Should you avoid Tropes in Horror?

You sit down to read a new horror story, right for the season. When you start to read you find that this story has a monster – a vampire specifically. As you keep reading you may start to become bored, or no longer scared. There are infinite reasons why a story might go awry, but one of the biggest problems with horror stories are tropes. This article will include spoilers to some horror movies, comics and stories.

Know your tropes so you can avoid them, or not. 

Let’s take a look at different tropes and cliches that are long overused in the horror genre. If done wrong, they will push readers away,  but this doesn’t mean that you should always avoid them. If you do want to write about one of these tropes, find ways to make them more unique or deviate from the usual conclusion to said trope. Repeating what others have done with tropes is typically the first way you fail at writing with tropes.

The key to using tropes or cliches is to use them in a way that the audience will not figure out the whole story the moment they appear. Plot twists are a literary technique that is often used in horror movies to reveal a pivotal moment or catch the audience off guard. Jordan Peele’s movie “Get Out” is a prime example of this. The love interest of the protagonist is a seemingly well-intended damsel in distress who conceals her true intentions.

At a glance, one might think that Rose Armitage would be the final girl, the innocent woman who will survive the true villain of the story, or in this case, survive along with the protagonist, Chris Washington. During her interactions with other people, she has come to the defense of her boyfriend Chris, especially when it came to racism targeted against him by the police, family members, or other characters. This aids in the idea that Rose is well-meaning and on Chris’ side. The whole movie, while trying to make Chris comfortable, she is taking his side and will often be the one to call out any wrong behaviors from others which Chris will not mention out loud, but silently agree with. As the movie progresses to its climax it is revealed that Rose’s intentions were not as supportive as she led on. The whole time while trying to make Chris feel comfortable, she had been making him let his guard down with her and trust her even further. They reveal that the whole family including Rose are the true antagonists and then discard the initial idea that Rose would leave with Chris and therefore survive. This reveal catches the audience completely off guard, as for the whole movie the notion of Rose being on Chris’ side instead of her own family. While plot twists can be common in movies, and therefore need to tread with caution to avoid boring an audience, Get Out used this technique in a way that still creates a compelling story. It is all about how little or much you have revealed about the twist before it happens.

Creature Feature

We all know about the tropes of a paranormal ghost pulling the covers out of the bed, blood-sucking vampires, packs of werewolves, or even that terrifying monster that lives in the sewers. If you want to include these monsters or any of them in your story, try to give them a twist that will make your creature feature stand out.  A great example of the creature feature comes from the 1982 movie The Thing. Even if it starts as an alien-like creature, the twist is that the ‘thing’ takes the form of its victims, making any other human or animal character in the story a potential enemy. This creates tension between characters and adds suspense.

Gigantic rabbits are the feature monsters from the 1972 movie Night of the Lepus. While in reality, rabbits are small, soft, and adorable, in the movie they twist the very characteristics of said animal and morph them into gigantic, human-eating monsters. This twist of the very nature of an animal can be quite alarming for a viewer as they will have never expected such an adorable animal to be as frightening. While creature features may be a great aspect of a horror story, things such as morphing an unsuspecting being into a terrifying monster might be more successful at scaring a reader than they would be to present the usual werewolf howling at the moon.

Too much flight, not enough fight

How many times have you watched a movie where the main character keeps on running away instead of fighting back? The fight or flight response is an ingrained reaction which has helped us survive through centuries. It is the primal reaction when facing the unknown. This response is activated when facing a threat, releasing great amounts of adrenaline. Although responses can vary due to the release of adrenaline, people will typically choose to fight back at a threat or flee from it. Not everyone will fight back or react when facing a killer clown, but having them flee in every single encounter with danger makes the story repetitive and will not only frustrate the reader but bore them.

A character won’t always do exactly what you expect them to do in a movie, since that would make them too predictable. If you want to make a character’s response to a threat more believable, try to think about how you or someone you know would react to the danger in your story. You might not have the character fight off the initial threat, but maybe as the encounters continue, the character may have more courage to fight back. It is important to consider pacing when deciding if a character should fight or flight. In order for a character that usually flees a threat to fight it, there needs to be significant character development to make this change believable.

A good example of characters fighting back and coming up with diverse solutions are the band members of the movie Green Room. From the start they fight back those who hold them hostage despite not being that successful. The scariest aspect of this movie is having them fight back and not knowing if this following encounter with the antagonist will be the one that will kill the characters or give them a chance to survive.

Separating from the pack

Dumb decisions can cost your reader’s interest. Try to create more difficult situations where the characters are challenged to make conscientious decisions. Create complex problems so the reader will be intrigued and come up with solutions on their own. For example, instead of breaking off a group in what seems like a very obvious segway to each character getting killed off by the monster, have a situation where the group turns on each other or has a physical separation not caused by their own volition. Foolish decisions can take the reader out of the narrative or disengage with the story entirely. Rather than having the reader question why a family would move into a murder house, make them wonder what will change in the characters after they’ve experienced the haunted horrors of the house and what it will ultimately reveal about themselves.

The Final Girl

Usually found in slasher movies, characters that are the last ones to face the enemy or even survive the enemy are known as “final girls”. While there are movies with the “final boy” trope such as Final Destination, the final girl trope is exploited even further, as the final girl is more of the opposite from the villain or “man behind the mask”, while the final boy tends to be a mirror of the same villain. So even if the final girl gets pushed into an extreme situation, their ‘weakness’ will be perceived as a positive and they rarely take into the traits of the same individual they are running from. 

