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Effective Villains- The Moral Event Horizon

Greetings all,

Today I am going to deal with my absolute favorite trope- “The Moral Event Horizon”.

A Moral Event Horizon is an act committed by a character that plummets our opinion of them so far away from “good” that it would be impossible for them to recover. This act does not need to be committed by a villain (who is already passed the “good line”) and can be incredibly effective in completely turning a previously well centred, good character over the deep end.

There are unfortunately easy ways for us to use this technique; rape has always been a sure-fire way to completely kill off reader or viewer sympathy with a character, but unless you have the necessary writing and character crafting skills, it comes off as not only cheap and forced, but also in incredibly bad taste.

An effective way of establishing a good moral event horizon is to use it on a character who toes the line between “good” and “bad”.  The ambiguous nature of the character will allow for a greater transition to “irredeemably evil” than if it is used on a character that is previously established as evil. It is also generally ineffective to have a character who is noble and good suddenly fall into the Moral Event Horizon. These turns rarely seem genuine and most readers and watchers will have a hard time believing that this character will stay evil.

If you want a character that your readers or viewers can unanimously root against, the moral event horizon is an incredibly effective way to ensure that nobody is rooting for their redemption.

Just remember, when it comes to villains, make the act that pushes them over the edge meaningful. Don’t waste it on things that lessen the story that you are trying tell.

That’s all for now

-Shawn

 

 

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Welcome and my introduction to horror!

Greetings all,

This is the inaugural post in the horror-writers.net blog, something we will be updating often .

We will hopefully have some guest bloggers and contests here as well, so please check us out regularly.

I would now like to take this opportunity to talk about my introduction to the horror genre.

As a child, I was lucky enough to have parents who allowed me to watch movies that not only contained some severe language, but some violence as well. I am appreciative of my parents because they always took the time to sit me down and explain that the violence or language that I was about to see in a movie was simply just that; “Violence and Language in a movie”.

They instilled in me an understanding that the things that existed in the worlds of film and television were meant to stay there. I always appreciated that because it fostered in me accountability for my own actions at an early age.

If I saw something violent and acted it out, I was the one who made the decision to act that way, and seeing it in a movie would not be an acceptable excuse, as I had been lectured at length that what I saw in movies was supposed to stay there.

All of that being said, they never really allowed me to watch horror. My father was a giant fan of the Fulci and Argento films so in retrospect keeping me away from things that disturbing was probably a good choice. Growing up in a house where I was allowed to watch pretty much anything except horror only made me want to watch horror that much more.

Every attempt I made to watch a horror film was thwarted until roughly the age of 10 when I stumbled upon a show called Tales From The Crypt on television. I was immediately blown away at the mix of terrifyingly dark stories and genuinely laugh out loud campiness of The Crypt Keeper (I’ve always had a morbid sense of humor). From the very first episode the show I was absolutely hooked on horror and would find any and every opportunity to watch it.

After several months of watching the show without my parents knowing about it, I finally confessed. As much as I enjoyed watching the show, I didn’t feel good about lying to my parents (I didn’t have a lot of rules, so breaking the few that I had made me feel awful.)

My father finally gave in to my repeated requests to watch a horror movie by allowing me to watch “The Evil Dead” on the condition that I didn’t

A) Have Nightmares or

B) Turn it off halfway through.

I can happily say that I didn’t have nightmares after watching The Evil Dead (my first horror related nightmare would come at the hands of Dolls) and was then allowed to move on to the Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

I’d like to think that I would have gravitated towards horror anyway, as it is something that I do enjoy very much, but there was something about having it as “the last taboo” that made it absolutely irresistible to me. I will also say again that I was lucky enough to have parents that took the time to talk to me about the movies and t.v. shows that I watched. Without them instilling a strong understanding that “it’s only a movie” in me at a young age, who knows how I would have turned out (I assume I’d be boring and like romantic comedies or something).

Anyway, this will conclude the first posting on The Horror Blog, if you or anybody you know would be interested in writing a piece for us, please contact me at

info@horror-writers.net

Thank you for reading and do take care

-Shawn