How to Write Cosmic Horror

With all the uncertainties in the world, cosmic horror is on the rise. Booktok is buzzing about it, sales are rising, and prizes are being won, meaning now is the perfect time to start writing in this genre.

Cosmic horror was made popular by the work of HP Lovecraft, whose stories feature dangerous secrets and incomprehensible monsters, against whom humanity are powerless.

But what separates a good cosmic horror writer from a bad one? Here are eight ways that you can make yourself stand out from the crowd!

1. Make sure you’ve read the classic Lovecraft stories - along with other classics such as Danielewski’s House of Leaves; or Thomas Ligotti, who was recently published in Penguin Classics.

2. Lovecraft was famous for his extensive vocabulary and you will need some impressive language. Become a lover of words like squamous, cyclopean, ichthyic and stygian.

3. Hone your descriptive skills. Can you take regular things and make them feel strange? Try describing a modern kitchen from the point of view of a mediaeval peasant. Imagine how shocked they would be, how difficult it would be to explain things like plastics and microwaves.

4. Realise how similar to that medieval peasant you are. Do you know how a toilet works? What would you do if the cold chain collapsed? Where will you get water once the taps stop working? What would you eat if the supermarkets were turned into rubble?

5. One of Lovecraft’s greatest creations is Cthulhu, a god who sleeps in the South Pacific Ocean, whose awakening will destroy our civilisation. You can now buy cuddly toys depicting this vengeful god. What could you write that will make those little cuddly pieces of plush seem loathsome and terrifying again? What would make people see them and feel fear?

6. Think about the world from a pig’s point-of-view of view. They are destined for the slaughterhouse but have no knowledge of their fate. Imagine the sort of novel that a pig would write if they understood about pork.

7. Stop to think about how the entire world could be destroyed within an hour by a nuclear war, everything you love and care about being ruined and irradiated. Sit on the bus into work and consider that the effort you put into waking up that morning could be wasted by a single warning system’s malfunction. Ask yourself why nobody makes cute plush toys about nuclear war.  

8. If you truly understood cosmic horror, you’d not have the strength to type a single sentence.

Background

I came up with the title for this story while browsing at Lyall’s bookshop last weekend. I liked the contrast of a breezy how-to-write article that turns increasingly grim. It’s an odd piece – but I think the implied character of the writer, along with the progression of the weirdness, do give it a narrative and make it a story. It’s not conventional, but it’s the sort of horror story I find myself most interested in at the moment.

(I debated with myself whether to add a subtitle making it obvious that this was a story rather than an actual writing guide with an over-enthusiastic introduction. That would might been sensible, but unfair on the story).

Horror is a strange genre. I think it’s partly an attempt to manage our fear - writing the worst things one can think of, and reducing them through that. Cosmic horror deals with existential dread, but always puts it at a remove. As Lovecraft wrote: “The most merciful thing in the world… is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents”. Maybe horror writing helps some people to avoid correlating certain truths.

Recommendations

I love comic books but, as the prices have gone up, it no longer feels good value to read them as monthlies. It’s very rare for me to like a series enough to buy single issues. But, right now, I’m reading two series as they come out. One is James Tynion IV’s Nice House By the Sea. The other is Keiron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard’s The Power Fantasy.

The starting point for The Power Fantasy is superheroes whose powers could destroy the world: the survival of humanity depends on them not coming into conflict. Gillen is open about the series being an allegory for nuclear war, and the first issue explores some of Bertrand Russell’s ideas around this. It’s also a beautifully illustrated and well-scripted story.

Gillen, like me, seems to have been horrified by reading Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario, and I’m interested in seeing his response. He’s also being inspired by Paul Morley’s excellent biography From Manchester with Love: The Life and Opinions of Tony Wilson. This will be an interesting series.

The first issue of The Power Fantasy has just gone to a third printing, so should be easy to get hold of at a comic shop. I’ve put it on regular order at my local store.