Miller's Law, Shards of Glass, and Psychological Horror

“The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing - or need be nothing - but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status.”

-Arthur Miller

In the above quote, Arthur Miller (author of Death of a Salesman) provides a succinct starting point for creating a protagonist. Any other traits will vary from story to story, but the hero always possesses an innate sense of dignity and takes action when they believe this dignity is violated. In my notes I call this Miller’s Law, and it has served me well.

Observe the careful wording: “what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status.” The hero’s self-image is tangled with something Blake Snyder calls their shard of glass: a misguided worldview that harms the hero from within.

Let’s look at, say, Finding Nemo for an example. It’s tempting to say that Marlin’s shard of glass is the violent loss of his wife and other children, but trauma is a backstory, not a motivation. What’s actually wrong with Marlin on Nemo’s first day of school? He’s overbearing and neurotic. He suppresses his son’s curiosity and excitement in the name of safety. Marlin’s mistaken belief is that the world is cruel and dangerous and the best thing to do is withdraw as much as possible. Lo and behold, Dad’s excessive control is exactly what drives Nemo into the diver’s net. Marlin manifests his own worst nightmare.

And manifesting nightmares is what horror is all about, baby!

I sometimes stumble across a certain debate online: which is scarier, supernatural or psychological horror? In this context, “supernatural” includes scientifically unattested phenomena like occult magic, ghosts, demons, monsters, aliens, etc. So-called psychological horror, then, takes no liberties with the observable world as we know it. Its demons are right there in the human psyche - paranoia, grief, guilt, obsession, envy, and so on.

For reasons I struggle to articulate, it grinds my gears when someone claims “I’m only scared by things that could happen to me in real life” as a way to position psychological horror as superior to the supernatural. This is akin to dinging a sci-fi movie for its pyrotechnic explosions in the oxygen-less vacuum of space. What exactly did you want from this fictional story that you didn’t get? Such criteria are especially incomprehensible because…

If it’s any good, all horror is psychological horror.

A ghost/demon/monster isn’t scary merely because its eyes are black and its mouth opens wider than one might expect. In accordance with Miller’s Law, a ghost is merely an affront-to-dignity for the protagonist. The shard of glass remains tied with the hero’s internal torment. The horrific weight of the antagonist depends entirely on the psychological context. Places aren’t haunted; people are.

Therefore if your supernatural phenomenon doesn't grab the protagonist's shard of glass and twist it, the story won’t resonate. The audience may feel unsettled in the theater but they won’t lose any sleep that night. I want my audience to lose sleep. Don’t you?

(Bonus Vitriol: Incidentally this is why I tend to be disappointed by slasher films - the victims are often punished for something the writers have moral hangups about, like casual sex or smoking weed. The kids themselves certainly have no qualms. Even the final girl has only a moral objection rather than a true shard of glass. The audience might gain some sleep. There are good slashers out there, but it’s one of my least favorite subgenres for this reason.)