What Exactly Is Horror Fiction?

What makes one story ‘horror’, but another not?

You know that feeling you get when you’re watching a movie or reading a book and you suddenly don’t know if it’s truly horror?

It’s funny, so does that make it a comedy? There’s a love interest, so is it a romance? There’s no physical monster, so what’s the deal there? Doesn’t horror need a monster?

Well, yes and no.

I’ve thought about this a lot.

Probably too much, tbh. Sometimes this question keeps me awake at night. What exactly is horror fiction?

Isn’t Fiction Just Books?

No.

The word ‘fiction’ just means ‘made up stories’.

Made up stories are not real. They may be ‘based on’ real stories, but fiction is not real.

You can read stories, long or short or anywhere in between.
You can watch stories through movies, television shows, videos, and plays.
You can listen to stories through audio, songs, music, and podcasts.
You can play a part in stories through games.
You can look at stories in art. All art tells a personal story. The story I see when I look at a piece of art is not necessarily the same as yours.

All of these tell you a story in its own unique way.

Is Horror Fiction All About Monsters?

Technically, there’s always a monster in horror stories.

But the monster doesn’t have to be a separate entity; it can be an internal monster. The internal monsters can often be even more terrifying than the physical ones. How do you kill something that’s part of you or someone you love?

Monsters in horror stories can be explainable, unexplainable, or ambiguous.

Explainable monsters are things like psychopaths, aliens, mutants, zombies, vampires, Frankenstein-type monsters.
Unexplainable monsters are your ghosts and demons and things from the spirit world that can’t be explained by rational thought.
Ambiguous horror is when you get to the end of the story and you can’t be sure if it was real or not. A brilliant example of this is Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts. While there were logical explanations for most of what happened, you’re still left with a niggling doubt. Was the sister truly possessed or not?

What About Blood and Gore?

Horror fiction might have blood and gore – but it doesn’t have to.

Some of the most effective horror stories are psychological and don’t show you any blood at all. Sometimes leaving the gory stuff to the imagination is more effective than the slasher movie that goes through gallons of the stuff.

How Do I Define Horror Fiction?

Like most things, the definition of a horror story can be somewhat subjective.

One of our basest human needs is to feel safe and protected.

In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, safety is the second most important need in the list. We need to feel safe before we get to look for things like love, belonging, self-esteem, or self-actualisation.

The horror story plays on our darkest fears, our need to feel safe, and our survival instinct. The only way to win in a horror story is to survive. But not all horror stories have survivors and neat explanations and endings.

After many long nights, and long drives, thinking about what defines horror, I’ve come up with three underlying things that define horror fiction to me:

The story is an invented story, not a real-life story.
The story tries to inspire feelings of dread or horror in its audience.
The story makes me uncomfortable or unsettled in some way, be it physically, psychologically, or both.

So, to me, a horror story is an invented story calculated to inspire feelings of dread or horror that makes me uncomfortable.

What Types of Horror Stories There?

Trying to fit horror stories into sub-genres is like trying to categorise people or dogs. They might have some surface similarities but each individual also has traits unique to them.

Most stories fit into one or more categories, no matter how many categories you come up with. My view of where something fits will not always match yours.

I can usually shoehorn a horror story into one of nineteen categories. See What Types of Horror Stories Are There? for more details about these categories.