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Ching-Jo (Zoe) Lu

Greg McClure

WR 39B

23 March 2018

Cover Letter

Magistrale and Morrison, two award-winning and prestigious professors, once state in

their essay, Intro to Dark Night’s Dreaming, “Horror consistently reminds us of human

vulnerability” (Magistrale and Morrison 2). Horror not only presents us the potential fears in a

society but also reflects the irony that people are driven by desires. People fail to realize how

vulnerable they are until horror brings out the realistic side of human nature. But from every

weakness, there are always insights to obtain. During the ten weeks, I have learned to depict the

horror appears in horror stories, and I have analyzed the genre, elements, and the connotations

within. Horror used to be broad and complex, but after exploring the genre and reflecting to our

daily lives, its meaning leads me to think deeper and create new ideas. The process of generating

ideas stems from reading the story, The Other Place, to filming a horror movie with original

contexts and visual elements. Along with personal understanding of the genre, the ideas are

formed also by collaboration and discussions with teammates. Since horror is originated from

vulnerable human nature, ideas are more powerful when multiple perspectives merge. The ideas

in horror contexts are presented in class via visual assistance, such as PowerPoint, in written

form, and videos. Our ideas are shown in class to display how sources build up our arguments.

All in all, I grow as a better writer not only because of the analysis and collaboration between

people but also because of the metacognition I have obtained from being more open-minded to

embrace diverse conventions in the horror genre.

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Becoming a better writer from personal growth, I successfully employed both inside and

outside sources to demonstrate my ideas, connecting with my reflections of the phenomenon I

see in the mundane world. Before starting to analyze, I first gain knowledge and background of

how a genre creates certain tropes to meet people’s expectations and desires. In Noël Carroll’s

essay, The Nature of Horror, he implies, “horror are designed to elicit a certain kind of

affect…an emotional state whose emotion we call art-horror” (Carroll 52). In the readings, the

major genre is not only horror—it is art-horror that signals me to react with an emotional

response. I realize an emotional response is not merely how people are scared by the monsters in

the context, it is also about the way the art-horror context triggers people to expand their

thoughts to relate back to the human nature. For instance, in my first draft of Rhetorical Analysis

on The Other Place, I wrote my thesis, “the story…represents an art-horror story by revealing a

conflict of a person between the authority and the inner disobedience, which contrast the

traditional horror stories” (Lu 1). Within the art-horror genre, it is necessary to have an

emotional reaction toward the context, and the emotional reaction reflects one’s idea about the

lessons the contexts contain. Therefore, after annotating the story, I add an emotional response to

convey the importance of the message the author tries to discuss. Following the thesis statement

checklist, I improve my thesis by passing the so-what test and by giving a purpose of my

analysis. Aside from analyzing an art-horror text, I create my own piece of horror story. In the

RIP project, I write a script about a college girl who is deprived by various kinds of stress,

causing serious mental illness that she tries to hurt herself. I come up with the story by

considering Magistrale and Morrison’s article, Intro to Dark Night’s Dreaming. They state,

“Horror inspires a repulsion-attraction reaction…we are repulsed by images that are meant to

threaten our security” (Magistrale and Morrison 3). Stress is commonly seen in colleges, so
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people ignore the serious consequences it may bring. As the script shows details of the story, we

are repulsed by the stress, which threats the protagonist and hurts her both physically and

mentally. In the script, the art-horror genre strikes the audience with the idea that stress is the

most obvious but the most overlooked severe issue in a college student’s daily life. During

writing the script, I have revised the script to make images more vivid for the shooting process. I

used to dislike revising, but for writing a story that completely, freely represents my idea, I gain

the ability to carefully revise to ensure my idea is correctly presented. Nevertheless, it is

impossible for a film to be successful unless with the help of others.

Taking team collaboration into account, my personal growth is emphasized by my

responsibility and engagement in teamwork since first week. While I am able to transform the

horror genre from written form into a visual one, I have improved in group presentations in class

and embracing different ideas in our group. From the first presentation, “Zombies”, to the last

one, RIP Storyboard, I have significant improvements in communicating with visual assistance.

