What makes horror horror?

Riana M said:

Not sure if you want to change your label to better market you work, or if just interested in other opinions. But here's my five cents.

Thriller - Short rare bursts of violence/action or dark topics.

Suspense - Prolonged dark topics and mood but with very little violence outside the climax.

Horror - Plenty of in-depth violence, dark topics and even supernatural themes.

When mixed with sci-fi Alien comes a bit to mind, but also The Riddick series (Novel: Pitch Black): is for example called: "A fantastic futuristic thriller of a deadly new frontier."

Maybe Sci-fi Suspense would free you from the horror label?

Click to expand...

My own work has little in depth violence, contains mainly supernatural or creature feature themes and is more along the lines of what you class as suspense. But I'm definitely a horror writer, not a suspense writer.

I'm unsure how level of violence plays into it. I've had a recent spate of writing, for want of a better term, 'ghost stories' or 'old style' horror where the primary emotion is dread, rather than terror and the gore level is pretty low. I've been aiming at a similar feeling of gothic darkness to that achieved by Susan Hill but it leaves me wondering whether they really count as horror.

Violence doesn't define a piece as horror, nor does it define the genre itself. Horror is defined, in my own personal opinion, by its ultimate goal, which is to scare the reader. That can be done without blood and gore, for the same reason that it can be done without anything supernatural. As long as the piece (no matter the subject matter, length, antagonist, or sub-genre) frightens, disturbs, or horrifies the reader, it is horror.

Just my two cents

williemeikle said:

My own work has little in depth violence, contains mainly supernatural or creature feature themes and is more along the lines of what you class as suspense. But I'm definitely a horror writer, not a suspense writer.

Click to expand...

I am very sure you can write horror with almost no violence, I just laid out the stereo types, which we often see in movies and pop culture.
And you are defiantly right; the supernatural/creature feature aspects seem to drive the horror genre.

My reason for adding violence and gory images to the category is only because it often happens to go hand in hand with horror. And because the OP mentioned that he had very little violence in his story and therefore didn't find it to be a horror.

Stephen King is your typical horror writer, but when he ventures into stories such as Misery or Dolores Claiborne they get labeled as: Psychological Thrillers.

While Saw and Chainsaw Massacre is rated: Horror

Which is strange, considered that Misery and Saw should be in the same category? (Violent nut chase brutally abuses victim till escape is possible.)

If Misery had been even more explicit with it's violence, it might also had gotten the horror rating?

Only guessing.

Riana M said:

I am very sure you can write horror with almost no violence, I just laid out the stereo types, which we often see in movies and pop culture.
And you are defiantly right; the supernatural/creature feature aspects seem to drive the horror genre.

Click to expand...

Just to note: unless the OP has written a screenplay, I wouldn't depend on figuring out the literary genre by looking at movie genre labels. That goes double for the horror genre. Movie horror and literary horror can be two very different creatures.

virtue_summer said:

Just to note: unless the OP has written a screenplay, I wouldn't depend on figuring out the literary genre by looking at movie genre labels. That goes double for the horror genre. Movie horror and literary horror can be two very different creatures.

Click to expand...

I totally agree. Gore and violence (the typical signs of horror) in movies doesn't scare me, so gore and violence in books sort of makes me roll my eyes.

I'm afraid I won't be much help in this thread (other than agreeing with the above poster) but I don't know what makes horror, horror. I just know it when I see it, which seems like the OP's issue. It sounds like it wasn't meant to be horror, but someone viewed it that way.

I think a lot of times, horror is a matter of opinion. Same with comedy, as some movies listed as comedy don't make me laugh, and some comedians don't make me laugh or feel humor either.

I believe a horror novel is, in large part, creepy, unsettling, and/or causes a feeling of intense dread. It could be psychological and nerve-racking, or it could be outright violent. Of course, for every horror novel there will most likely be people who don't think it's scary at all.

Even though it might lack blood-fountains, if your story / characters / twists sing of Evil (meaning harm for no particular/understandable or conquerable reason) that would probably make me tag it as horror.

Riana M said:

And you are defiantly right

Click to expand...

I'm defiant in almost everything I do.

I guess to me, apart from tone, suspense is proactive, where horror is reactive. Horror relies on the bad guy starting with the upper hand and the hero/ine struggling to survive. Suspense has the hero/ine starting on equal footing with the villain and then working to discover the villain. That's why Alien is horror and Silence of the Lambs is thriller/suspense.

JMHO, of course...

Cathy C said:

Horror relies on the bad guy starting with the upper hand and the hero/ine struggling to survive.

Click to expand...

That's a good way to put it!

Cathy C said:

Horror relies on the bad guy starting with the upper hand and the hero/ine struggling to survive. Suspense has the hero/ine starting on equal footing with the villain and then working to discover the villain.

Click to expand...

That's a big part of it. Another aspect is that in suspense/thriller you expect the hero to survive and even triumph. In horror, it's much more in doubt.

The ur-text of American horror (IMHO) is Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.