Horror, of all the genres, is the only one that can provoke an involuntary visceral reaction.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
If you keep having to dip into the story's past to explain the present, then there's a good chance your real story's in the past, and you're just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The essence of your current story often lies in your past experiences.
This quote suggests that if one finds themselves frequently referring back to the past in order to make sense of the present narrative, it indicates that the core of that narrative is rooted in past events. It implies that understanding one's history is crucial in order to fully comprehend the current situation or story being told.
Themes
StoryPastPresentNarrativeHistory
In practice
Example use cases
In a book discussion about character development and backstory.
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.
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I figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer.
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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.
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Most zombie stories, the problems they solve are not the actual zombies. The problems they solve are the human interactions.
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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.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
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