An example of this trope is in the 1978 movie Halloween with the serial killer Michael Myers. The final girl is Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Even if she does not beat the villain, she will for sure survive the movie, while everyone else will not. One of the theories on the  reason why these survivors are commonly women is due to the expressiveness and screams that they offer to the genre, in a society where it is more accepted for women to visually express their fears and pain rather than men. There is debate about the final girl, like is she good or bad– or is the final girl a positive model?

At times the final girl trope will be connected to a more outdated trope known as the Virgin trope. This trope is based on the idea that a woman who is pure and virginal will most likely survive than those who have already been tainted by lust or evil. Final girls serve as models of innocence, virginity, and morality. They do not engage in explicit sexual activity or partake in illicit drugs or excessive drinking. Their survival past the less moral characters shows their goodness paying off, fighting the monster with a clear head.

A dark horror comedy movie which critiques the stereotypical final girl trope is Jennifer’s Body.  The film highlights the sexist remarks that come with the outdated trope. This story is about a young woman who is sacrificed by a group of men who believe she is a virgin. When the curse goes wrong she gets demonic powers, letting her exact revenge on those who murdered her and any other person who has underestimated or oversexualized her. 

Final girls will not only escape death, but bring terror to the subgenre with their screams. Coined as ‘scream queens’ these actors are commonly known for their incredible vocal range and ability to emit a sense of true fear and goosebumps to whoever hears them scream. 

Haunted House with a Dark History

Haunted houses are a staple of paranormal horror movies, but what lies underneath? These movies are often based on atmospheric horror. Haunted houses typically end up in common suburban neighborhoods, which gives an uneasy feeling to a viewer. The reason for paranormal activity in the house can usually be explained by a mysterious event or character that lived in the house. For example, a person gets murdered, their soul gets trapped, and they will haunt whoever lives there next. To add fear to the already spooky haunted house, try exploring common fears, or even your own. An amazing example of a haunted house is the TV show The Haunting of Hill House. It all starts with the house, but even when the characters abandon the house, it still holds power over them. Trauma lingers not only in the house but everywhere they go. We get to see how each character deals with the horror they experienced in the house they grew up in, and how they handle it. Each character has their own experiences with fear and their common denominator is the haunted house.

Other Tropes to look out for:

• No cell service/dead phone.
• The location with a horrible backstory that the whole town knows about but won’t tell any new visitors. 
• A minority character is killed first. Uses of this trope, whether intentional or not can be seen as racist. Try to avoid this trope.  
• Losing the most important item that was foreshadowed previously.  
• Vengeful spirits coming to haunt the living. 
• Reaching for a weapon that is just out of range. 
• Not making sure that the evil entity is fully dead before leaving it.  
• Ankle grabs. 
• A character deemed crazy that no one believed until it was too late. 
• Acharacter trips and falls when being chased.
• The car won’t start.

Junji Ito

Dream-like horror, with creatures and situations hard to beat, can be found in the works of Junji Ito. Ito has honed the art of manga with characters driven by compulsion. Demonstrating how a situation can change a person at their core. His monsters or creature features are not vampires or zombies, but far more complex monsters that are harder to defeat. His stunning brushwork and detailed descriptions help him explore the subgenres of horror known as body horror and gore.  

Personal recommendations: “The Enigma of the Amigara Fault”, “Tomie”, “Uzumaki”, “The Hanging Balloons”.

You can find some of his works here: https://junji-ito.com/

Carmen Maria Machado

There is a skillful use of atmosphere in Carmen Maria Machado’s stories. With a great memoir and a collection of short stories under her belt, Machado recently dived into the world of graphic novels and has created her first novel “The Low Low Woods”. This novel includes a great sense of uncanny valley with the horrific combination of human and animal creatures. The unknown is explored in this comic with mystery, questioning the appearance of  these horrid creatures and why they appear in this dark and eerie town. This Pennsylvania based author has rendered possible to instill fear in a reader by atmosphere itself.

You can find her work here: https://carmenmariamachado.com/the-low-low-woods-a-graphic-series

Ed Piskor

This is for +18 readers who are really into body horror and gore. Visceral imagery can be alluring but also a useful shock factor for those who read it. As an alternative cartoonist and comics creator, Ed Piskor has previously worked on historically-based comics, such as X-Men Comics: “X-Men Grand Design”. Heavily inspired by Stephen King’s novel “Danse Macabre”, Piskor began work on his project “Red Room”. In this series, he looks into what could be a conspiracy theory or an actual event taking place on the deep web. The story explores people killing others while recording themselves on webcams. 

Personal recommendation: ”Red Room: The Antisocial Network”

Here is a video where Piskor himself explains a bit more about “Red Room: The Antisocial Network” on his co-created YouTube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/watchv=LUtB8KOHoPI&ab_channel=CartoonistKayfabe

You can find and buy Piskor’s work here: https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/red-room-the-antisocial-network

 Learning about tropes may not seem truly pivotal to creating a story, but the moment you understand the different tropes, the easier it gets to write an original story. Should you deviate from tropes? It is really up to you, yet my biggest advice here would be to assess what you know about the tropes, and if you really want to incorporate one into your work, find ways to deviate from it. Explore your characters and their motivations to see if they would most likely fight a problem head-on or run from it. Once you have experienced these tropes, you will know how to deconstruct them and make them your own. 

The HoneyDripper is the Savannah College of Art and Design’s juried comics and illustration blog, dedicated to publishing, promoting, and showcasing the finest in student work.​