Horror in Simplicity: A Guest Post by Chuck Wendig

Would you climb a staircase if you didn’t know where leads? A simple premise, an unusual mystery and a diverse core cast of characters powers this intriguing exploration of the unknown. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Chuck Wendig on writing The Staircase in the Woods.

One of the best things about horror is how simple it can be.

When we look at the genres of science-fiction and fantasy, I think we’ll find that what goes on there in both the story and the worldbuilding can often be quite complicated – and that’s not a knock against them! It’s a feature, not a bug. You’re being drawn into whole new worlds and it behooves those worlds to be more than a cheap façade shellacked clumsily to the wall of a soundstage somewhere. Complexity adds depth.

But in horror, complexity can add distance between the audience and the emotion of horror itself. (And therein lies another key difference between these genre groupings – ultimately, sci-fi and fantasy are described and defined by setting, whereas horror is defined by the emotions it is meant to conjure: fear, shock, revulsion, gooseflesh, that shifting uncomfortable feeling you get that makes you squirm around as if you’ve got spiders prancing across your nether-bits.) The more convoluted an idea or a narrative is—the more Byzantine it becomes—the more intellectual and detached we might be to the horror ahead.

Which is why sometimes (not always!) the simplest things can be scary.

Take, for example:

Interstitial territory, also called liminal spaces.

These are between spaces – eerie places of transition, often empty, perhaps poorly (or weirdly) lit, and nearly always causing discomfort to witness. They are passages, both mundane and eerie at the same time, as if the crass mundanity feeds the otherworldly eeriness. You can find photos of these online, or communities of people talking about liminal spaces: a corridor in a defunct mall, a tunnel underneath a road, a set of stone arches where no other stone arches can be found, or—

Well, a staircase in the woods.

A staircase in the woods is, again, a perfectly normal thing that happens by perfectly normal means, but it feels like it doesn’t belong. Like it came from somewhere else, like it’s an intrusion. I’ve seen a couple of these in real life, and they’re always jarring to behold—a piece of improbable, cursed architecture, emergent, even defiant. And so, long ago, I resolved to one day write about kids who found one of these, and who lose one of their own up the staircase—and who then, as adults, find another staircase in the woods. Do they walk up it? Do they try to find their lost friend? I think you know that they do.

And of course, the real horror is what waits at the top of the stairs. Beyond them. Because that, then, may be the truly terrifying promise of interstitial spaces—

This place of transit, of passage, must take us somewhere.

And that somewhere might not be very nice.