Friday, October 4, 2024

Genre Expectations: Writing Gothic Horror and Standard Horror


by A.C. Williams @ACW_Author

I love October. It’s my favorite month, and that’s not just because it’s my birth month. The air just feels different. At least, that’s the case in Kansas. The days start getting cooler as well, and since I work in an upstairs office with no air conditioning, I care about the temperatures!

But October is also heralded for a different reason. October is the spooky season. The time of year where ghosts and ghouls and other creatures of the night emerge from their shadowy realms and take center stage (and that’s just in the grocery stores).

While I don’t personally “celebrate” Halloween (or Carnival if you’re in Europe), I know many people who do. And like it or not, there’s a huge market for scary stories, and no list of genre expectations would be complete without taking a little trip into Horror.

For the easily frightened, don’t worry; it won’t be a long trip. And for those of you who believe you can’t learn anything from the horror genre, let me encourage you to keep reading. You never know what you might be able to use. 

But first, let’s review the genres we’ve talked about so far (the link to each post is at the end of this post): 
  • Romantic Fantasy and Fantasy Romance
  • Fantasy and Space Opera
  • Steampunk and Gaslamp
  • Magical Realism and Contemporary Fantasy
  • Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance
  • Suspense and Thrillers
  • Dystopian and Apocalyptic
  • Classic Mystery and Cozy Mystery

Like any other genre, horror has multiple subgenres, and I’m sure there are variations within each subgenre. But the general intent of Horror as a genre is to scare a reader. It is designed to leave a reader feeling unsettled and uneasy and even a little bit on edge.

If you are wanting to write a horror novel and your readers feel like they are tip-toeing through the tulips whistling a jolly little tune, you’re doing it wrong.

Maybe one day we’ll talk more about the Why behind the different genres, but for now we’re just going to focus on reader expectations, specifically between standard Horror and Gothic Horror.

So, is “gothic” just another word for “classic”? No. Actually, if you want to get into the nitty-gritty, Gothic Literature is a subgenre of Romantic Literature. Gothic-style stories are romantic stories that use dark elements and mysterious settings and sometimes supernatural creatures as plot devices. 

That means, Gothic Horror novels are books designed to scare or unsettle a reader using dark, mysterious aesthetics and supernatural beings. As such, Gothic Horror includes most of the familiar scary classics, such as Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Gothic horror books like these focus strongly on relationship dynamics, character emotions, and richly detailed settings. Gothic horror is going to incorporate the psychological in many ways, not so much the jump scares and physical violence readers expect in modern equivalents.

Standard horror, or modern horror, is more fast-paced and less focused on a character’s emotional or mental stability. It’s more about the moment, a surface perspective of a scary event or a person who is intent on causing your character harm. Often times, some standard horror will include physical danger or violent threats against a character.

Great modern horror examples are books such as It by Stephen King (or just about anything he’s written honestly), The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, and The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. Some of those examples of standard horror use supernatural or paranormal beings. Some of them don’t. 

I great up keeping my distance from horror books simply because I know my imagination, but when I read Frankensteinin college, I was surprised how much I loved it. Frankenstein is a brilliant story with very deep, challenging themes that still resonate with a modern audience. There’s a reason it’s a classic, guys. 

But then I decided to try reading a Stephen King novel, Salem’s Lot. Again, I was shocked at how much I enjoyed it. The deep, meaningful themes were apparent early in the story, and I actually couldn’t put it down. And I wasn’t terrified either. It really read, to me, more like a suspense novel than what I had assumed a horror novel would be like.

So while Horror as a genre is absolutely designed to scare and unsettle a reader, that’s not all it is. Horror, almost like humor, is a tool authors can use to get readers to face themselves. 

If you are interested in more information on how to write horror that’s more than “just a good scare,” one of the best resources I’ve found Christian Horror: On the Compatibility of a Biblical Worldview and the Horror Genre by Mike Duran. 

Even if horror isn’t a genre you ever want to write, learning how masters have used it to accomplish their story goals is something every writer can benefit from. And if you do want to write horror, don’t neglect the importance of a meaningful theme under everything that goes bump in the night.

TWEETABLE


A.C. Williams, also known as Amy C. Williams, is a coffee-drinking, sushi-eating, story-telling nerd who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. Author of more than 20 books, she keeps her fiction readers laughing with wildly imaginative adventures about samurai superheroes, clumsy church secretaries, and goofy malfunctioning androids; her non-fiction readers just laugh at her and the hysterical life experiences she’s survived. If that’s your cup of tea (or coffee), join the fun at www.amycwilliams.com.
Posted by Edie Melson at 1:00 AM
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