User blog:Parlour/Some Thoughts On Monsters

I've been thinking a lot about monsters recently. Not just the ones I dream up for my stories, but also the ones I read about on this site, and even the "monsters" that lurked in my dark bedroom as a child. I was raised into a family of horror movie fanatics, but none of them were so fixated with monsters as I was (my father was always preferential to cheesy 80s slashers). Recently, I began to ponder where this fixation came from, and I realized that my love for monsters came from a single, solitary fear: the fear of the unknown.

If I describe a monster as being dog-like, it gives a basic outline of the creature while leaving a precious amount of detail to the reader's imagination. Everyone's had a nasty experience with a mean dog at some point in their lives, which is then reflected unknowingly into the story. Many children (including a younger me) suffer from overactive imaginations, imagining that the shadows darting across their walls are malevolent things; if I describe a monster as being tall and shadowy, it taps into a primal fear, one that many people bury in their subconscious mind once they exceed childhood. Of course, this is no excuse for sloppy writing and lack of detail: not every aspect of a monster can be left up to the reader's imagination, or else the illusion is shattered. They become too fixated on what this creature could possibly be that they lose sight of the story as a whole. But people's deepest, most well hidden fears can be expressed in a monster without them even realizing it without further analysis.

The reason this doesn't work so well with ghosts or demons is because the human mind has preconceived notions of both of them. People associate ghosts with moving objects and vengeful poltergeists, and demons with horns, pentagrams, and the number 666. But a monster? A monster is whatever scares you most. It's everything you fear, and everything you tried to forget that you feared.

There's my two cents on the subject of monsters. Feel free to add to the discussion in the comments section, but I just wanted to express my fascination on the subject and I thought it would be some interesting food for thought for the community.

Until next time,

Parlour