Horror noob wants to know what the community is looking for.

[moo1988]

Okay, so currently I am concocting source material for a series I am working on and it currently best fits the supernatural horror genre, however my personal knowledge on the genre pretty much amounts to knowing that Twilight sucks. If some people would be so kind into showing me what you guys are looking for. Thank-you

 

[thatollie]

Read a lot of horror novels, and then you'll know.

 

[Demonomania]

What I don't understand is the fact that you feel it fits into the genre but all you know of it is some hack story that you don't like? I think you're going to have to be a little more specific in what you would like to know from people and also as thatollie said, do some research!

 

[Interference]

Agreed.

It's such a tricky genre - one person's horror is another's bad comedy.

Check out Poe and Lovecraft, perhaps, rather than Wes Craven or Clive Barker. And King.

Horror is so difficult (imho, of course). Atmosphere is everything, tension is everything else, shock and surprise are just minor players if the job is being done right.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Stop being a noob. Study your chosen genre, see if you really understand it, like it, want to contribute to it. Reading is the single most important training for writing, and if you want to try your hand at what happens to be a difficult genre for which several excellent writers have established very high standards over the last few centuries, you need to do your homework.

 

[moo1988]

What I don't understand is the fact that you feel it fits into the genre but all you know of it is some hack story that you don't like? I think you're going to have to be a little more specific in what you would like to know from people and also as thatollie said, do some research!

Well, I did say it best fits it, I am not saying I know it fits. The reason why I am asking is because I am researching, said making source material not the series itself yet. I also should enforce I don't have much personal knowledge of something that was definably horror, in that I haven't really read many books that are horror but looked at history of, but I am working on it. Please understand I can read all I want in it but I need confirmation of people I am trying to hook for it to really do anything. It really sort of stands in the religious area but I believe uses psychological horror to demonstrates perversions of certain philosophies that exist in many elements of the institutions we live in.

 

[Nesacat]

Am just going to add my voice to all that has been said. I feel that you are as good a writer as you are a reader and if Twilight is what you are going on then you certainly have a very long way to go.

Forget about the series for now and just get down to reading. You'll need to work out if this is something you love enough in the first place and you'll need to understand what 'horror' means to you personally.

We can each of us tell you what 'horror' means to us as individuals but you'll probably realise very quickly that there's no real consensus. You'll might be able to use what is said here as a basic gauge or guide but it's not a hard and fast guideline you can bank on.

I'll go with just reading as much as possible for now and then narrowing down my selections as I figured out what I cared not and what I did not want to ever read again.

 

[Interference]

.... It really sort of stands in the religious area but I believe uses psychological horror to demonstrates perversions of certain philosophies that exist in many elements of the institutions we live in.

I noticed you intimated that before ("supernatural horror" struck something chord-like, I suspect) and, apart from everything else said here (which has been, perhaps, exactly the kind of advice you sought, rather than what you thought you'd get) the thought that struck me then was that you should just write the darned story and let it find its own genre. If it becomes "horror" (by whatever definition your researches turn up) so mote it be

I think, and I doubt I'm alone in this (I've never been called exactly "original"), that the need to tell the story ought to be greater than the need to find out what pigeon hole people are going to stuff it into.

You get change from two cents for that one

 

[Nesacat]

Yes exactly ... just get the story out of your system and let it find a home. Besides, it might be easier to figure things out once it's been written. And yes, that is a whole lot more important than trying to shove it in any particular slot when it's not even out of your head and on paper yet; if for no other reason than the fact that pigeon-holing it might just push it into places it does not want to go.

 

[biodroid]

Spaceships with psycho aliens

 

[Lemmy]

I'm a big fan of horror, but personally I think we care too much about putting something in a genre. You should think outside the box. If we go to the movies, think about Nightmare on Elm Street. Back when the first one was released, it was really scary. We had never seen anything quite like it, so we weren't prepared for it. The same goes for Friday 13th. Forget about Jason, the endless sequels and all that. The first one is in many ways terrifying, and especially back then. It would be very easy to make bad sequels for both Elm Street and Friday 13th, and true, they quickly stopped being scary. Elm Street 3? Great movie, but we've seen it all before. Friday 13th part 4? Jason's back. Again.

But the fun thing is they didn't have to be scary any more. Freddy and Jason both became icons, so instead of being scared of them, they more or less became the fan-heroes. They are still the villains in the movies, but for the fans, they are the heroes. Friday 13th was supposed to end with the fourth (trivia: Jason was actually alive until the finale in part 4, and didn't rise from the grave until nr 6), but fans demanded his return. And what about Freddy vs Jason? The story doesn't make sense at all, but the fans demanded the movie anyway simply because they wanted their two icons to clash.

The latest books I've read are Nightmare on Elm Street: Dreamspawn and Friday 13th: Church of the Divine Psychopat, and both are brilliant. I dare say they are better than most of the movies, even. But they are not scary anymore. They have somehow trancended the whole horror genre and become something else. It's not comedy, horror, thrillers, drama, sci-fi or anything like that. I don't think they even have a genre. They just... don't need them. It's Freddy and Jason. What else do you need?

And that's the point. What you should do is focus on writing the best story possible. It doesn't matter what genre it's in. If it's scary, put it in horror. If it's not, put it in a different genre. As long as the story is good, people will want to read it.

 

[J Riff]

Also, a good percentage of SFF falls under the horror aegis. Many, many stories targetting the institutions and philosophies you refer to.

 

[thatollie]

Stop being a noob. Study your chosen genre, see if you really understand it, like it, want to contribute to it. Reading is the single most important training for writing, and if you want to try your hand at what happens to be a difficult genre for which several excellent writers have established very high standards over the last few centuries, you need to do your homework.

I would argue that point with you, but this is not a thread for a mostly semantic debate.

Noob, I'm going to recommend an exercise for you.

Get a hold of the Prime Evil Anthology edited by Douglas Winter. Read through it, and then list the stories from your favourite to least favourite. That should give you some ideas of writers to look into.