What does creepypasta do for the value of YA horror?

giraffes 33

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For those of you who don't know what creepypasta are, they're online horror pieces (often short or novelette length, but not always) particularly popular amongst preteens and teenagers. The most famous creepypasta are based around the villains, with the most recognizable ones even outside the community being Slenderman and Jeff the Killer.

One of the stories I lost in the hard drive watering incident of November was a creepypasta intended to be around novel length. Having since gotten into more professional writing, I learned that YA horror is apparently a difficult sell...which does not fit the sheer number of creepypasta-obsessed people I know.

Then I realized the 10-15 year olds who mostly read and write creepypasta aren't necessarily in control of the media they buy yet. Creepypasta as a general rule is filled with gore and violence, which YA horror shies away from more often than it addresses. More to the point, creepypasta is free. You can go on any one of twenty given sites dedicated to it and find the best things they were submitted, or head to Deviantart and drown in Sturgeon's Law in action. If people latch onto a creepypasta villain, he (almost always he) will become super famous in the community and possibly outside of it, and nobody will be able to move for art and self-insert shipping fanfiction for a solid six months. If the average creepypasta reader had to ask her parents to buy a book with the same content for her, she'd probably get rejected.

With free, gory, made-by-the-community-for-the-community YA horror available everywhere, does commercial YA horror have a chance?
 

cornflake

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For those of you who don't know what creepypasta are, they're online horror pieces (often short or novelette length, but not always) particularly popular amongst preteens and teenagers. The most famous creepypasta are based around the villains, with the most recognizable ones even outside the community being Slenderman and Jeff the Killer.

One of the stories I lost in the hard drive watering incident of November was a creepypasta intended to be around novel length. Having since gotten into more professional writing, I learned that YA horror is apparently a difficult sell...which does not fit the sheer number of creepypasta-obsessed people I know.

Then I realized the 10-15 year olds who mostly read and write creepypasta aren't necessarily in control of the media they buy yet. Creepypasta as a general rule is filled with gore and violence, which YA horror shies away from more often than it addresses. More to the point, creepypasta is free. You can go on any one of twenty given sites dedicated to it and find the best things they were submitted, or head to Deviantart and drown in Sturgeon's Law in action. If people latch onto a creepypasta villain, he (almost always he) will become super famous in the community and possibly outside of it, and nobody will be able to move for art and self-insert shipping fanfiction for a solid six months. If the average creepypasta reader had to ask her parents to buy a book with the same content for her, she'd probably get rejected.

With free, gory, made-by-the-community-for-the-community YA horror available everywhere, does commercial YA horror have a chance?

I only know what creepypasta is because of the Slenderman stabbing.

Your sig suggests you're on Wattpad - does the existence of free fiction make commercial not stand a chance?

I take issue with your premise. I know a fair number of teenagers, and was one. I know no kids YA-type age who aren't in control of the printed media they choose to consume (aside from school-mandated books), have to get permission to read books, or who don't get books when they ask.
 

giraffes 33

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Wattpad has a lot of fanfiction, which requires changing the names to publish legally. Also, I know from both there and pre-Wattpad experiences with fanfiction and free original fiction writers that there are a lot of people who won't even pay for YA romance because they can read it free, and that's far less niche than YA horror.

I know a lot of people YA-type age who aren't in control of paying for their own media. I'm almost an adult and don't have that control.
 

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I'm with Cornflake. I was raised in a crazy sheltered Christian home. I was not allowed to watch much on the tv, I as homeschooled, pop culture was a foreign concept, my clothes had to be approved by both parents and I was rarely allowed to spend time with friends, but my parents never said a single thing about what I read.

I would go to the library and pick up whatever books I wanted, and they never batted an eyelash. Maybe my parents were odd in that culture for encouraging us to read - read a lot and read anything that we could get our hands on- but once I eventually went to public school, none of my friends' literature was censored either.
 
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cornflake

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Wattpad has a lot of fanfiction, which requires changing the names to publish legally. Also, I know from both there and pre-Wattpad experiences with fanfiction and free original fiction writers that there are a lot of people who won't even pay for YA romance because they can read it free, and that's far less niche than YA horror.

