What's special about YA horror?

I've really wanted to read some YA horror. I don't go in for adult horror much, although I've read a few and I mainly enjoyed them, so my opinion might need a grain of salt.

I don't think it differs significantly from adult horror in any way except the way YA in general differs.

I also disagree about the mother and child bond being a requirement. And sort of bond could work similarly.

It also seems to me that horror is a broad enough genre that only the most inane of generalities could apply to all the sub-genres.


I also used to love R.L. Stine when I was reading middle grade books. They're often predictable looking back, but I definitely enjoyed them when I read them.

I love horror! There are some considerations when it comes to YA though, for example, splatterpunk and the other extreme horror subgenre aren't considered acceptable. In other words, the gratuitous stuff. Gore and violence is fine long as it isn't the over the top stuff.

Other than that, there appears to be no real difference except the added conventions that make Young Adult what it is. Teen protag, comming of age aspect etc.

Some monsters that can kill you, and a bottleneck.

Oh and horror that relies on anticipation, and humid environments instead of dry. I would have said Japanese horror, but I tuned to prefer to write humid instead of dry environments.

Other then teenagers instead of college students, I'd say nothing much different than that.

I've been thinking about horror, lately. Most of the short story ideas I get are horror-ish. Not gory or high-octane horror in any way, mostly really quiet, creepy situations. Also I've been reading some Marcus Sedgwick lately and I think a lot of his work could be called literary horror.

It's really, really interesting genre, anyway. I'm getting more into it.

Huh, I should check out Marcus Sedgwick. Looks cool.

In current YA, ANNA DRESSED 1N BLOOD also comes to mind. I liked that, but there was only one scene I found actually scary.

This one's older, but BLACKBRIAR by William Sleator scared the crap out of me as a tween. I think it was mainly the atmosphere. (His HOUSE OF STAIRS, which we might call dystopian, is also deeply creepy.)

When I was a kid, though, Lois Duncan ruled YA horror. SUMMER OF FEAR, STRANGER WITH MY FACE, DOWN A DARK HALL -- they made your spine tingle without offering the full-on gross-out of Stephen King. They had high concepts that weren't much different from those of the paperback adult horror bestsellers of the time, only with parts toned down or only suggested, and a happy-ish ending for the protagonist.

Come to think, this is the biggest potential problem with YA horror: YA typically ends happily or at least sort of positively, and horror typically doesn't. Even when one girl survives the wrath of Freddy or Jason, she's horribly traumatized -- not exactly a positive "coming of age" experience. The one generalization I'd make about horror is that it promotes a view of the world as chaotic and dangerous; anyone who tries to explain or control the horror, like a scientist, ends up dead.

On the other hand, there should be an audience for YA horror, because teens are enthusiastic consumers of horror movies.

Personally, I'd like to see a YA book like the GINGER SNAPS movies, which blended horror and coming of age in a very nice, dark way.

I'm really excited for Stephanie Perkins's next novel, which is a YA horror of the slasher variety. Contemporary, not paranormal. Yay!

Anna Dressed in Blood to me is more paranormal than horror. I found almost none of it scary. I have to admit, I loved the title more than I loved the book. It seemed like a Supernatural clone to me. It wasn't a bad book by any means, but after all the hype, I ended up being a bit disappointed.


I would love to see some toned-down Lovecraftian horror in YA. Or maybe a better example is Daryl Gregory. Extra-dimensional, more than just the standard horror creatures horror.

Psychological horror or just really uncomfortable happenings are nifty, too.

I want to see more scarey vampires in YA Horror. The vampires tends to fall into paranomal and urban fantasy end of things too often. I think people forget that they are killers generally, human or animal something is being drained of blood to feed them.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I don't think it differs significantly from adult horror in any way except the way YA in general differs.

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I agree with this. Same as other YA, it seems it's all about perspective, voice, pacing, etc.

Please, please write YA horror, someone. I really wanna read some, but I haven't been very successful at finding much that grabs me.

I was a Christopher Pike, RL Stine, etc. junkie as a kid and turned that into a love for Stephen King, but I haven't read a YA that really felt like a good horror in a long time. (Though I did like ANNA, I agree it didn't feel scary to me.)

I've got 4SYLUM and AM1TY samples downloaded right now, but I haven't been able to immerse myself in either yet.

The_Ink_Goddess said:

There have been a few (dating all the way back to my beloveds, Stine's Fear Street), but not many.

