Horror
Hi, and sorry for yet another hiatus. I'm in the process of selling my house and buying another one, and things are crazy.
Anyway, I wanted to write a little bit about horror today. I think of all the genre fiction out there, horror is the most misunderstood. Let me explain.
A couple weeks ago, I was with my in-laws at a family reunion. My sister-in-law was chatting with one of her sisters, saying "I think all horror writers are sick people. They should all be locked up." I just looked at her, and said, "You know I'm standing right here." And she kept on about how awful the entire horror genre is and how sick the people were that came up with the stories and situations. It made me want to bash my head in with the door.
Now, I want to break "horror" into a few separate categories.
Slashers
What most people think of as horror nowadays. People think of '80s and '90s movies like Child's Play, Scream, Friday the 13th, and Halloween as representatives of the entire horror genre. More recently, they think of the Saw franchise, since it's so ingrained in the zeitgeist.
Oy. Let me be clear. I. Don't. Like. Slashers. There are a lot of tropes that surround this category—e.g., drunk/stoned/horny teens in a haunted house/forest, a serial killer pops up and the teens break up the group. The killer picks them off slowly. There's some variation on the theme, but this is the norm from my experience.
Monsters/Supernatural
This is where things start getting fun. Having a monster in a story doesn't immediately make it a horror story—it could just mean you've got a supernatural power that's a lot more powerful than your protagonist. Sure, it can be scary. And it should be. This is where things like Stranger Things falls. You've got a monster coming after the MCs, and they have to deal with it by rising to the occasion.
Psychological
This is the kind of thing that messes with your mind. The game Doki Doki Literature Club is one of these, and I think Poe's The Telltale Heart is, too. This pushes your mind out of its comfort zone and forces you to consider things as they could possibly be, but in a frightening way. Again, let's take Stranger Things as an example: a child disappears, but things start happening that hint that he's not gone. His mom is in the middle of a psychological horror. What's happening? She doesn't know, and neither does the audience. That brings us to the fourth category.
Existential
To me, existential horror is something that makes you fear something about life itself. Is this person going to survive? Will they die? Or will something much worse happen to them? Will they turn into a monster themselves? In Stranger Things, things go from a psychological terror to an existential horror when we realize that certain situations aren't what they seem on the surface and that things are much worse than we originally imagined.
Other good examples of existential horror include a lot of stories by H.P. Lovecraft. When you begin to question not only the purpose of life, but whether life even has a purpose, you're living in the existential sphere.
Horror is so much more than just murderers cutting up corpses in the basement. If that's what I wanted, I'd read true crime novels about Jack the Ripper or H.H. Holmes. But if I want a good scare that'll thrill me enough to keep reading until late in the night, I'll pick up I am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells or Shutter by Courtney Alameda. Those are the kind of fears nightmares are made of.
And speaking of nightmares, use them. They make great fodder for horrific short stories or the beginnings of a novel.
Thanks for wreading!
Jeff
Anyway, I wanted to write a little bit about horror today. I think of all the genre fiction out there, horror is the most misunderstood. Let me explain.
A couple weeks ago, I was with my in-laws at a family reunion. My sister-in-law was chatting with one of her sisters, saying "I think all horror writers are sick people. They should all be locked up." I just looked at her, and said, "You know I'm standing right here." And she kept on about how awful the entire horror genre is and how sick the people were that came up with the stories and situations. It made me want to bash my head in with the door.
Now, I want to break "horror" into a few separate categories.
Slashers
What most people think of as horror nowadays. People think of '80s and '90s movies like Child's Play, Scream, Friday the 13th, and Halloween as representatives of the entire horror genre. More recently, they think of the Saw franchise, since it's so ingrained in the zeitgeist.
Oy. Let me be clear. I. Don't. Like. Slashers. There are a lot of tropes that surround this category—e.g., drunk/stoned/horny teens in a haunted house/forest, a serial killer pops up and the teens break up the group. The killer picks them off slowly. There's some variation on the theme, but this is the norm from my experience.
Monsters/Supernatural
This is where things start getting fun. Having a monster in a story doesn't immediately make it a horror story—it could just mean you've got a supernatural power that's a lot more powerful than your protagonist. Sure, it can be scary. And it should be. This is where things like Stranger Things falls. You've got a monster coming after the MCs, and they have to deal with it by rising to the occasion.
Psychological
This is the kind of thing that messes with your mind. The game Doki Doki Literature Club is one of these, and I think Poe's The Telltale Heart is, too. This pushes your mind out of its comfort zone and forces you to consider things as they could possibly be, but in a frightening way. Again, let's take Stranger Things as an example: a child disappears, but things start happening that hint that he's not gone. His mom is in the middle of a psychological horror. What's happening? She doesn't know, and neither does the audience. That brings us to the fourth category.
Existential
To me, existential horror is something that makes you fear something about life itself. Is this person going to survive? Will they die? Or will something much worse happen to them? Will they turn into a monster themselves? In Stranger Things, things go from a psychological terror to an existential horror when we realize that certain situations aren't what they seem on the surface and that things are much worse than we originally imagined.
Other good examples of existential horror include a lot of stories by H.P. Lovecraft. When you begin to question not only the purpose of life, but whether life even has a purpose, you're living in the existential sphere.
Horror is so much more than just murderers cutting up corpses in the basement. If that's what I wanted, I'd read true crime novels about Jack the Ripper or H.H. Holmes. But if I want a good scare that'll thrill me enough to keep reading until late in the night, I'll pick up I am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells or Shutter by Courtney Alameda. Those are the kind of fears nightmares are made of.
And speaking of nightmares, use them. They make great fodder for horrific short stories or the beginnings of a novel.
Thanks for wreading!
Jeff
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