User blog comment:ChristianWallis/A Look at Ambiguity/@comment-26007602-20160603231746

I think you've done a damn good job of explaining the importance of ambiguity, and the effectiveness of it when used correctly. I see a lot of new writers on this site fail to properly apply ambiguity just like you mentioned, and instead use it as a defense as to why their story doesn't a lick of sense. In fact, if I were you, I'd ask one of the admins for permission to add this to the Writing Advice Blogs, as I think it has quite a lot of useful information. I might add more on the importance of some form of logic or a believable rule set in a story, but I think this would be a fine piece for new authors to read and understand why not everything needs to be explained.

There is one thing I disagree with though; when you say: "...There’s no ghost. I mean, mechanically it’s a ghost story. It goes bump, it moves things, it’s invisible, it’s mystical and all that. But they tell us it’s a demon they tell us it’s something else, it’s not human and because of that you get all the scares of a haunted house but without turning the movie into a slow reveal of some boring family drama.", I believe that this is just as bad as explaining the ghost away.

Demons are on the same level as ghosts when it comes to horror movies (at least in my opinion), in that they simply aren't as threatening once you're aware that the creature is a demon. It becomes easier to visualize and humanize, since most people have a specific idea of what a demon should look and act like. You mentioned Insidious, which I thought was a fine movie until the revealed the actual demon that was possessing the kid. All that tension and build up was instantly erased because I now knew what the monster was, and he wasn't as threatening as I imagined him.

And I guess that's really my overall point: when we know exactly what the monster is (or what their motives are as you mentioned), no matter what  kind of monster it is, it becomes less frightening. Ghosts, demons, aliens, cryptids, all become more muted once we see them in the flesh (or ghost-flesh, in some cases), because our previous visualizations/preconceptions were more attuned to our own fears.

I'll stop ranting. You hit the nail on the head with this post. Nice work.