Are we a dying breed?

Horror isn't nearly as popular today as it was in the 80s and 90s. I remember shopping my novel Malice around and all the agents and publishing houses kept saying "horror is a tough sell." And yet, go to Amazon today and there are tons of new authors publishing good horror. You gotta sift through some crap, but that's always been true of the genre.

I don't think were a dying breed but I do like my horror stories short and scary.

Of course we are a dying breed.

We all are.

Hurtling blindly through the dark toward the Abyss, never knowing when our time is up, desperately trying to find meaning in the fickle spark of our existence.

That is the beauty of life

On a more serious note - no, we are not.

In Denmark we had a horror drought of 10-15 years where nothing really happened on the Danish scene.

Then, five years ago, suddenly a new influx of horror writers appeared (including me) and now the genre is going full steam ahead here.

I'm a co-founder of the Danish Horror Society - a society for Danish horror authors trying to defend the notion that horror is for adults.

We even have a yearly award for the best Danish horror published aimed at an adult audience.

See - overhere any horror published goes to the children section of the library unless there are very, very valid reasons it should not.

Of my four horror novels only one made it to the adult section - a tale of some strange disturbances at a retirement home, which was also a strong comment on our treatment of the elderly.

That made the cut.

The rest goes to the children/YA parts, even though I wrote all of them to adults.

But no - as everyone else seems to agree - we will rise again. That is, after all, our Modus Operandi

WormHeart

WormHeart said:

See - overhere any horror published goes to the children section of the library unless there are very, very valid reasons it should not.

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This makes me happy for some strange reason - giving the next generation an appreciation of horror seems a smart idea. Can't imagine other countries opting in to that idea though.

Speaking of the lack of fright in recent movies...

It seems they are getting blinded by the digital possibilities and are forgetting the tools of the trade.

Take Silent Hill Revelation 3D for instance.

Very nice visuals, but no fear. None. They are showing off everything, trying to dazzle us with effects, but fear does not join the party, when everything is served.

Just take the spider-mannequin thingy - very, very cool monster, but we see everything right away. Nothing is hidden in the shadows to activate the imagination.

*sigh*

And of course the story is a mess.

TRAILER


On the other hand Descent showed incredible talent in the fear-making.

WormHeart

PS: I agree that the first Resident Evil was all kinds of awesome. The rest are just glorified music videos.

BigWords said:

This makes me happy for some strange reason - giving the next generation an appreciation of horror seems a smart idea. Can't imagine other countries opting in to that idea though.

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Yes and no. It is good that the new generations are learning the genre, but if you write to adults, you are probably not connecting with the youth and your target audience miss the title.

I'm currently in the middle of a project where my MC is in his late thirties, lives in a dysfunctional relationship and struggle with the estrangement of his children who are going into puberty.

It's good, (Promise! ) but I dont see youth connecting with the MC in any way. If that goes to the YA section, I dont know how I will ever get away from there

WormHeart

WormHeart said:

Take Silent Hill Revelation 3D for instance.

Very nice visuals, but no fear. None. They are showing off everything, trying to dazzle us with effects, but fear does not join the party, when everything is served.

Just take the spider-mannequin thingy - very, very cool monster, but we see everything right away. Nothing is hidden in the shadows to activate the imagination.

Click to expand...

The problem with Revelation isn't that it's not scary--it's that the screenwriter tried to retcon all the game mythology and character arcs that the filmmakers for the first one wrote out. Which makes for a lot of confusing "fan service" moments for the gamer crowd (the spider-mannequin thing is a combo of the mannequin monsters in Silent Hill 2 and a monster-doll boss in Silent Hill 5), and a hot mess with enough plot holes to start a new drinking game for everyone else.

Plus, it's a character-driven dark fantasy action movie. The game it's based on is scarier.

I'm still fuzzy on the difference between "urban fantasy" and "horror" actually. I've started to notice that I hardly ever care if a movie fails to scare me--it may fail as horror, but that doesn't automatically make it a total bust as a movie.

Yes, the game is scarier ... but the interesting question is WHY is it scarier?

