Good fiction and film requires conflict. And usually when we’re talking about genre, that conflict often includes violence and some amount of blood. How you depict gore in your work is all about managing expectations and tone. You can write something with virtually zero gore and still end up scaring more people than the bloodbath horror story. You can even use blood and gore for laughs, if you like. But there exists a strange, unspoken agreement with an audience that, once you’ve established tone, it can be shocking and unpleasant to disrupt that tone with new extremes of violence. Using that shock as a way to jolt the audience is all well and good, but it’s important that you know what you’re doing. Otherwise, the horrific headshot in a goofy adventure tale may come across as a tad unpleasant. Today I want to talk about three central ways to address blood and gore in your writing.

Suggestive Violence

You can often suggest more than you’re allowed to show. And that’s just as well, because your audience then uses their imagination to fill in the blanks and conjure up something horrible. The original Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is a gruesome film—any movie about being stuck in a house of cannibals is going to be some manner of unpleasant—but it doesn’t show us nearly as much gore as you might remember. Director/co-writer Tobe Hooper sets up the horrific situation, drenches it in sweaty atmosphere, and then lets us imagine the worst. The film is creepier as a result.

Less gruesome and more crowd-pleasing is Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). It, too, is an example of suggesting violence and getting more scares as a result. The film spends a good amount of time hyping its three carnivorous dinosaurs, the super smart velociraptor, the dilophosaurus which spits venom at its prey, and the t-rex, which the film gives the inability to track things that don’t move. Tidbits of information are sprinkled about, letting us know all about the dinosaurs before they ever threaten the human characters. The velociraptor kills three named characters (and a cow) but every one of these deaths occurs with violence hidden somewhere just off-screen, with only one leftover arm as bloody proof of their kills. Similarly, the dilophosaurus blinds Nedry before chowing down on him, and we only get to watch the man’s Jeep shake as we imagine what’s transpiring beyond the fogged up windows. But I would argue that both the raptors and the dilophosaurus make for more threatening, scary dinosaurs than the t-rex, who, by comparison, makes all of her kills in plain sight.

It’s because we’ve been told what to expect from the velociraptor and dilophosaurus and our imagination goes wild. Grant, trying to frighten an annoying kid, tells how the raptor will split your belly with its killing talon. “You are alive when they start to eat you,” he says. And the computer tour guide mentions how the dilophosaurus venom causes blindness and eventually paralysis; “Allowing the carnivore to eat at its leisure.” Because they set up these dinosaurs as ruthless predators, we don’t need to see them make the kills. Our mind imagines the worst of it—poor cow—and that’s the magic of suggestive violence and gore. The t-rex, meanwhile, takes on more of an antihero persona instead of that of a monstrous villain, as it makes its kills in some grand fashion.

Writers and filmmakers have received irate mail about the violence in their works, only to have to point out to their ‘fans’ that no such violence ever actually appeared in their work. That’s the power of suggestion. Trust your audience to meet you half way. You don’t need to show the blood in all its gory detail to scare or thrill.

The Build Up to Blood

The half-way point between suggestive violence and a bloody free-for-all is to slowly build to that gory climax with a purpose. This can be a difficult thing to pull off, because it means changing the tone and expectations in the final act. But when successfully done, it leaves the audience stunned.

Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) is a good western that becomes a great western thanks to its violent, vengeful finale in which the film’s protagonist reverts to his darker self and dispatches horrible violence unto those who’ve wronged him and his friends. The film was not without violent moments before this—one of the opening scenes in which a woman is brutalized is pretty tough to watch—but the hero had done his best to lie to himself about what kind of man he is now. When he embraces the monster of yesteryear, the film takes on a darker look and tone, almost like a horror movie is encroaching on the western. Unforgiven is never more unforgettable than when its hero begins to act like a villain.

In Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro (1962), the unnamed samurai played by Toshiro Mifune is good with a sword and makes quick work of numerous lesser swordsmen. Each strike is largely bloodless, with only sound effects and acting to sell the violence. But in the film’s final moments, a surviving villain demands a duel with Mifune’s protagonist. The two swords are so fast that we can’t even tell who has won. But then comes the gush of blood that jets out of the villain’s chest. It is a geyser, the sort of blood spray that would become famous in later swordplay movies like Lone Wolf & Cub (1972 – 1974) and Kill Bill (2003/4). Kurosawa let the viewer think they knew what to expect from the violence only to shock them right before the end of the film with a gush of blood so extreme that it will conjure gasps and laughs in equal measure.

If you go this route, you run the risk of upsetting certain members of the audience. But you also reward others with one hell of a finale. So it’s a risk vs reward creative choice. Whatever you do, you must ensure that the story earns this escalation of gore in the finale. That’s why we talk about building up to it. Unearned shocks are distasteful.

Bloodbath

Simply throwing buckets of blood at a situation and expecting that to satisfy usually results in something cheap. You’ve got to use the blood and guts as a means of exploring the themes and atmosphere of your work, whether it be for comedic purposes or in the hunt of getting underneath your audience’s skin.

Nick Cutter’s The Troop is one of the goriest pieces of fiction I’ve ever read, telling the story of monstrous tapeworms attacking a troop of boy scouts. Too many gore hounds only think in terms of sight and touch but Cutter engages the other senses and encourages readers to imagine the smell, sound, and flavour of the horrors he has created. The result is one of the best pieces of nasty modern horror you’re ever going to read.

Michael Patrick Hicks, an author friend of mine, uses gore and pain as blunt instruments in his fiction. Broken Shells is a gore-filled horror tale about creatures that imprison humans in amber beneath the ground, using the still living people as edible nests for their young. Hicks explains the horrible details with an almost scientific interest, like he wants us to get right up in there and dissect the gore in an attempt to better understand his monsters. It’s nasty as all hell. Squishy, too. But it works because it doesn’t feel like a scramble for shock value. I think this is because he is honest about what kind of book it is. He doesn’t shield the reader’s eyes as we explore the underground horrors. Instead, he hits you over the head with it and says, This is what you wanted, right?

Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer (2001) is a dark, demented movie that I hated the first time I saw it but have grown to like on repeat viewings. It is insanely violent and gory. But that’s the world Miike meant to create. You can tell by scene #1 what type of movie this is going to be and Miike never betrays his vision or the audience’s expectations. It may be difficult to watch but it is strangely, perversely honest with itself.

You can go in the opposite direction and use extreme gore for laughs. Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (1992) was once known as the bloodiest film of all time; it’s also hilarious. Slither (2006), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Evil Dead 2 (1987), and others drench their characters in blood and horror effects, but do so for laughs instead of gasps. Horror violence can be cartoonish and maybe it’s worth celebrating that.

Sometimes it’s just that genre can be so absurd that we can’t help but laugh.

Too many books/movies get away with thinking that gore alone is enough to appease fans of the genre. It’s part of the reason that horror earned a reputation as a ‘cheap’ genre. Because for all the good examples of using gore either for chills or comedy, there are plenty more that simply think of horrible ways to kill characters as compared to how to write a good story that happens to have a high body count. Some horror fans will love a book or film simply because of its use of gore, but most audience members require something more. I will continue to defend 2004’s Saw (and, to a lesser degree, the first three Saw films) as clever horror mysteries with nasty set-pieces. But as the series went on, it became less about the clever plots and more about the nasty set-pieces, and the series took a dive in quality as a result.

In conclusion…

Whether you’re going for suggestive brutality, a steady build up to blood, or a sticky bloodbath, the violence and gore have to support the story, not the other way around. So take a look at your stories, is the level of blood and gore provoking the feelings you want or would another approach help?