Horror, of all the genres, is the only one that can provoke an involuntary visceral reaction.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
Every time I lock my people in a spacecraft or land them on an asteroid, the blood wells up again, and I'm writing horror. Horror's my default setting. It's also where I prefer to write.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the author's affinity for writing horror, indicating that tension and fear are integral to their creative process.
Stephen Graham Jones reveals his instinctive connection to horror as a genre, describing how the act of locking his characters in dangerous situations invokes a visceral emotional response. For him, horror is not just a theme but the foundation of his writing style, suggesting that fear and suspense are core elements that drive his narrative and imagination.
Themes
HorrorWritingFearCraftEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
During a writing workshop, I quoted Stephen Graham Jones to emphasize the power of fear in storytelling.
More from Stephen Graham Jones
All quotes →We watch a romantic comedy because we want to cry, say, or an action movie so we can participate in heroics. Horror's different. It can hit you with a moment of revulsion so hard you might want to erase the last five minutes of your life, please.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
I figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
The way humor's usually used in horror, it's as a pressure-release valve; without it, the drama would escalate out of all control almost immediately.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
Most zombie stories, the problems they solve are not the actual zombies. The problems they solve are the human interactions.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the somber, the tragic. This is because sad endings are easy in comparison - happy endings aren't at all simple to earn, especially when writing to an audience jaded by them.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
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