When Reality Meets Fear: Why I Write What I Do

By Colby Marshall - September 11, 2012

Days like today give me a lot to think about as a writer, particularly one who writes tales meant to thrill and scare, to toe the edge of reality for the sake of entertainment.  It's fun to write things that give readers a chance to be just a little terrified—in the safety of their own living room recliners. 

Which is why days like this really make me think a lot about what I do.  Eleven years ago, the unthinkable happened right here on American soil.  Villains rose, true evil struck.  People died horrible deaths, and families were torn apart.  Images would be burned in our brains forever, and new fears stamped on our hearts.  That day brought forward an unknown surge of the truly atrocious fears we'd never ventured to conceive of, because until then, we didn't know they were on our repertoire. 

So why, then, when such devastating things happen, would anyone want to write stories about things like this?  Why would anyone desire to read them?  In a world with so much pain in its reality, why escape to a world where an equal amount of terror exists?

It's a question with many answers, I think.  For some, maybe reading and writing these types of events make them seem further away or less likely to happen to them or those they love.  Maybe others feel a certain ability to relate to the characters forging through hardships and larger-than-life circumstances.  And sure, for some, it's simply for the thrill of the adventure, the surge of adrenaline to find out what happens next, not too unlike the way people follow true crime trials that aren't as real on television as they are to the neighbors who witnessed them.

But for me, the draw in writing fear is the same reason this day will live in the hearts and minds of people everywhere: because we remember not just the villains and the disaster or the wreckage and broken hearts.  We also remember humanity as a whole that day and the days that followed.

For every story I write with an evil villain or three, a hero fights back to overcome him.  The fear, the panic that gives way to resolve in the characters as they battle scenarios we can hardly fathom highlights a very real human condition we see every day.  Stories, be they thrillers, family sagas, or even science fiction, captivate us because they don't just entertain.  They remind us of that amazing quality the human spirit possesses to rage against a storm, empathize with others who are hurting, and ultimately, to heal. 

Do you read scary books or watch scary movies?  What do you take away from them?