I know a lot of people YA-type age who aren't in control of paying for their own media. I'm almost an adult and don't have that control.

I didn't say they all paid for it themselves - few do. I said they're in charge of it. I've discussed books with a lot of teens and they sometimes want to read stuff I recommend and either say like, 'I'm buying books on Amazon!' or 'I want to/will stop at Barnes & Crap - I need some books'

I've heard some parents object, and some kids have to ask, but that's been about money or excessive buying - most parents I know are more than keen for their kids to read. Even the ones who aren't on board with spending will say like 'see if you can borrow it and read it on my/your kindle/get it from a friend or the library' or whatever. I don't recall seeing a teen asked even what something was about except because the parent was interested.
 

cornflake

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I'm with Cornflake. I was raised in a crazy sheltered Christian home. I was not allowed to watch much on the tv, I as homeschooled, pop culture was a foreign concept, my clothes had to be approved by both parents and I was rarely allowed to spend time with friends, but my parents never said a single thing about what I read.

I would go to the library and pick up whatever books I wanted, and they never batted an eyelash. Maybe my parents were odd in that culture for encouraging us to read - read a lot and read anything that we could get our hands on- but once I eventually went to public school, none of my friends' literature was censored either.

Yeah - I was raised very differently from this, but I knew kids, and know kids now, who have parents not quite so blase, and none I've met was censoring literature for teens/preteens. Even MG it's more like 'you sure you want to read that/are going to read that' than 'no, you cannot read that,' and I do know some ppl who buy books for their MG-aged kid, but most pick their own out, from the library or the bookstore.

Also, as to the 'they get it free so why pay' thing - a lot of people steal music. itunes still makes a shitload, as do other pay services, as does Netflix, etc.
 
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Sage

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I suspect the crux of your question is:

does commercial YA horror have a chance?

And the answer is yes. Is it super-hot? I don't know, but there was a decent table of horror/creepy YA in B&N in October, and more on the shelves. Even Pike and Stine are coming back. The demand may go up. Or it may trail off. The answer is, write the book you want to write and don't worry about how hard a genre may be (unless it's DEAD, which basically only means dystopia, and even then, write the book you want to write).
 

lenore_x

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I don't understand economics that well, but isn't there a school of thought that says getting stuff for free increases the demand for it? And therefore people are more willing to pay, so long as it's a good value.

I'm not sure there's as much connection as you think, though. The usual content of creepypasta wouldn't necessarily work in novel form. It uses bite-sized bits of weirdness or gore to unsettle, and then it's over -- short and sweet. A lot of creepypastas become trite and dull when writers try to extend them too long or when fans take it and run with it. (And then, there was that stabbing...)

Full disclosure that I find quality creepypastas to be few and far between, so maybe I'm out of touch. :p
 

hester

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I loved horror as a teen (still do) and I believe there's a fairly strong demand for commercial YA horror ("The Creeping," which is on my list of to-reads, comes to mind). I don't know how it stacks up to other genres in terms of marketability, but good scares never seem to go out of style :).
 

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I know that YA horror exists, yet I've heard there's a certain bias in the category against covers that scream "horror," which suggests that they're perceived not to attract the target market.

This reminds me of an article I read several years ago about Hollywood marketing quadrants. Back then, anyway, the quadrant that includes teen girls was known to reject gory or gruesome horror. However, PG-13 scares were marketable to that group. It seems like the publishing industry may be following a similar principle: you can sell creepiness in YA, where the audience is mostly female, but not gore.

So my question would be: Are a significant percentage of creepypasta readers female? And do they like the gory stories? That might suggest a generational shift, if so. (There did seem to be some teenagers watching Hannibal, a show I don't dare to recommend to my adult friends because of the gore level. I wonder if the replacement of practical effects with CGI could be making people less squeamish about fictional gore.)

Of course, a book/movie can be terrifying without being gory. But gore seems to be a dividing line.
 

giraffes 33

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So my question would be: Are a significant percentage of creepypasta readers female? And do they like the gory stories? That might suggest a generational shift, if so.

