Halloween is coming up this month so I thought I’d start my scaring posts now (you can tell I love this holiday). Today, I’ll be talking about a few types of horror elements in books/media.
We all know that there’s plenty of genres of horror out there. However, people often forget that scary elements can be incorporated into genres that aren’t just horror. My own book is an example – its urban fantasy with some dark overtones. I would say there’s definitely a horror element to quite a few scenes given urban fantasy’s nature of involving the supernatural. So let’s have a chat about three of the main scary elements in non-horror books.
1. Physical Horror
This is the most straightforward, to me, and the one I make use of in CALIGATION. It involves something that is physically greusome or horrifying (eg: monsters and beasts) whose threat to the characters is purely physical. This is incorporated into a lot of fantasy (as, oftentimes, characters in most genres are chased by some sort of nasty creature) and probably one of the more family-friendly types of scare.
However, it can easily become dark and gruesome, depending on the levels of violence and gore, or just make for very suspenseful scenes.
Sub-genres include body horror (eg: disfiguration) and splatter-house (eg: gore). Both of which are much less family friendly but can also be added into other genres to turn up the tension or add a bit of unpleasantness for the characters.
2. Fear of the Unknown
Continue reading …