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Totally off topic but HOLY HELL did those Fear Street books mess me up as a kid. Especially the 99 Fear Street series. Maybe that's why I like horror movies so much?

I love it so much I'm now writing one. For me, it seems particularly cinematic. I just enjoy reading it...it seems somehow nostalgic.

Don't judge me, but I still love RL Stine's stuff. They always remind me of that AWESOME show Eerie, Indiana.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

Anna Dressed in Blood to me is more paranormal than horror. I found almost none of it scary. I have to admit, I loved the title more than I loved the book. It seemed like a Supernatural clone to me. It wasn't a bad book by any means, but after all the hype, I ended up being a bit disappointed.

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EXACTLY. I actually get kind of grumpy about ADiB because it's always the first recent title to come up whenever this topic appears, and I was so let down by the lack of scary! I am a huge horror fan but I also consider myself pretty easy to scare, so... definitely disappointed.

I write YA almost exclusively, but the only straight horror story I've written was adult. Because, much as Fuchsia Groan said, horror nearly always paints a very bleak view of the world, and YA is usually the opposite. (Definitely exceptions, but they're just that.) I have a hard time imagining YA ever getting its own Stephen King, although some people have described Daniel Kraus that way and I'd say he's come the closest.

I had a WIP that was essentially survival horror meets fantasy, but it eventually got so Id-driven that I had to shelve it and step away from it. Lets just say it started to get into human centipede and audition territory with some of the gross out/gore factor...

As far as YA horror is concerned, I think the reason you don't see much of it is because there is a persistent idea that YA has to have a positive message or at the least, a happy ending. Personally, I don't believe that either is needed for a good YA story, but the idea is out there. Horror, generally, has a very bleak message, and usually doesn't end happy. This can be a barrier to somebody who feels all YA MUST end happy and/or say something good about the world. Likewise, some people are generally afraid to push the boundaries of what can be done in terms of gore/violence/gross-out factor in YA as well so right there your essentially cutting out several genres of horror (Lovecraftian horror as well as general body horror and shock-value gross out/heavy gore horror alla human centipede and friends.), some of which happen to be the easiest to write. Simply put, shock-value horror is easy. Being able to scare without resorting to shock-value horror is hard.

However, that doesn't mean there isn't a place for YA horror. It can be done, and well...It just will take authors who are not afraid to defy what people think YA "should" be, I.E. the happy ending and positive message, and who can induce fear without resorting to shock-value gross outs....or at least can write those shock-value gross outs in a way that would not turn off potential publishers/be too "mature" for the YA market. I know as a Poe & Lovecraft enthusiast who sat through human centipede 1+2 and grew up with the Goosebumps books and Alien movies that I'd certainly like to see a good YA horror story. So I hope somebody comes along who can do it well!

It almost seemed like something unique to Stine. I've never really been easy to scare, but Stines work always weirded me out. I actually like his subtler (in terms of gross out) books like Night In Terror Tower the best.

I'm wanting to study Stine, just because I always framed my dystopia around a horror concept rather than a ... well, a dystopian concept. MG and YA horror used to be what I went to for Beach reading.

Not that there isn't good horror romance. It's more that horror (good films like Jacobs Ladder, Silent Hill, and to some degree 12 Monkeys) left you with a wholly different feeling than say ... Hunger Games, an equivalently scary story. Like it's just as scary, but the mood was different. More like a single person alone in a town.

The_Ink_Goddess:
That's a funny header, but I couldn't think how else to put it, but I'm currently drafting (and drafting and drafting and drafting) my new Idea of the Moment, a YA horror, and I wondered - horror is something of an emerging genre in YA right now. There have been a few (dating all the way back to my beloveds, Stine's Fear Street), but not many. The only horror that seems to revolve regularly around teenagers in mainstream culture is the slasher movie.

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I'm not sure that's quite right. There's a lot of YA horror on the shelves at the moment because it was seen as an easy way of being 'boy friendly' (hate that phrase). Darran Shan, Charlie Higson, Chris Priestly and Will Hill spring to mind immediately. I'd also add that Jonathan Maberry had a successful YA zombie quarter, then there's Kendare Blake, Carrie Ryan, Neal Shusterman, Barry Lyga, Sam Enthaven, Steve Feasey and Ilsa Bick - it's a broad church.

The_Ink_Goddess:
So, is there anything special or particular about YA horror? Does it appeal to you, or not? How does it differ from 'adult' horror?

