We spend our lives trying to avoid fear, then pay to experience it.

Storytelling began long before writing existed, as a primary way to make sense of the unknown and warn others of danger throughout history. Now, storytelling may be one of the ways we make fear tolerable by transforming uncontrollable threats into controlled experiences.

Does the exploration of fear thread through all forms of storytelling?

From horror to romance, and poetry in between, fear is a subject that brings us to write and read alike, even when the goal is to entertain, inform or offer escapism and comfort.

Classics like Hamlet, Peter Pan, and The Tell-Tale Heart introduced the concept of fear as something worth exploring with modern storytelling methods. A way to dabble in exposure without leaving your desk, or even your bed. Freudian theories strung along Greek mythology, and contemporary horror novelists use their own fears to add control over its subject. Fantasy writers seemingly shift towards phobias and use the irrational factor to evolve a plot and add a face to an otherwise lingering feeling that has transcended through evolution and remained untouched by time. Biblical literature remains close to how stories are organized around fear through mortality, punishment, exile, temptation, divine judgement and apocalypse, never straying from the topic at hand. Ancient characters fear death, divine punishment, betrayal, monsters, loss of loved ones, and social rejection. Contemporary characters experience the same vulnerability. The monster changes, yet the underlying fear does not.

Some stories relieve fear through catharsis, rehearse us for it, give it a recognizable shape, and simply make an uncontrollable emotion briefly controllable. The Ordeal Simulation Hypothesis, tested by researchers Olivier Morin, Alberto Acerbi, and Oleg Sobchuk, suggests that fiction may be more than entertainment. The hypothesis proposes that stories allow us to mentally simulate rare, high-stakes situations that ordinary life seldom gives us the opportunity to prepare for. After analyzing the summaries of 744 twentieth-century American novels, the researchers found that death appeared far more frequently than it does in real life, with homicide particularly being overrepresented compared to natural causes. The idea of storytelling as rehearsal, however, extends much further back. Biblical stories fit into the rehearsing example. A guidebook on how to behave to avoid the same threats that mirror our mind’s. Behaviors to follow and conflict to avoid are seemingly easy to miss without stories to mimic or reflect on. Would we be able to maneuver life without them? If we did, would we still produce and consume them?

How much of what we consume is magnetized by the feeling that takes over? 

Romance as a genre is often discussed as escapism, as is most literature, yet how much of it looks at betrayal, infidelity, or the fear that comes with being perceived? Slow burns ignite a sense of anxiety I would characterize as threat as a subcategory of fear. The uncertainty about reciprocation, rejection, exposure, and loss can generate tension in a contained experience. Dark romance invites negativity bias and benign masochism, a term coined by psychologist Paul Rozin, when studying how we enjoy experiences the body initially interprets negatively once we recognize that we’re actually safe. Controlled experiences of fear, such as riding a roller coaster or escape rooms, are ever present in storytelling on screens, pages, and experiences we pay for. A 2020 paper, “Playing With Fear: A Field Study in Recreational Horror,” published in Psychological Science by Marc Malmdorf Andersen, Uffe Schjoedt, Henry Price, Fernando E. Rosas, Coltan Scrivner, and Mathias Clasen, studied 110 visitors to test the experience of recreational fear in a haunted house. Across the participants, the findings suggest that fear can remain frightening while still being pleasurable.

Fear, however, is perennial. A basic human emotion. It sits between everyone, and the world around them. And whether one’s fear is rational or not, the underlying approach to death is enough to be a driving factor.

Why would someone willingly read a story when they know salvation isn’t coming?

Contemporary writer Javier Savia states that most of his stories “end as badly as expected, and there are no heroes or heroines to save the day.” Knowingly delving into a story that pulls you from the collar of your shirt, and demands that you experience the very feeling humanity attempts to escape, places the question of how control is truly held while reading. Being able to simply close the book at the end might just be enough to keep relieving that same experience across genres and authors. We have a contradictory relationship with it. We avoid uncontrolled fear while deliberately purchasing controlled versions of it. It could be, after all, that storytelling never eliminates fear, but rather transforms it into something that is happening to us, into something that we can observe.

Cue the true crime documentaries and podcasts as a trending topic. What happens when the stories we’re following actually happened to somebody, and become entertainment?

No one actually clicks on a true crime Netflix documentary to demand full-fledged entertainment like one would with an Adam Sandler comedy film. But both are treated similarly. With snacks laid out and a call to one’s partner when a new one makes its way to your home page, the climactic anticipation as you both lie on the couch is worthy of a suspense film. Podcasts that play while one gets ready for work or applies makeup integrate themselves into daily tasks. Theories online can become a reward at the end of a long day. Is there a real difference when the characters are people? How can we be ethical audiences when the driving force is no different from the literature previously discussed? True crime begins to take the shape of rehearsal, whether we knew about the case beforehand or not. Looking for signs to avoid or behavior to look out for might just be the part of fear we explore and relieve by watching or reading about the latter. In this case, the monster is not fictional anymore, and what happens then? We analyze the motives, reasons, the why. Some let mental health take part of the discourse, while others remain needing a hero, a villain and a victim. But at what point does rehearsal become voyeurism?

This leaves us with public forums as a way to find the universal moral compass we embarked on since the beginning of humanity. Subreddits that transcend platforms are discussed and reposted on every social media platform, and we never fail to become a part of the discourse, even without commenting or adding to the physical conversation. AITA grew in popularity in less time than it takes for a small town to pick apart a family’s conflict discussed in public. We will always need a villain, and now we have ways to make sure we aren’t one ourselves. Fear of being perceived as the villain, the Karen, the asshole, all fit into rehearsal and entertainment. But here, rehearsal becomes judgment. Someone’s problem means we are less of one. Watching tensions unfold and confirming one’s opinion aligns with the comments attached to the story feels rewarding. Watching our fears unfold within someone else’s situation eases our own instantaneously. Until our own experience is presented on our screen and everyone disagrees with how it was handled.

Maybe then, we return to literature. Back to the stories where the author, the character and one’s own moral compass remain free of public scrutiny again. Back to where the monster can be observed from a distance, where fear can be rehearsed without being lived, and where control can be regained simply by closing the book.