An Introduction to . . .Horror

To be honest, I don't read or watch horror. I don't like being scared, or seeing lots of blood and gore. But I do know that it's a large genre that many people do enjoy, so I wanted to add it to my genre breakdown repritoir. That being said, you can thank my sister, Bethany for writing today's post. You can check out her blog here, where she has lots of cool writing ideas of her own. She also just released a werewolf short story if you're into scary stories.

Genre: Horror

The horror genre has but one rule: It has to scare you. Anything from a brief unsettling story with a twist ending to a seven-hundred-page King novel fall under this category, and since the possibilities are essentially endless, the horror genre covers a huge range of stories.

Recently, with surprisingly well-told stories like A Quiet Place and Us, horror is becoming increasingly more popular. Depending on your fear threshold, you may love the horror genre or hate it, but more and more people are reading and watching into this genre lately, and I for one love a good scare. 

Sub-genres

• Slasher. A common style in movies. Y'know, the really violent ones, normally with a serial killer.

• Creepypasta. A horror short story, normally with a twist ending.

• Psychological. Another love/hate thing. Psychological horror really messes with your head, and for that reason some people really don't like this sub-genre, but I love these!

• Supernatural. Horror involving supernatural elements like werewolves or demons.

• Action-horror. Action and horror combined. Things like Jurassic Park fall under this category since it's mostly action and only a little bit of horror.

• Suspense. Horror combined with suspense, kind of like a thriller. Lots of tension.

Tropes

• Monsters, murderers, disease, and/or zombies. Horror is so versatile that your villain could be anything. . . or nothing. Have you ever seen that one episode of Doctor Who titled Listen?

• A creepy environment. A lot of things in horror come down to the environment. The park in Jurassic Park, the Other House in Coraline, or any horror story involving a hotel, insane asylum, or hospital.

• Characters with backstories. Welcome to the Dark House had a lot of issues, but one thing that made it interesting was the backstories. All of them had gotten into the Dark House theme park by submitting a short story written about their worst nightmare. So, when their worst nightmares were turned into theme park rides designed to kill them, the fear became personal. That's what made it so scary.

• Villain motivation. What's the point in doing it if you don't know the villain's reasoning behind his murders? Even if it's only because he's stark raving mad, I'd like to know the reasoning.

• Creepy elements. A visual or audible clue of when the monster is coming? Lights turning off and on at random intervals? Just a dash of blood? Creepy elements like these can be used to up the chill factor and prep for jumpscares.

Cliches

• Abandoning good storytelling for gore. Too many horror books forget about telling a good story just so that they can have another battle scene. Boring! Unless I'm enjoying the story and understand the characters to go with the scare, I get bored. I really do.

• It's an alien! Surprise surprise, the writers couldn't figure out an explanation for the inhuman abilities of their monster, so it's an alien! Unless we were talking about aliens earlier in the story, this normally shatters the suspension of disbelief. Plus, aliens are overdone. I like the ones better where it's actually demonic possession, because that promises a bigger boss battle with the unfettered demon later. Exciting!

• It's not actually dead. We kill the monster(normally in a way that wouldn't actually work, but that's a different subject), and when the sequel comes out, it turns out it wasn't actually dead! Why are we even bothering anymore if we just know it's going to come back? Blow it up already!

• The insane victim. This comes back to the thing about good story telling. The character we're supposed to be most attached to- the main character- is just a little delicate in the head. They scare easily, they have bad dreams, they stare off into the distance whispering, “It's back.” I find it hard relate to and therefore get attached to an insane character, plus they just look weak and would actually stand no chance of beating the monster.

Example Books

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Fear Street novels by R.L. Stein

The Island of Doctor Mareau by H.G. Wells

Asylum by Madeleine Roux

The Agony House by Cherie Priest

Lockwood and Co. by Jonathan Stroud

All he Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn

Thank you again to Bethany for writing this for me, since I know nothing about horror. If you'd like to read more of this series, just head to the writing page at the top of the blog!

Do you like horror books? Have you ever written one? Tell me in the comments.

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