I'd say about 60% of creepypasta fans are female. And a sizable chunk would need their parents to accompany them to a PG-13 feature. (In both the stabbing incidents -- there were two, both in the Midwest, though the Slenderman stabbing attracted an order of magnitude more attention -- the attackers were twelve-year-old girls. Twelve-year-old girls are the stereotypical creepypasta fans and were long before anyone lured their friend into a forest in Wisconsin.)

I was one of those teenagers watching Hannibal. I also had a lot of friends at the time running full-blown gore blogs, real gore, on Tumblr. Most of the people I know within a few years of my age really aren't phased by gore, which seems to be at least in part a 'growing up on the internet' thing.
 

cornflake

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I dunno, I used to love slasher flicks in h.s. and so did a bunch of my friends. I don't know that gore is that much worse; I think it's more mainstream maybe, in that tv has loosened up.
 

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As a writer of Creepypasta(though unpublished to the internet at the moment as my modest collection of creepy shorts needs to be proofread/BETAed before I post it up since I'm picky like that) I feel obligated to chime in. While I am no expert on economics, I do know creepypasta and I can safely say that while there is crossover with YA horror they do not fill the same niche'.

Thing is, the typical creepypasta is very short. So short that it could never be sold as a standalone book or even novella. While you can have characters with many stories such a Slenderman, the stories often become contradictory due to the fact they usually are written by different people. Creepypastas are quick reads; you don't have to spend the time with them that you would spend on a novel. This is where YA horror and creepypasta differ; one can be consumed quickly while the other takes a fair time to enjoy...and both models carry advantages and disadvantages. I think that's why gore "doesn't work"
as well in ya horror; "shock scares" are great in a short burst creepypasta format but in a ya novel they are more likely to their potency.


Do I think Creepypasta hurts YA horror sales? Perhaps...however, it only hurts sales by taking away potential readers rather than stealing away established members of the YA lit readership. Some people want a longer horror story while others may like one, but don't nessicarily realize it; the former group will still read YA horror despite creepypasta existing while the latter will be -content- with the quick reads of creepypasta websites. However, at the same time, a fair portion of that second group likely aren't avid consumers of YA lit period, so it 's not so much taking away YA horror readers as it is stoping more people from becoming new readers of YA horror...at least potentially. Honestly, I don't think it's had much effect period as YA horror is actually one of the two most marketable spec-fic genres as in YA from what I have heard. (The other being fantasy). So while it may not be as big as YA Fantasy, it's still in better shape then, say, YA sci-fi.....even with the existence of creepypasta.
 
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Whiskey_Black

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in 8th grade I discovered Christopher Pike and to this day he's still my main inspiration for writing. I was raised indie fundie southern baptist but I had control over what I read. My mom knew exactly what his books were about, even the abortion one, and allowed me to not only read them but encouraged me by giving them as Christmas and B-day gifts. She asked me once why I liked him over other authors like R.L. Stine and I told her it was because Pike pulled no punches with this horror, it was creepy and gory. R.L. Stine's YA horror was decaf compared to Pike's espresso shots....and still is from what I know. I read A LOT of YA horror throughout high school, and beyond and to this day no one has been able to touch Pike.

The last book that I read that came close to reminding me of Pike's work was called Survive The Night. It was just good ole' teenage terror. Nothing life changing but still a fun, quick read.
I'm also about to start reading Daughter's Unto Devils which seems extremely promising.

I think there is absolutely still a huge market for YA horror. They're re-released many of Pike's and L.J Smith's books, and even the Buffy ones.

(If anyone knows of any newer author's akin to Pike PLEASE let me know! I'd love to check them out)
 

Princess Amps

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I've dabbled a bit with creepypasta, but thing is, they are free to read for a reason. Most of them are meh with a few that are amazing. Also they are written as if they are a true story, while normal horror fiction is more of a narrative. It could serve as a segway into horror lit, because after a while, creepypasta gets old. Nowadays, I only read one if someone reccomends it. Candle Cove to this day is my favorite.