Horror / Comedy

You might have a dark/humor piece. That's what I finally settled on with mine.

I don't do both, but then that's because I find comedy a lot harder to write than horror (then again, I'm sort of surprised to find myself having written horror at all, lol). If you can do both, that's fantastic.

And it can totally be both. I just read John Dies at the End which was really entertaining.

In my opinion, the conflation of horror and humor is inevitable. The best definition of comedy I've ever heard is "the unexpected juxtaposition of incongruities". Two things that don't belong together--the aristocrat and the cream pie--are suddenly thrust together without warning. Hilarity ensues.

Likewise, most horror involves the intrusion of things that should not be into the ordinary world. The most primal example of this is probably dead people who insist on getting up and walk around. Terror ensues.

I believe that any time you break your audience's expectations--when the cherubic little girl reveals a mouth full of fangs, when the reflection in the mirror moves on its own, when Talky Tina announces she doesn't like you--you are equally likely to elicit either emotion. Ideally, you're probably going to get a mixture of the two.

Go to any horror movie, and I'll wager you'll hear as many laughs as screams. They're both mechanisms to break tension, after all.

Of course it can be both. I can't think of any written examples right now, but Shawn of the Dead, Army of Darkness, Black Sheep, Return of the Living Dead, the original Fright Night and Lost Boys--horror and comedy have been rubbing shoulders for decades, and doing it rather well.

Where's the chihuahua? He can you all kinds of things about why and how horror and comedy work so well together, including his own books.

How many times have you laughed at something you know you shouldn't have? I do it all the time. I tell jokes only certain people laugh at and that's okay.

The HWA a couple years back put out an anthology of humorous horror stories and it wasn't bad. I laughed at a couple of them.

Write what you want and go from there.

My icky bug stories are humorous horror. Always have been. Not out and out comedy, but humorous.

Rhoda Nightingale said:

Where's the chihuahua? He can you all kinds of things about why and how horror and comedy work so well together, including his own books.

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Rhoda's probably expeciting to hear my normal humor/horror spiel here--about how horror and humor are alike in that they both sneak up behind you. The only difference is that humor hits you in the face with a banana cream pie while horror chews your neck off. But I'm not gonna say it.

Oh. Wait....

Yeah, I'm a big believer in using both and it's terribly difficult for me to write horror without including at least some humor. The problem is that not every publisher wants to see that, so use humor cautiously when planning to submit to a pub that doesn't indicate an interest in dark humor.

CircusOfCrows said:

Does anyone else here work comedy into their horror stories? Aside from romance, does anyone else work in other genres into their horror?

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Sure. Just counting horror stories I've sold I've mixed in humor, SF, and crime/noir.

If you look into the unsold stuff there's Western, coming-of-age, and literary elements. And many cases where the story is another genre primarily with horror elements mixed in.

Mixing genres is a lot more accepted in short fiction, but it's certainly not taboo in novels. The road may be a bit tougher, but it's a tall mountain to begin with. Who cares if it's 10,000 ft or 10,100 ft. Write what you like.

Of course horror and humour can co-exist, the key is to know when is too much and what direction you want your story to lean. Is it a dark humour piece, as was mentioned, or is it a traditional horror?

Both my novels have humour in them. I use it as a break from the suspense. not too much and not over the top; subtle.

Go for it. That's what first drafts are for.