What defines horror/dark fantasy, and where is that line?

[tlbodine]

This is sort of ridiculous, but I've recently come to realize that I may be a horror writer. This shouldn't exactly take me by surprise as it was my genre of choice growing up, and honestly the only thing I really read (or watched) until my twenties.

But I never really thought that I was writing horror, mostly because I never really thought anything I was writing was particularly scary.

But some of my beta-readers seem to disagree. The word "creepy" gets tossed around a lot. I've also been favorably compared to Clive Barker and Richard Matheson (much to my delight). Which makes me start to seriously question whether I'm writing horror without even realizing it.

My concern is...is "creepy" enough? And would a horror audience have any patience for fantasy tropes (like, say, faeries. and unicorns. although the unicorns are flesh-eating scavengers, so...erm)? Is that basically what dark fantasy as a sub-genre exists *for* or am I deeply misunderstanding subgenres again (something I seem to do often lol)?

 

[CupofJoe]

Flesh-eating scavenging unicorns - now that is one I won't forget in a hurry...
For me "Horror" is when the gore, shocks and creeps are there to be gore, shocks and creeps, where as in "Fantasy" they are there to be part of the narrative.
I haven't read horror [other than HPL] for 25 years so I may well be out of date [and I don't know Richard Matherson] but I would count Clive Barker as a Fantasy writer.
Personally I think most of the "genres" are marketing tools and don't have any relationship to writing.
Good luck to you.

 

[Guru Coyote]

(The following is my very personal take on things, abeit I think it's an educated one.)

"Horror" is more about the direction in which a narrative is headed than about gore and creeps. Take the classical Hero's Journey as an example: The hero get's in a bad situation (creep and gore, why not), struggles to overcome the crisis and - and this is the key - overcomes the obstacle.
In Horror... we often see a decline into darkness. A bleak, cynical outset on life. We all die, and some tell tales about ir.

Dark Fantasy... well, I guess a lot of it has a rather cynical world view also, yet obstacles are mostly overcome eventually.

On the other end of the spectrum we'd have the Happy Ever After... life is hard but you can succeed if you fight hard enough.

Anyway, flesh eating unicorns per so are dark fantasy. If it is horror depends on the type of 'message' the story is telling.

Hope make sense? No. It's the beginning of unhappiness.
(See, I'm getting ready to write some horror-esque material this week.)

 

[Butterfly]

Horror Fantasy = scary stories. A combination of horror and fantasy. Primary goal is to scare. (Think Jason in a pot-helm, stalking through a wizard's academy).

Dark Fantasy is different to horror fantasy in it's approach. It's not necessarily scary. Here, in the end, good may not triumph over evil, but if it does, then the world may have changed around them and not for the better. Or, the heroes are anti-heroes (people who are morally or ethically ambiguous). The settings often take place in a world where evil has already triumphed over good.

 

[wordwalker]

I usually contrast fantasy and horror: in fantasy you're facing down a nasty "gun" with your own "gun," in horror you've got a set of antlers. Joke or not, I think the point of horror is the sense that you really ought to be helpless, and you're scrambling to survive or beat rules that are qualitatively stacked against you; it isn't just tough odds.

One rule of thumb might be that "fantasy" suggests a wider supernatural system, some forces helpful as well as some evil. (At least if it's set in our world; a full horror-level imbalance set in a separate world tends to get called fantasy anyway.) Dark fantasy keeps that rule but uses some horror tone (such as its creatures) without limiting who's allowed on which side or the overall sense that fighting back's feasible. EG, Buffy the Vampire-Survivor would have been horror, but as Vampire-Slayer with all its superpowers and helpful spells it was definitely dark fantasy.

Tone ought to be more important than distribution of weaponry, but... ultimately, what matters most is that you write what you want, and afterward you label it to match the right readers' expectations about genre. And I think that rule of thumb is a good place to start there.

 

[Steerpike]

For me "Horror" is when the gore, shocks and creeps are there to be gore, shocks and creeps, where as in "Fantasy" they are there to be part of the narrative.

I think that's a definition of 'bad' horror, and is particularly prevalent in bad horror movies. Good horror writing has the same standards as any other literature.

 

[wordwalker]

For me "Horror" is when the gore, shocks and creeps are there to be gore, shocks and creeps, where as in "Fantasy" they are there to be part of the narrative.

I think that's a definition of 'bad' horror, and is particularly prevalent in bad horror movies. Good horror writing has the same standards as any other literature.

Touche. But, I think the idea is that in horror more of the narrative is about being afraid and however the character and reader cope with that fear; bad horror just gets clumsy at it.

 

[skip.knox]

@tlbodine

You've got a great opportunity here. Don't categorize yourself!

Write your stories. Let your readers react. And let the agent figure out the category.

If you are self-publishing, though, I guess you'll have to come to terms with it. But at Amazon, IIRC, you get to pick three. I just wouldn't get too hung up on it. Write what you write.

Categories and subcategories are about as easy to define (and about as useful) as are categories and subcategories in music.

 

[Steerpike]

Touche. But, I think the idea is that in horror more of the narrative is about being afraid and however the character and reader cope with that fear; bad horror just gets clumsy at it.

Yeah, I think that's right. With good horror it is still advancing the narrative, theme, characterization, or whatever the author is trying to do with a given scene. With bad horror, it's only there for shock value. Then you get someone like Glen Duncan who manages to cross horror over into literary fiction, even though the violence and gore content of his work is high, which is something I find interesting.

 

[tlbodine]

Ahh, those pesky genre lines. Slimy little buggers they are.

I'm indie-pubbing, so of course one concern is picking appropriate categories. The bigger concern, though, is figuring out where to find readers. Hard to market if you're not entirely certain who you're marketing it to. I've aways struggled with a target audience. My rule so far has been, "People like me" since one of my objectives in writing is to write the sort of books I want to read. Lurking around my preferred haunts in search of would-be readers is a challenge, though, and probably not very efficient.

 

[Abbas-Al-Morim]

I always identified with the dark fantasy genre. But I never thought of dark fantasy as "horror in a fantasy world" - unless you have a very broad definition of horror. I always thought dark fantasy was: "fantasy set in a realistic and troubled world of grays and that offers a cynical view on our contemporary problems." Sort of like the Witcher and Warhammer and, to lesser extent, Dragon Age.

 

[Guru Coyote]

"Horror" is less abut the setting or the world it is set in. It's more about the sensation, the emotion, mood.
As such, Dark Fantasy 'could' be horror, just like SciFi could be, or present-day downtown.
Maybe that's why it is so often confused - those who put labels on things too often do it by "what's in it" and not by "what's it about" ...

 

[wordwalker]

True. The classic example is the first Alien, a pure horror story in an SF setting-- followed by what was (because of the now-hardened MC) an SF/action tale.

Still, I think dark fantasy hasn't quite moved into horror if the characters can still fight back, though it may get the words "gothic" and "horror-influenced" on a lot of the description.

And if it's set outside of our world, it's harder yet for that Horror label to break out of the secondary terms and fight for a place on the official genre; we all know what Alien's really like, but it will always be classed as SF first. Not fair, but true.

 

[skip.knox]

>Alien's really like, but it will always be classed as SF first.

In fantasy, no one can hear you scream...