In our “Zombies” presentation, instead of filling the slides with texts, I decide to transform

words into conversation to energize the audience, so there are slides without any word or only

basic information. However, besides being able to employ visual effects, I gain experience in

making group presentations with word documents. In “The Other Place Thesis Statement

Checklist” presentation, every member has equal opportunity to present while adding to others’

ideas to further support our thesis. Either in visual or vocal form, I improve in collaborating with

teammates to expand our ideas and take responsibility in the parts I am presenting. Furthermore,

in our RIP project, I realize only with others’ help and cooperation can I achieve my goal. Before

brainstorming the plot of our movie, we review ideas in Noël Carroll’s The Nature of Horror to

decide a theme inside the art-horror genre and also consider ideas in “Sleepy Eyes” and “Larry”.
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I utilize the themes and elements, such as narrowing down the horror in a limited space, to

connect with my own piece; this helps me understand the horror genre better and widen my

imagination to create my monster. Also, we visit TVTropes.org to support the theme in our

movie. “Fear of the Unknown” and “twisted ending” are the two major tropes. “Fear of the

Unknown” is a strategy to limit audience’s information and make them predict the story based on

their imagination (TVTropes). In the shooting process, even with the script, we are able to gather

new ideas beyond the message in the script, and it is because of the tropes can we follow the

pattern and meet audience’s expectations. Carol J. Clover, an expert in rhetoric language, once

implies in her book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, “It [Psycho] suggests so much but shows so

little” (Clover 41). Clover sates that in the famous movie, Psycho, it uses limited information to

present the audience an enormous message behind the story. We borrow the idea to make a film

closer to the art-horror genre. During the 10 weeks of cooperation with my team, I learned from

small team discussions, such as drawing out the timeline to organize our process, to larger

improvements—respecting different opinions toward the shooting angles and the message

behind. Although we have conflicts during the process, we discuss, respect, and think of better

options to help the film become a success.

I have also improved as a better writer in minor assignments. In the reflections on class

readings, short videos, and weekly responses, I have improved in generating my ideas more

toward emotional effects on people and analyzing the proponents for employing in my projects.

At the beginning of exploring the horror genre, I do a reflection on Reznor’s and Cash’s versions

of the music video, Hurt. In the response, I fully explain the emotional proponents in the video. I

write, “the rebirth of a decomposed fox is possibly a hope…but the juxtaposition of “rebirth” and

“remain” strikes the audience with a sorrow that it cannot be wiped away and leave a stain in
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one’s life” (Lu 1). The music video is horrific because of the sorrowful but genuine emotions

Reznor and Cash want to convey to the audience. I realize art-horror is not what appears to be

scary visually; it is the idea that the relationship between the emotions inside and reality that

strikes the audience to rethink their lives. For the emotional elements I found in the video, I

created my own two-sentence horror story with erring, creepy effects. In my story, “I opened my

eyes, seeing my husband lying against me. While moving closer to cuddle with my husband, I

glimpsed at a missed call from him a few minutes ago” (Lu 1). I employ a twist from the

beginning—a perfect Sunday morning—to a creepy acknowledgement which condensed in one

small bed. The emotion I transfer is from a normal setting to an intensive situation, and this

makes my story horror to my readers. In Noël Carroll’s The Nature of Horror, he indicates, “the

monster is an extraordinary character in our ordinary world” (Carroll 52). This well-known

concept keeps reminding me of how emotions and tones establish a monster in a horror story. I

gain the ability of finding the emotional elements in other authors’ works and employing them

into my RA and RIP.

In this journey of exploring the genre I love the most, I have gained more abilities as a

good writer than I have ever expected. From “finding” the horror to “creating” my own horror, I

persist in digging deeper the art-horror concept and broadening my horizon to embrace different

versions of horror, such as videos and literature. I have obtained the skill to communicate

through visual effects and in written style, which displays my messages and emotions clearly.

Although I considered the journey not easy to achieve the end, I have overcome difficulties and

grow as a better writer. I love the time I spent in exploring the genre since I could never reach

the end; the art-horror genre has given me enormous ideas to contribute to the society by

reflecting modern social norms and the issues disguised as “normal”. Above all the strategies,
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skills, and abilities I have obtained, I am ready to start another great journey in creating new

ideas in Writing 39C. Thank you Professor McClure for giving me advice throughout the quarter

and encouraging me to challenge myself. I enjoy being in part of this class very much.
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Works Cited

Carroll, N. “The Nature of Horror.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 46, No.1

(Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59.

Magistrale, Tony and Morrison, Michael A. “A Dark Night’s Dreaming.” University of South

Carolina Press, March 31, 1996.

Nothing is Scarier. TVTropes.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NothingIsScarier

“Larry - Short Horror Film.” Youtube, uploaded by jafyats13, 8 December 2017,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15R5Aup56Ro

“Sleepy Eyes (Horror Short Film).” Youtube, uploaded by Kenneth Dagatan, 31 December,

2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VDnpf7G1iI

Clover, Carol J. 1992. “Men, women, and chain saws: gender in the modern horror film.”

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.