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I love YA horror (in case the above doesn't reveal that ... ) and I think the only difference between it and adult horror is the age of the protagonists. From what I've heard, zombies are as hard a sell in horror now as vampires were in paranormal romance, but the best horror is always character focused with the tension coming from the situation.

If you've got an idea, I say go for it.

MM

I once plotted out an entire YA horror book then did NOTHING with it! LOL! It was Lovecraftian-extra-dimensional evil seeping into our world kind of thing. The MC was a guy and his mom was driven crazy by seeing stuff all the time. He had a ton of tattoos that helped him with thwarting Old Ones LOL!

I love horror but as a teenager in the late 80's early 90's all my friends and I were riding the big horror boom of the time. We read tons of King, Koontz, anything at all we could get our hands on! I read Haunting of Hill House (scared the bejeezus out of me), Lovecraft, and I chickened out reading Pet Cemetery.

But I kind of wouldn't want to write YA horror because of the restrictions (?), limitations? I'm not sure if those are the right words. I think teens looking for scares are better off with adult horror anyway. Less shoe-horned in romance and more focus on actual horror.

CheG said:

I once plotted out an entire YA horror book then did NOTHING with it! LOL! It was Lovecraftian-extra-dimensional evil seeping into our world kind of thing. The MC was a guy and his mom was driven crazy by seeing stuff all the time. He had a ton of tattoos that helped him with thwarting Old Ones LOL!

I love horror but as a teenager in the late 80's early 90's all my friends and I were riding the big horror boom of the time. We read tons of King, Koontz, anything at all we could get our hands on! I read Haunting of Hill House (scared the bejeezus out of me), Lovecraft, and I chickened out reading Pet Cemetery.

But I kind of wouldn't want to write YA horror because of the restrictions (?), limitations? I'm not sure if those are the right words. I think teens looking for scares are better off with adult horror anyway. Less shoe-horned in romance and more focus on actual horror.

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What is this shoe-horned romance you speak of? Love is the ultimate motivator for a character to face evil. It can be platonic, familial, romantic. The mother who knows her unborn child is the anti-christ or a demon who will unleash hell on earth, may protect the child anyway because she loves the child regardless of its destiny. Someone who faces a violent spirit, demon etc to protect their best friend, sibbling, or partner is also motivated by love. It's very common for one of the different forms of love to show up in adult horror, so why shouldn't it show up in YA?

In one of my future wips, there's no romance between my two MCs but they're still motivated by love. FMC who just happens to be a lesbian finds her bestfriend a gay boy after he committed suicide, and wants to kill those who drove him to it because she loved him like he was her own brother. MMC is the dead best friend's ex and a closeted jock, he blames both others and himself for the death of my female lead's best friend. He teams up with my FMC because he did love her friend and he also wants other people to pay for what happened. It's an obsessive love on both their parts which leads them to kill, but it's still love. People do some of the evilest things when motivated by love, just like they do some of the kindest.

I think some YA horror is wonderfully subtle, not all blood and gore and horrific, graphic scenes (not my cup of tea at all). Lois Duncan, who's already been mentioned, Lisa McMann's CRYER'S CROSS/THE MISSING (UK title), Anthony Horowitz's HOROWITZ HORROR short stories (which freaked me out as a 14-yr-old), all are frightening in a subtle, haunting way.

The 'worst' horror I've read recently has to be THE BUNKER DIARY by Kevin Brooks though. I know I mention it a lot but that was bleak as hell and haunted me for weeks. Also, most of the horror of it was in the subtlety, the little asides and implications. Without spoiling things for people who haven't read it, what it is implied that the protag does on the last page was all the more horrifying because it wasn't outright shown to the reader, just implied.

What initially turned me off of horror (not sure if I mentioned this), was that my primarily experience of it was rather limited in that I was mainly familiar with stuff that amounted "these teens get heads chopped off, last girl standing kills the bad guy. Then he survives."

Not to be flippant, that was just how I viewed a lot of teen slasher movies. That was before I became familiar with finer stuff like Terminator, 12 Monkeys, Jacobs Ladder, and films more like that that I really started enjoying teen horror.

Of course now with all the books out now, I wonder what exactly I missed. A lot of books sounds absolutely fascinating. But that makes me wonder how Slasher stuff continues to make money.

I don't personally like horror in it's pure form, I have to have just a little bit of it combined with science fiction philosophical leanings. Though that's more my opinion that has changed, as I used to love slasher movies.