HALLOWEEN: NOT JUST FOR HORROR WRITERS

Halloween belongs to horror writers. Or at least, that is what we are supposed to think. Mention writing a story set around Halloween and most people immediately imagine ghosts, haunted houses, serial killers, graveyards, vampires, things scratching at bedroom windows and somebody making the incredibly poor decision to investigate a strange noise in the cellar. And yes, Halloween is wonderful for horror. But I think writers of almost every genre should steal it. Because Halloween offers something that writers are constantly trying to create: a night when ordinary people are given permission to behave differently.

For a few hours, normal rules become slightly blurred. People dress as somebody else. They hide behind masks. They knock on strangers’ doors. They walk through darkened streets. They attend parties where they may not immediately recognise the people around them. They flirt more openly. They become theatrical. They laugh at death. They deliberately frighten themselves. Most importantly, perhaps, they let their defences down. And for a writer, that is irresistible.

HALLOWEEN AND ROMANCE

I think Halloween is a marvellous setting for romance. Christmas gets most of the attention from romantic novelists, and I understand why. Christmas has snow, roaring fires, mistletoe, presents, family reunions and conveniently attractive people returning to picturesque villages after spending ten years pursuing careers in London. But Halloween has something Christmas does not. Anonymity.

Put two characters at a Halloween party wearing masks and immediately you have possibilities. Perhaps they already know one another but do not recognise each other. Perhaps they are rivals. Perhaps they work together. Perhaps they have spent three years pretending not to fancy each other. Then suddenly they meet at a Halloween party where neither quite knows who the other is. They talk differently because they are hidden. They flirt. They confess things. They become bolder than they would normally dare to be. Then comes the moment when the mask is removed. That is romance writing gold.

Halloween also allows characters to become somebody else temporarily, and that change can reveal who they really are. The painfully shy woman arrives dressed as a glamorous vampire and discovers that people notice her. The supposedly confident man hides behind a ridiculous costume because underneath all that bravado he is terrified of rejection. Two people who normally argue find themselves dancing together before either realizes who the other is. Perhaps someone kisses a mysterious stranger at midnight, then spends the next hundred pages trying to discover who was behind the mask. I would read that. In fact, I might write it.

AND THEN THERE IS EROTICA…

Well. Halloween and erotica hardly need an introduction to one another. Costumes. Masks. Stockings. Boots. Leather. Corsets. Capes. Roleplay. Do I really need to continue?

There is something inherently sensual about transformation. Perhaps that is why witches have so often been portrayed as seductive figures in popular culture. Look at Samantha in Bewitched. She was charming, mischievous, glamorous and possessed something enormously attractive beyond her magic: confidence. Or Anjelica Huston sweeping into The Witches looking magnificently dangerous. Yes, I realize the Grand High Witch is hardly conventional romantic material, particularly once the wig comes off, but before that revelation she certainly understands how to make an entrance. And entrances matter. A good fictional character should change the temperature of a room simply by walking into it.

Halloween gives erotic and romantic writers the opportunity to play with disguise, confidence and fantasy without it feeling artificially imposed upon the story. Your normally reserved character can put on a costume and suddenly discover another personality. Not because the clothes magically change them. Because the clothes give them permission. Permission to flirt. Permission to tease. Permission to make the first move. Permission to say something they have wanted to say for months. That is where costume becomes much more interesting than simply describing what somebody is wearing. It changes behaviour. And behaviour creates story.

MURDER LOOKS BETTER BY CANDLELIGHT

Then we come to murder mysteries. Personally, I think almost any murder mystery can be improved by a bewitching setting. Give me an old country house in October. Rain against the windows. Pumpkins glowing on stone steps. Candles flickering in the hallway. A masquerade party underway downstairs. Everyone wearing masks. Then turn the lights out. When they come back on… Someone is dead. Now we have a story.

Halloween gives the mystery writer an enormous toy box to rummage through. Masks hide identities. Costumes create mistaken identities. Fake blood can conceal real blood. A plastic knife can be replaced with a real one. A scream can be dismissed as somebody playing a joke. A person seen leaving the scene may have been wearing somebody else’s costume. And everybody has an excuse for behaving strangely.

Imagine interviewing witnesses after a Halloween murder. “What did the suspect look like?” “About six feet tall.” “Anything distinctive?” “He was dressed as Dracula.” “Excellent. There were only seventeen Draculas at the party.” Suddenly the detective has a problem. And problems are what mystery writers live for.

