Five Horror Tropes that Scare the
Crap Out of Me
When I found out
that Christian was looking for guest bloggers for his site, I jumped at the
chance – we writers tend to rise to the challenge whenever there’s some copy to
be created. But I didn’t know what to talk about – the only rule that I was
given is that there are no rules!
But because
Christian and I were brought together by horror, I thought it only fair if I
wrote about that, and so this blog post was born! Ladies and gentlemen, prepare
to be terrified.
5 – Injustice
Horror novels
excel at this. Generally speaking, most fiction is rooted in justice – the good
guy always wins in the end, the bad guys get their comeuppance, and no innocent
bystanders end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In horror, all of that
goes out of the window, and there’s just something deeply sinister about a book
in which the bad guy wins, the hero ends up dead (or worse), and little old
women are getting bumped off left, right and centre for no real reason.
4 – Zombie Animals
Zombies
themselves aren’t a problem – after all, they’re slow, they’re simple and
they’re pretty easy to pick off from a distance. But once animals get infected,
all bets are off – where the hell are you supposed to hide when there are
infected birds and dogs knocking about? Especially when you consider that one
little nip is all that it takes to become infected!
3 – Creepy Little Kids
You know what
I’m talking about here – think of the twins in The Shining, or the possession
of Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist. Perhaps it’s because I don’t like children,
although there’s also something to be said about evil corrupting the pure, if
you believe that children are ever really innocent. Either way, they creep me
out.
2 – Computers Killing Stuff
I remember when
I watched Resident Evil for the first time – I was absolutely terrified when
the computer was killing people, but then I was fine once the zombies woke up.
Well, until the zombie dogs, at least. The thing that scares me the most about
computers killing people is that, unlike zombies, vampires, werewolves and the
like, it could actually happen. It probably already DOES happen.
1 – Mental Illness
As a
depression/anxiety sufferer myself, I’m allowed to say this. Fictional people
with mental illnesses can be terrifying, if the author so desires, and it works
whether you’re a sufferer of the same mental illness or not. If you can relate
to the character, you know exactly what they’re capable of, and if you can’t
relate to them then they can seem unpredictable, which is often even worse. But
it has to be done tastefully, or not at all – that’s why it’s so effective.
So there we have
it – now you know how to write the perfect story to scare the crap out of me!
If you happen to pen a novel about a creepy little zombie puppy with
schizophrenia, who develops a computer programme to kill everyone who isn’t a
banker or a politician, you’ve got yourself a reader.
Author Bio:
Dane Cobain is a
writer and poet from a place you’ve probably never heard of, somewhere in
England. His debut novella, a supernatural thriller called ‘No Rest for the
Wicked’, will be released by Forsaken in the summer of 2015. When he’s not
writing books, he’s reading and reviewing them on his book blog, SocialBookshelves.com – Charles
Bukowski, Graham Greene and Phillip Pullman are favourites. He’s very sad that
Terry Pratchett died, and is hoping to come across Death in a Forsaken book so
he can ask him what he’s playing at. Find him at Facebook.com/DaneCobainMusic
or follow @DaneCobain on Twitter.
Make sure to show Dane, as well as all my guest bloggers, some love. Follow them on twitter, like their facebook pages, check out their books, and read their blogs. Also don't forget to follow this blog and the guy who puts it all together, Christian Jensen. Authors like to know what you think about them, so comment here. And always tell your friends about the cool things you find. Thanks!
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