Description
Book SynopsisFrom M.R. James to Shirley Jackson, the Uncanny has long provided fertile ground for writers – and recent years have seen a notable resurgence in both literature and film. But how does the Uncanny work? What can a writer do to ensure their fiction haunts the reader’s imagination? Writing the Uncanny sees some of the best contemporary authors explain what drew them to horror, ghost stories, folklore and beyond, and reveal how to craft unsettling fiction which resonates. Authors such as Jeremy Dyson, Alison Moore, Jenn Ashworth and Catriona Ward share their insights on psychogeography, fairy tales, cultural tradition and the supernatural, and offer practical advice on their different approaches to the genre. Writing the Uncanny is an essential guide for both the casual reader and the aspiring writer of strange tales.
Table of ContentsIntroduction – Richard V. Hirst & Dan Coxon Negative Spaces and Ambiguity: A Toolkit for Writing Uncanny Fiction – Lucie McKnight Hardy A Many-Storied House – Michèle Roberts Finding the Comedy in the Blatantly Unfunny: A Personal Journey Through Three and a Half Tales of Unease – Robert Shearman Spotlight on… Shirley Jackson: Personal Experience in the Uncanny – Alison Moore Half-Concealed Places, or a Particularly Humdrum Uncanny – Gary Budden Beach Reading – Nicholas Royle Potluck: Making the Most of Your Little Horrors – Chikodili Emelumadu In the Forest, Stories Grow: Writing Uncanny Fiction with Fairy Tales – Claire Dean Spotlight on… Robert Aickman: Seeing by the Moonlight: Thoughts on ‘The Hospice’ and Robert Aickman – Jeremy Dyson Seeing Things and Saying Things: Writing the Ghost – Jenn Ashworth Haunting the Text: Housing Ghosts in Fiction – Catriona Ward All You Have to do is Die – Rowan Hisayo Buchanan Spotlight on… Sigmund Freud: ‘You Must All be Very Worried’: Freud’s Uncanny and Hoffman’s ‘The Sandman’ – Timothy J. Jarvis