THE PERFECT NIGHT FOR MISDIRECTION

Halloween is especially useful because the audience expects to be tricked. That means the writer can play games. Was that shadow significant? Was the noise upstairs supernatural? Was the figure watching from the garden really there? Did somebody actually see a ghost? Or did they see a murderer wearing a sheet? The supernatural can exist around the edges of a perfectly conventional crime story. You do not even have to explain everything.

Perhaps your detective solves the murder completely. The killer is arrested. The motive is established. Every clue is accounted for. Case closed. Then, on the final page, the detective looks at a photograph taken during the Halloween party. There is somebody standing behind the guests. Nobody recognizes them. And according to the photographer… Nobody was standing there when the picture was taken. Happy Halloween.

COMEDY LOVES HALLOWEEN TOO

We should not forget comedy. Halloween is inherently ridiculous. Adults spend good money buying clothes deliberately designed to make them look like dead people. Perfectly respectable neighbors decorate their gardens with gravestones. Parents spend weeks telling children not to accept sweets from strangers before accompanying them around the neighborhood specifically to collect sweets from strangers. There is comedy everywhere.

Costume disasters. Two people arriving in identical outfits. Someone attending the wrong party. A man discovering that his supposedly terrifying vampire costume makes him look like an assistant manager from a Victorian bank. The elaborate costume that cannot fit through the bathroom door. The person who refuses to dress up and arrives wearing ordinary clothes, only to discover everyone assumes they have come as “a serial killer because they look just like everyone else.” Halloween allows comedy writers to exaggerate ordinary behaviour because everybody is already behaving rather strangely.

EVEN HISTORICAL FICTION CAN HAVE HALLOWEEN

Halloween also has centuries of folklore behind it. Samhain, the ancient Gaelic festival. All Hallows’ Eve. Fortune telling. Bonfires. Apples. Ghost stories. Superstitions. Old rituals. Local traditions. That gives historical writers an enormous amount to explore. A Halloween story set in Victorian Britain will feel completely different from one set in the 1950s, which will feel different again from Halloween today. And that means Halloween itself can reveal character and period. What frightened people then? What did they believe? What did they laugh at? What superstitions did they publicly dismiss but privately observe? There is always something fascinating about a character who declares: “I don’t believe in any of that nonsense.” Then quietly throws salt over their shoulder when nobody is looking.

HALLOWEEN CHANGES PEOPLE

And perhaps that is the real reason Halloween is such a useful setting. It changes people. Not permanently. Just enough. People become braver when their face is hidden. They become flirtier when playing a character. They become more willing to enter dark rooms. They tell ghost stories they would normally dismiss. They allow themselves to believe impossible things. They scream. They laugh. They touch the person beside them when something jumps out of the darkness. They become children again. And writers should always pay attention whenever society creates a situation where people behave differently from normal. Because that is where stories begin.

MASKS ARE MADE FOR WRITERS

There is another reason I love masks in fiction. Every character is already wearing one. Not literally, perhaps, but emotionally. The successful businessman hiding insecurity. The confident woman hiding loneliness. The happily married couple who have stopped talking. The comedian hiding sadness. The respectable neighbor hiding something considerably darker. Writers spend entire novels gradually removing those masks. Halloween simply gives us the opportunity to make the metaphor physical. Put an actual mask over the character’s face. Then ask: Who are they when nobody knows who they are? That question works in horror. It works in romance. It works in erotica. It works in comedy. It works in crime. It works in literary fiction. It probably even works in science fiction, although your Halloween party may be taking place on Mars.

AND NEVER WASTE A GOOD JUMP SCARE

Finally, whatever genre you write, never underestimate the humble jump scare. It does not necessarily need to be terrifying. A romantic heroine walking through a Halloween maze can jump straight into the arms of exactly the person she has been avoiding. A detective investigating an apparently empty house can be startled by somebody who was never supposed to be there. A comedy character can spend an entire chapter terrified of a decoration that keeps moving in the wind. And yes, a horror writer can have something genuinely dreadful waiting behind the door.

Halloween provides atmosphere before the writer has written a single frightening sentence. Darkness comes earlier. Leaves scrape along pavements. There is mist in the air. Windows glow orange. Strangers walk past wearing masks. Nobody thinks twice about hearing a scream. That is an extraordinary gift to a storyteller. So perhaps Halloween does belong to horror writers. But we should not be allowed to keep it to ourselves.

Romance writers, steal the masks. Crime writers, take the darkened mansion. Comedy writers, have the terrible costumes. Historical writers, dig into the folklore. Erotica writers… Well. You already know what to do with the witch’s outfit.

Happy writing. And Happy Halloween.

BIG KISS XX

Diane Marie