most people would, but that fails. He has one option: to kill himself. As the movie progresses we find out that Nikki’s true self is still in there, trapped, and in horrible torment. In fact, at one point, the real Nikki begs him to kill her to be free. She’d rather be dead than trapped in this deranged state.

Bear knows this, he knows she’s suffering. Even after she kills someone, still he hesitates. Worse, there’s even an overt sex scene. Bear has sex with her, knowing she’s not in control of herself (and there’s a term for that, btw). Even at the end, with the derangement gone horrifically wrong and multiple people dead, still Bear hesitates. He takes a bunch of pills, but then chickens out. Herein lies the truth of the film: we aren’t meant to empathize with Bear, the lovable loser, we’re meant to empathize with Nikki. She’s cursed, trapped inside her own mind. She’s forced to become a monster, a murderer of her own friends. The ending of the film is one of the best modern examples of catharsis. The story strongly implies that Nikki wakes up, is freed from the curse, only to be surrounded by the reality of what has happened. We have seen how she was made to suffer and are confronted with Nikki facing us, overwhelmed by her horror and misery. The film ends by forcing us to watch and listen as Nikki continues screaming and sobbing. We feel all that negativity and are only freed, only purified with catharsis, once the screen darkens.

The key to all this is that we, the audience, care. We care if the final girl survives. We care HOW she survives. When characters die, we care; we they fail, we care; when they are triumphant, we care. Through horror, we get to experience something we’ll likely never experience in real life, and certainly something we’d never WANT to experience. We get to see people at their best and their worst. Once more, with feeling, the important part is to make sure the audience cares.

So, how do you do that? Great question, voice in my head.

It’s really not that complicated or difficult. We care about people with faults. Look back at the examples. Oedipus was a great singer/poet, but he didn’t trust his wife. Dr. Forrester is a brilliant scientist whose science fails him. Nancy becomes strong, but only after all her friends are butchered. And Nikki may have known about Bear’s feelings. The narrative key is twofold. First, the tragic flaw needs to matter. Science fails and the Martians almost win. Hesitate to take charge and find answers, and your friends die. Take away a girl’s free will and hilarity ensues. The faults need to impact the story. Second, the character’s need to try to overcome their flaws. Forrester lives a life of science and rationality, but he gives himself to love and faith. Nancy is timid, but she learns to assert herself. Nikki knew about Bear’s feelings, then became enslaved to them. But therein lies the key: Bear isn’t sympathetic, we don’t care about his bad fate. We do care about Nikki’s. She is sympathetic because she’s trapped by someone else’s wish and is struggling to be free.

If you want your horror, suspense, and/or tragic characters to matter, you need your audience to care about them. If you want the audience to care about your characters, give them a flaw, have that flaw matter for the plot, and have the characters struggle to overcome that flaw. That’s it. That’s the big secret.

This week, I’m back up in North Conway.

Those shows are always great. Also, lo and behold a miracle has occurred! I’ve finally gotten my copies of Southern Invasion! This week, I’ll finally have copies of Master of Fate book 5 available!