/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:19:41 2018 No.10902335 [Reply] [Original]

Why is horror lit so consistently shit?

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:21:01 2018 No.10902338 Words aren't scary.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:21:30 2018 No.10902341 >>10902335 books can't have jump scares

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:22:07 2018 No.10902343 >>10902341 There's more to horror than jump scares

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:24:43 2018 No.10902352 >>10902341 >>10902343 jump scares are thrills not horrors! 99% of horror movies are THRILLERS

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:25:03 2018 No.10902354 File: 45 KB, 584x622, 1521681018549.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>10902343 >he thinks im serious

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:25:52 2018 No.10902356 File: 101 KB, 489x352, stand.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>10902354 >he isn't being serious

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:26:10 2018 No.10902357 Because horror has been replaced with spooky jumpscares in the unconscious mind so now it's what you expect when you consume anything labeled as horror. It's not possible to startle you on paper so your expectations or demands can't be met.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:27:08 2018 No.10902359 >>10902357 >Because horror has been replaced with spooky jumpscares in the unconscious mind This is nonsense

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:30:29 2018 No.10902367 >>10902359 I disagree

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:32:06 2018 No.10902373 >>10902367 >>10902359 I'm going to stream of conscious a story where you both come to an agreement

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 19:58:32 2018 No.10902477 >>10902341 >not printing a picture of a lifelike spider on one of the pages

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 20:00:05 2018 No.10902484 >>10902335 maybe it's because there's a lack of illustrations?

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 20:01:52 2018 No.10902492 File: 258 KB, 714x1000, at-work-with-your-supervisor.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] There's actually a glut of decent horror lit you just have to dig deep for it. I'll throw you this one for free: Throne of Bones - Brian McNaughton

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 20:03:05 2018 No.10902496 because horror genre is supposed to be read by teenagers

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 20:04:03 2018 No.10902499 >>10902496 This Girl teenagers at that

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 20:05:08 2018 No.10902503 >>10902492 >"Throne of Bones" is a masterpiece of dark fantasy. Pass. Trust me, I've dug plenty. There's like one good horror novel for every 100 bad/medicore ones.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 20:06:24 2018 No.10902508 File: 17 KB, 320x230, horsecock.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>10902503 >Pass

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 20:44:45 2018 No.10902623 File: 411 KB, 1000x1480, 1516928484322.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Arthur Machen Algernon Blackwood M. R. James Ramsey Campbell Robert Aickman

Anonymous Mon Mar 26 20:59:27 2018 No.10902678

bc we aren't used to it
people back then shat their pants with frankestein or dracula, but if you give that book to any person below 25yo and then you show him a movie about it he will likely prefer the movie.

It's not that we are dumber, we just have a lot of alternatives for horror that make literature more of a niche.

This is also retroactive, as most of us will try to emulate films and videogames instead of literature when it comes to writing, since we are more used to them and we have more relatable experiences with them, or instead we try to carbon copy other authors bc we can't truly understand how to create horror.

tl:dr we are outdated

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 21:22:42 2018 No.10902751 File: 29 KB, 398x493, IMG_1916.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] It's a shame Anne Rice won't touch religion like in the 80s.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 21:50:19 2018 No.10902833 >>10902477 I'd really rather you didn't desu

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 22:01:51 2018 No.10902890 >>10902477 >being afraid of spiders I found the Midwesterner.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 22:02:52 2018 No.10902895 >>10902335 name five contemporary horror novels that are both good and not written by Stephen King

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 26 22:05:46 2018 No.10902904 >>10902335 Horror rarely actually frightens its reader, a good horror novel makes you think about it, it makes you remember its contents and makes you compare them with everyday life. A good example is the last few pages of Island of Dr Moreau.

Anonymous Mon Mar 26 22:19:48 2018 No.10902945

I like horror, but it's not a genre that lends itself to good novels, and often not even good short stories. It's pretty hard to scare an audience through just the written word if they're over the age of, like, 14 (which is probably why the audience for creepypasta on the internet is largely kids). It's easier to make a scary movie or a scary game because those are more immersive experiences and, as someone else ITT put it, you can't put jump scares into a book. I'd take that even farther and say you can't even create a spooky atmosphere to the same extent without visuals and sound.

To me, the best horror lit is not good because it is "scary", but because it functions well as fiction in general and makes good use of the uniquely dark, weird tropes of the genre. At its best it leaves unsettling mental images in your head and leaves you feeling sort of... unnerved. The best horror stories are those that don't spook you right away, but you think about them again when you're trying to sleep. Or else, the best horror lit is not really horror lit, but works of other kinds of literature that make use of horrific elements.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 27 05:49:48 2018 No.10904336 >>10902890 I'm Australian you faggot. And nowhere did I say I was afraid of them.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 27 12:20:38 2018 No.10905530 The Quran

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 27 12:42:52 2018 No.10905602 >>10902503 >There's like one good horror novel for every 100 bad/medicore ones. This applies to every genre in every medium

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 27 18:47:13 2018 No.10907177 >>10902335 it relies on the grotesque aspect a bit 2 much

Anonymous Tue Mar 27 19:01:36 2018 No.10907221

- It's excessively influenced by pop media like television and films, which translates poorly to literature. Characters speak like sitcom and thriller screenplays, there's an over reliance on gore and disgusting images (which often aren't scary so much as they're just gross),
- The tone is either hilariously self-important or overly detached and ironic
- It's difficult to deliver fantastic images in a convincing way, which is essential if horror is to be effective
- The single biggest problem is when the writer attempts to combine beauty and unease and fails. If they don't have the technique or the content to back the technique, the end product is the literary equivalent to a Nightmare before Christmas sweatshirt

There's a lot of good horror fiction, but it works better with restraint and formalism, which isn't so common in modern times. The best of horror authors are long dead Victorian ghost story writers and dark Romanticists like M.R. James and Poe

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 27 19:06:05 2018 No.10907243 >>10902335 genre fiction is made by people dumb enough to like genre fiction, which keeps it band and then it only appeals to people who like it's badness and so-on

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 27 19:06:27 2018 No.10907246 >>10902338 Came here to post exactly this.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 27 23:29:34 2018 No.10908360 >>10902341 Yes they can. First you start out writing normally. Then. ALL CAPS!

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 28 02:38:26 2018 No.10908935 >>10908360 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YrDQ18P9x4

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 28 06:34:40 2018 No.10909431 I had read Ligotti, but still haven't read Lovecraft and Poe.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 28 06:39:18 2018 No.10909444 >>10904336 triggered

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 28 06:41:34 2018 No.10909451 >>10902335 because the true horror is written in history books and political works

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 28 06:50:54 2018 No.10909480 >>10902623 This, but without Ramsey. Add Ligotti. All of them first rate writers. Ain't gonna argue with antigenrebigots in 2018.

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