Suspense or horror?

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Aholm83

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I'm certain this has been done before, but what genre of fiction could a story about a very Christian township being secretly controlled by Satanists fall under?
 

alleycat

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It would depend on how it's written, but just making a wild guess I would say more suspense or thriller (unless the Satanists are butchering people in a horrible way).

It's kind of like the movie Psycho--sometimes people refer to it as a horror movie (I think Stephen King did in his book Danse Macabre, but I'm not sure) and at other times as suspense.
 

Marlys

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I'd say, if the plot is more about the town takeover, and you could replace the secret Satanists by secret Communists without changing the story much, then it's more probably suspense.

But if the Satan-worship is vital to the plot, and the Satanists do nasty scary things to keep the townsfolk in line, then it's more probably horror. Especially if there are actual demonic forces at work.
 

Galumph_Triumph

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I had this issue with my novel. I didn't know whether it was horror or thriller. But then I got some good advice.

What reaction do you want your reader to have? Do you want them to be afraid to go to sleep, afraid to be home alone, afraid to shampoo their hair in the shower, etc. after reading your book? Or would you prefer that they bite their nails and rip through the pages of the book to find out more?

I determined that my book was a thriller, because I wasn't actually trying to scare anybody - I was just trying to create a creepy atmosphere in which a lot of suspenseful action could happen.
 
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