Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Horror Defined & Sub Genres

Horror fiction - any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience.

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Traditional - Supernatural Horror - ghosts, werewolves, vampires

Gothic Horror - characterized by
1. gloomy settings (nclosed or haunted settings, such as castles, crypts, dungeons, and mansions)
2. sinister events (ruin, decay, imprisonment, cruelty, and persecution);
3. the main character being trapped in some way, be it location, family destiny, etc

         a. English Gothic - theme of a dark past shadowing the present
         b. American gothic - focuses more on psychological breakdown

Cutting Edge - focuses more on style than theme

Psychological Horror - Quiet - Soft Horror - Suspense Horror - subtle or implied; suggest don’t show; fear of the unknown; relies on the reader’s mind to create fear;

Surreal Horror - difficult to tell where the dream world ends and reality begins

Splatterpunk - gross-out effect; make readers stomachs turn with the most disturbing images the writer can come up with

Urban Horror - Noir - take place in an underworld of crime; tales of corruption, violence, and oppression of the little person in a world of indifference.

Lovecraftian - Lovecraft Mythos - Mythos - premise is that the world was once inhabited by a race of powers known as the Great Old Ones. They were banished from earth. They now wait to take the world back and claim it as their own. The writing is typically elaborate and overwhelming with adjectives

Christian Horror - Apocalyptic Horror - focuses on the faith or development of faith of the protagonist

Comic Horror - Zombie Slapstick - Sci-Fi/Weird Fantasy Spoof

Redneck Horror - Appalachian Horror - people living outside society and preying on others that are usually lost

Pagan Horror - have Witches/Warlocks tends to go deeper into Pagan religions; about the spirits of nature

Science Fiction and Medical Horror -

Cross Genre - when genres such as horror, fantasy, science, romance, speculative, whatever fiction -- start slipping into one another

Gothic Romance - Paranormal Romance - Horror Fantasy -

Dark Fantasy - can have supernatural elements but is not the supernatural fiction of vampires, werewolves, etc.

Speculative fiction — a blanket term for science fiction, fantasy, and horror


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