I recall walking round with only a flashlight in abandoned buildings, where you couldn't tell if something was a jacket on a rack or someone standing there - and when the dollmonsters appeared, they moved in the dark - in the shadows.

And lots and lots of building up the tension.

All that could have made a very, very effective movie.

Still - it was entertaining.

Exactly--the movie's too damn crowded. WAY too many monsters in a small space. It didn't have that sense of isolation, and the abundance of exposition took away a good deal of the mystery. Also, no mirror room (scariest videogame moment EVER, IMO), no subway level (ganked straight from Jacob's Ladder, but that's what made it so effective), and Vincent was completely stripped of his creepiness. And then morphed into Douglas Cartland. With a side order of Love Interest. And a distractingly horrible American accent. (Shame on you, Jon Snow! *dope slap*)

I think icky bug has always been a tough sell. It's been around but it goes through phases. We icky bug authors are like the bastard children of the art form, often shunned or ignored. Yet, there are fans out there. Sometimes they aren't in big enough numbers that the powers that be take notice, but when they do, we get a foot in the door.

With the new electronic mediums, there are more opportunities, but that also means there is more opportunities for more crap to also flood the market. That clouds the playing field for the good stuff.

Do your best and keep trying. That's all anyone can do. Follow your muse, write your icky bug and hope someone will notice.

Feidb said:

We icky bug authors are like the bastard children of the art form, often shunned or ignored.

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Or ridiculed by other authors - the ungodly mess in the 90s (the authors have been named enough that it seems unfair to point them out again) was down to an established horror writer dissing the new wave in a magazine, then the back and forth continued for a fair while in the letters pages of at least two magazines. Waaay before the internet bitchfests came to dominate the attention of writers.

And that is still a problem. Writing about maggots and cockroaches and spiders? Good luck finding support from some corners of the writing world...

As it is, I don't "see" genre delineations, so I don't care whether something is in "bad taste" or not - and yeah, that's the reason I have seen used most often - as long as the writing is good. All I have ever cared about was interesting characters and plots, with some neat turns of phrase. The in-fighting in some sectors bores me to tears.

Nope I hope we are sting clinging on, I originally considered myself a science fiction horror writer.

The truth is that I write in multiple genres. Icky bug is just one of them. Unlike you, BigWords, I have no big beef with genres as they give readers, including me, some idea of the subject matter. However, I do agree that just because I may dislike a particular genre or subgenre, vampires comes to mind, doesn't mean I condemn or put down those authors. I also can't stand to read first-person stories unless they're non-fiction. Those are just personal preferences, but I have no right to condemn another author that wishes to write that genre or style. Bravo for them. I've missed out on this infighting you mentioned but if I saw it, I'd probably just ignore or avoid it anyway. It's counterproductive and serves nobody. It really burns me that the professionals do this as much, if not more than fellow authors.

These bad attitudes pervail in the marketplace among publishers and agents, unfortunately. It's really hard to find someone to take a fair look at your work, no matter how well written just because of the subject matter. Lately, I've been marketing my icky bug MSs as "supernatural thrillers" instead of "horror" just because it is more "politically correct." I prefer "icky bug" but since it's my term, I usually get raised eyebrows or blank stares so I have to go with the flow, especially since there are no "icky" bugs, literally, in the stories. Monsters, yeah, but no bugs.

In the other genres I write, I don't get this kind of flack. Even when the agent or publisher says they accept horror, I often get it. I really hate when they say horror but it turns out they want cushy cute vampires or some kind of Christian horror which I haven't the foggiest notion about.

Oh well... forge ahead. It's all we can do.

There are people on the board who write Christian Horror, but my reading of that particular sub-genre is woefully inadequate - the Victorian stuff I love so much probably doesn't count.

Horror's main problem at the moment is the lack of a cheerleader author. In the 80s Stephen King spent a LOT of time highlighting up-and-coming authors, and in the 90s Clive Barker promoted the hell out of a bunch of people, but with the rapid rise of review sites and other noise, that author-to-reader recommendation style has gone out of use somewhat. I tend to place more weight on those kinds of "read this" statements - rightly or wrongly.