Genre Snobbery Exists

Ever heard of genre snobbery? It means regarding a genre as inferior because some people decided it is beneath the taste of sophisticated people. Critics and writers alike from literary fiction side have been turning their noses up at genre fiction since the dawn of literature. These “unsophisticated” genres include Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Horror.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy are Awesome

Thanks to celebrated writers like Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells, Sci-Fi has garnered much deserved attention in literary societies. Due to unprecedented success of movies like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Harry Potter series, Fantasy genre, too, now receives the appreciation it deserves.

Horror is Still Niche

The genre still struggling to gasp in the air above the drowning sea of snobbery is Horror. While it has always had a dedicated fanbase who celebrate the genre with all its gory glory, the so-called literary society still does not see the value of Horror in literature. It can be argued that the situation is changing because of macabre authors like Stephen King. But even he, one of the most prolific and masterclass author, gets snubbed in literary circles.

Genre and Setting

Truth is, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror, these are all just settings so that the reader knows what to expect. They present no boundary whatsoever in the quality of fiction. They just give the writer the leeway he needs to explore his ideas.

People who do not like horror often says stories with gratuitous violence, stupid plots, and stupider characters do not hold much value for them. They are right of course. There are many horror stories that are just that: gratuitous violence. But that is like saying all fantasy stories are about Elves, Dwarves and a Dark One. Yes, due to the success of Lord of the Rings, many authors have written uncountable stories uncannily similar to it. Most of them are terrible. But Game of Thrones has taught people what Fantasy can offer: everything. Because, Fantasy is not a boundary; it is just a setting.

What Makes Good Horror

Let’s talk about the elements of good horror stories. Cause there are some bad ones. Neither the fans nor the haters of the genre would downplay their disdain for jump scares. Jump scare is a pathetic device for writers who does not have more effective tools in his repertoire.

So, what makes a good horror?

1. Believable plot. It’s not like you cannot have any fantastical element in the story. You can. You just need to do the worldbuilding and weave the story around the fantastical elements.

2. Sympathetic characters. Good horror stories, like any other stories (except maybe golden-age Sci-Fi), are about people. If the reader or the viewer does not sympathize with the characters, they are going to feel disconnected.

3. Horror elements the characters have connection with. This is the most important aspect of a horror story which most writers do not bother to work on. Five friends visiting a random haunted house and getting killed while having an orgy is, at best, bad fiction.

Show, Not Tell

Talking and reading about ideas feels like academic work. Boring and draining. So examples from a few good horror stories follow.

The Shining (Stephen King novel)

A father has to stay as a maintainer in a haunted hotel, which has been emptied out for the winter because the area it is situated at is cut-off from the rest of the world after heavy snowfall, with his wife and six-year-old son. On surface level, it would appear that this is exactly the random haunted house narrative device I said was bad. But this particular story has a lot more to offer than others.

The dad was an alcoholic. He had had many problems earlier in his life because of heavy drinking, from beating up his students in drunken episodes to (possibly) killing a child in a road accident. But, after he broke his baby son’s hand in drunken rage, he took some help and had at last been able to keep the demons of alcohol at bay.

Until the Overlook Hotel possessed him and tried to murder his family.

You might think, “How is this better than any other haunted house story? It’s just more of the same old thing.” But it’s not. Remember, the dad was an alcoholic, and although he had been sober for a commendable period, the narrative of the novel pointedly shows how alluring for him the beckon of a wine bottle is. He has done terrible things while inebriated. Both his wife and son know he can become violent if he starts drinking again. He, too, knows that. But he starts drinking anyway when the pressure of isolation breaks him and the hotel manipulates his perception of his wife, portraying her in a villainous frame.

The haunted hotel just provides the writer with a setting, a leeway, for exploring the cause and effect of alcoholism. Yes, a sobered up alcoholic will not be forced to start drinking because of a haunted house in the real world, but he will always be on the brink of falling on the same dangerous behavior if his friends and family do not support him properly. The Shining is a brilliant portrayal of how someone and his whole family can be mortally doomed because of heavy drinking.

If you put some random people in the Overlook Hotel and killed them, it would not have the same connection between the characters and the horror elements. The whole story would fall flat on its ass in the gutter.

The Invisible Man (2020 movie)

Originally created by H.G. Wells in his 1897 novel with the same name, the character of the Invisible Man has been prevalent in pop culture since forever. The original story dealt with the possible catastrophe one man could inflict upon the society if he were to be given the ability to be invisible. The premise might seem bonkers. “Why would we explore the implications of invisibility? It’s not like someone has invented the Invisibility Cloak.” Well, guess what? Somebody has. It’s called the Internet.

The allegory of invisibility to anonymity is from the original novel. It was a good horror novel in its own right, but this section is not about that particular novel, so let’s get back to the film.

The movie is about a woman escaping from an abusive relationship. Her partner at first restricted her connection to the outside world, then her movement around and outside the house, and gradually even her opinions and thoughts. So she flees from what can essentially be called captivity. But as she struggles to get back to normal lifestyle following the trauma of the abusive relationship, her partner comes back and haunts her, now completely invisible.

Any victim of abuse goes through a period of trauma. Some of them cannot overcome it completely at all. During this period, she (I’ll use feminine pronoun for the victim character here because of the characterization in the movie, and also because I did the inverse in the previous section) has to look behind her shoulder all the time to convince herself that her abuser is not back to hurt her again. Abuse not only hurts physically, it breaks the mental strength and self-confidence of the victim.

This movie explores the idea of always being scared of more abuse because of past abuse in a clever way. In the movie the abuser actually does come back to hurt her, which won’t happen in real life, or at least, won’t happen the way it did in the movie. But it provides a picture to understand the harrowing experience the victims of abuse go through. That is good horror.

The Haunting of Hill House (Mike Flanagan TV series)

This story blew me away. It showed me how you can play with familiar story elements in totally unfamiliar ways to create absolute terror. It’s a masterclass. The ending was a little soppy for my taste, but it was sweet too, which is unusual in horror stories. So that was not a bad idea.

A family lives in a haunted house in order to renovate it before selling it. But the mother develops a terrible case of being overly protective of her children and decides to take radical steps to ensure their safety.

The narration progresses along two different timelines. One shows what happened at the haunted house. The other shows what happened after their stay at the haunted house: the aftereffects and consequences.

The children, now all grown up, have problems revolving around their experience at the Hill House. Their relationship with the father has deteriorated because he has not told the children what actually happened at the house on the night of haunting, and they think their father left their mother to die in a deserted place, alone and helpless. The viewers get to know the real story as the kids get to know them.

The series explores what effects disbelief and distrust can have in a family. It shows the members of a family uniting to resolve their conflict together, helping each other. What it definitely is not is a cheap haunted house story.

Outlining vs Discovery Writing

Some writers need to plot the story before they start writing. Some of them just start writing, trusting the story to advance itself. Most of them do a little bit of both.

Do you need to think about the implications of your story before you finish it? No. But you should ponder about the human elements after you have finished writing it. Your first draft won’t be perfect. It does not need to be; nobody is going to see it. What matters is the final piece.

In an interview, the writer-director of Get Out, Jordan Peele, discusses the idea behind the Sunken Place. He explains that the fear of being trapped in his own body and not being in control of it has haunted him since early childhood. He just brought that fear onto the page. But when he read it afterwards, he understood the connection between the Sunken Place and minorities feeling powerless and voiceless. “I started crying,” he says to the interviewer.

Endings are Hard

Horror is good. Give it a chance.