{"id":610,"date":"2005-10-04T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-04T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/on-horror\/"},"modified":"2005-10-04T23:59:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-04T23:59:00","slug":"on-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lucysnyder.com\/index.php\/on-horror\/","title":{"rendered":"On Horror"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Horror is not a genre, like the mystery or science fiction or the western. It is not a kind of fiction, meant to be confined to the ghetto of a special shelf in libraries or bookstores. Horror is an emotion.”
— Douglas Winter<\/a>\"\", 1982 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As a literary genre, “horror” can be loosely defined as any work that creates as atmosphere of fear or dread and provokes those reactions in the reader.<\/p>\n

Many people associate horror with spooky tales of the supernatural: ghosts, demons, vampires and the like. Such stories are often the modern-day equivalent of old tales about the unknown dangers that lie in the shadows beyond the comforting light cast by the campfire.<\/p>\n

But in this modern age, we have lit virtually the entire planet, and so the midnight world has lost much of its mystery and fear. So others insist they couldn’t be frightened by a story unless it dealt with a scenario that could really<\/i> happen: being stalked by a serial killer, being trapped in a basement with hungry rats, etc. <\/p>\n

And still others insist they can’t be spooked at all by a story … but they can be plenty grossed out by one. These people associate horror fiction with the sense of revulsion that gory descriptions of decay and mayhem can create.<\/p>\n

Thus, to a certain extent, horror is in the eye of the beholder; it can be quiet or over-the-top, fabulist, surreal, or mundane. Horror sends its tentacles into virtually every other genre: mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, romance, erotica, etc.<\/p>\n

The basic qualities of a good horror tale are ideally the same as for any other story: a compelling plot and sympathetic and interesting characters. There should be plenty of atmosphere and suspense; if a good horror story can’t make jaded ol’ you want to sleep with the lights on, it should at least give you a delicious shiver now and then. <\/p>\n

Horror became hugely popular in the 1980s due to the burgeoning popularity of authors such as Stephen King<\/a>\"\" in the mid-to-late 70s. Publishing companies were eager to cash in on the trend, and by the late 80s, bookstore shelves were absolutely flooded with hastily-commissioned, poorly-written novels. The good stuff was lost in a sea of crap, and disenchanted readers naturally stopped looking to horror for entertainment.<\/p>\n

The horror market crashed, and throughout the 1990s major publishers shied away from horror novels from beginning writers. King and other authors such as Anne Rice continued to sell very well, but the industry as a whole treated horror as a dead genre. Good novels continued to find publication, of course, but they were most often marketed as thrillers or as dark fantasy. Unestablished writers of works that could be marketed as nothing but horror had to seek publication in the small press. <\/p>\n

The commercial prospects for horror started to improve in the late 1990s, but the re-emergence of horror as a popular genre has been slowed by real-life horrors such as the Columbine school shootings and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Horror is a bit like science fiction: it’s popular as long as the real thing isn’t readily available in the Real World. Just as many people lost interest in science fiction movies when the space program was going full steam, many people lose their taste for horror when the evening news is full of it.<\/p>\n

A few subgenres<\/h4>\n