Crossing-genre Question

What type of horror elements are you dealing with?

Cranky said:

LoTR comes immediately to mind here

Click to expand...

Really? You mean the undead, like barrow-wights and ring wraiths? That's just dipping a toe into dark fantasy territory. Having vampires, werewolves, or ghosts in your fantasy book doesn't make it horror.

As a genre, "horror" usually involves a dangerous Nasty picking off helpless victims in an escalating spiral of violence. The Nasty could be a demon, a serial killer, a shark or a possessed car - all that matters is that its victims are powerless to stop it, until a hero comes along (and sometimes not even then).

If that's the kind of situation you want to write about, then you could be talking about crossing the genre boundary. Otherwise it's probably just dark fantasy, and there's plenty of that around. I don't read it myself, but I'm sure someone will come along with suggestions

Cranky said:

First off, some blood and gore (not too much, I hope), and I have some peripheral characters that are your classic horror archetypes. I have a werewolf mentioned (which may become a more secondary character), and I'm thinking of a few others as well. Even a malevolent spirit! I'm hesitant to get too much into it and have it not mix well. I'm sure there is a way to make this work, but I think I have a lot more plotting to do, in addition to more reading.

Click to expand...

Oops, simultaneous post.

Yep, sounds like dark fantasy to me. Good luck with that!

Yeah, I agree. It's definitely dark fantasy. My novel is the same.

No problem.

Fantasy is an incredibly diverse genre these day (especially on this side of the Atlantic), but because bestsellers like Robert Jordan and George R R Martin get the most shelf space, folk tend to assume it's still basically all epic stuff about continent-spanning wars between humanoids of different stature

Dark fantasy is much more popular in computer games, truth be told - from D&D game worlds such as Ravenloft to "Devil May Cry" and "Diablo". There are plenty of books based on the Ravenloft games - maybe you should have a look at those...

If you want to read some serious, critically-acclaimed dark fantasy, though, I might recommend China Mieville. Not my cup of tea, but YMMV...

Cranky said:

Yeah, but yours is way cooler, Az.

Click to expand...

Ha! Thanks. But I like your chars. You've got somethin' there. Good luck with it, and let me know if you need a beta when it's done. I'm all over angelic types.

Oh, and double post, sorry. But I've heard dark fantasy is super popular at the moment, so get that manuscript done and out there! My friend is prodding me with her pitchfork to start querying mine, but I gotta fix some stuff first.