Horror Fiction – Ten Clichés to Avoid
For anyone thinking about writing in the horror genre, there are certain situations that, over the years, have been done so frequently that audiences know exactly what to expect. Using any of these is fine if you’re being postmodern and tongue-in-cheek like in the Scream series, because you can make the audience laugh while jumping around. But if you’re trying to pull off a big scare, here are some situations to avoid and alternate scenarios to consider.
The woman alone in the old dark house
She is usually blonde, big-breasted, and not very bright. She yells things like “Who’s there?” or “Is that you Joe?” She then goes into dark rooms to see what is in them. Tippi Hedren plays a good example in The Birds, as does Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. This scene has been satirized so successfully by the Scream series that it will be hard for anyone to do it again; but if necessary, you will have to find a new way to increase the tension. The woman has been blinded, as a man has been made to be stalked by a woman. But what if the stalker exists inside the mirrors and can only reach him at arms length? What if he gets a knife?
The child who is a mother is no longer a mother
The boy says, “That’s not my mom.” A cocky doctor says, “It’s all in your mind, kid: Mommy takes the kid, and the next day, both mommy and kid give the doctors stars far away. This was a staple in paranoia movies.” from 1950s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders from Mars, and was given a new lease on life in Dark Skies. It takes some serious thinking to give it a fresh perspective. What if it’s the pets that are being taken?, and only children realize?
The experiment went wrong
They say things like “Morality is for lesser mortals” and “The end justifies the means.” Then their creation jumps up and bites them. Think of all the movie versions of Frankenstein or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and you can’t go wrong. A more recent example was Beau Bridges at Sandkings, the pilot of the modern Outer Limits. Anyone planning to use this scenario should really know some scientists. Many of them are stranger than their fictional counterparts and provide excellent material for stories.
the crowd of villagers
Sometimes there is a ringleader, like an old woman whose grandson has been murdered. Other times it’s just an angry mob chanting “rhubarb” and waving torches. Perhaps the best example is actually in a parody, Young Frankenstein. How about trying a quiet mob? I can’t think of a new way to do this that would be scary, but maybe you can do better.
The priest who has lost faith
There are two ways this can go. The creature says “Your feeble god means nothing to me” and kills the priest in a particularly gory fashion. Or the creature says “Your weak god means nothing to me” and the priest goes up to the base and chases the creature away. There are good examples of the former in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and John Carpenter’s The Fog. Could you try to get the creature to banish the priest to hell? I haven’t seen that…yet.
Running through the woods in the dark
People are running in the dark, yelling things like “Mulder, where are you?” and waving lanterns, followed all the while by a malevolent presence in the trees. This is also known as The Blair Witch Project. The idea was taken to its extreme on Pitch Black, where there was no hope of even dawn. A variation would be to do it in daylight, but Big Arnie covered that in Predator. How about having the monster as an urban creature that is actually afraid of the woods when chased? Time for that angry mob again, perhaps?
Playing with the dark forces
Someone says, “Let’s play on Grandma’s Ouija board.” The next thing you know, a planchette is flying across the room on its own. This idea has been on TV a lot recently and usually involves scantily clad girls, in shows like Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How about a character who mouths the words while reading them, calling the beast that by accident?
The love of a good woman.
The monster dies an ignominious death and someone says: “It was beauty that killed the beast.” Our caveman ancestors probably told this around campfires. In the movie it goes back to at least 1933 and King Kong. More recently, there was a variation on the Beauty and the Beast TV series and even the Disney movie of the same name. Why not try to make beauty fall in love first while the beast never succumbs? You’d need to find a good resolution for the story, but then again, you’re a writer, so it’ll be easy 🙂
let’s divide
Everyone knows that the monster is somewhere, but someone says, “We’re off to explore that dark place. Go the other way and we’ll meet up later.” Why does everyone always think it’s a great idea? Just watch Buffy TVS and count how often the gang gets lost. Or she goes back to Scooby’s original gang and watches as Shaggy and Scooby get separated every episode. Why not have them stay together for a change? Or maybe they keep in touch via cell phones to fool the bad guys. Or better yet, what about a monster that can split and be in two places at once?
I am free
The monster has been vanquished, the victor turns to the other survivors for cheer, and is suddenly bitten to pieces by the reborn monster. There are good examples in Starship Troopers and Deep Rising. One way to subvert this would be to have another monster save your victim? Or how about doing something brave and getting your monster to die first time?
Conclusion
I’m off to write my new script “Chomp!” It begins when a mob of angry villagers storms the laboratory of a mad scientist who has been dabbling in powers man is not meant to understand. The priest with the mob is killed by a “creature” that escapes into the woods.
One year later, 10 nubile adolescents are shipwrecked on the island. They split up to search the area and found themselves being chased by a mutated half-man, half Komodo dragon-man-beast. Soon there is a lot of running through the woods at night and a tense scene in which a blonde is trapped in the ruins of the laboratory.
The big climax comes when the last two teenagers face the monster. The boy believes that he has killed him and turns around in triumph, only for the beast to rise up and rip him apart.
In a poignant final scene, the last girl cradles the monster’s head in her lap and cries as it dies.
Do you think it will sell? If your answer is “No”, what would you do to make it work?