Horror/gothic general thread
Also, how do you write a good horror novel? I find it's easy for me to write perhaps short stories or novellas, but does a horror story really need to be a novel? Most follow kind of the same pattern, a protagonist/group of people who has to overcome or defeat some kind of fear, with the meat and potatoes being the monster or the haunted house.
I ask this because I find it difficult to make it anything more than this when I write horror. I initially I only wrote horror, but I honestly find that it limits the development of a protagonist in a kind of way, being that the only purpose is to defeat or evade the threat and the only traits you can really add is a growing strength within them. I find that it's hard to make horror something "more" than this, and I absolutely don't want to write another shit-tier horror book for an oversaturated market.
This is why I simply add elements of horror into more expansive genres such as fantasy or sci-fi, but can never manage to write any lengthy, quality horror.
I've never been able to reconcile character development with writing horror myself. I like to identify with protagonists but it's basically just as a vehicle so that I can project my realistic response to a giant shoggoth raping me onto them.
I read a lot of horror and I don't think pretty much any of it has character development, other than the protagonist being subjected to things and maybe going nuts. Personality or morality just aren't big dynamics in there. I guess in some sense the traditional psychological structure of a narrative still exists, and there are things with arcs like The Telltale Heart, but it's not the same as complex psychological or philosophical conflict.
>>7593605
Absolutely. I just don't feel fulfilled by it I suppose. It's really kind of shallow in a sense. Entertaining absolutely. I'm going to try and make it kind of different this time. More of a thriller than anything, with description that can make you visualize colors and aura's. much like Dracula or a picture of Dorian gray. Very lush prose.
>>7593612
I don't mind it so much, but that's probably because I'm an autist and I don't mind my speculative fiction having bland protagonists as long as the speculations are good.
I wonder if you could push horror and tragedy together? There is kind of horror in the classic tragic dilemma, especially if you keep the supernatural aspects like Orestes being tormented by the Erinyes. Not just tragedy in the sense of a guy being caught in a paradox or between mutually exclusive choices, but actually being crushed between monolithic suprahuman things. Sorta similar to Lovecraft's vision of cosmic horror.
Everything I just said it probably derivative and trite and definitely pretentious
>More of a thriller than anything, with description that can make you visualize colors and aura's. much like Dracula or a picture of Dorian gray. Very lush prose.
That sounds cool. Luckily horror/speculative is such a fucking eclectic genre full of weird spergs that you can write like Gene Wolfe or Lovecraft and still be cool, more room to take chances and be original.
>>7593584
This pic is what? Some hack imitating odd nerdrum ripping off bacon?
>>7593633
Yeah I'm a pretty aspy guy when it comes to stuff like that, probably why I wrote horror before anything else.
