What are the Criteria that Distinguish a Thriller from Horror?
The criteria that come to mind are not exclusive to horror novels, so I'm a little confused and annoyed (annoyed because I find horror novels scary, and yet just cannot define it logically when I try to distill the reasons in words). Some of the criteria that come to mind are:
Blood and gore (also found in war novels)
Death and destruction (war novels)
Fear of the unknown (Crew of a nuclear submarine)
The Supernatural (Beautiful Creatures)
Monsters (Twilight, Warm Bodies).
The powerlessness of the protagonists (crew of a nuclear submarine)
Isolation and loneliness (Count of Monte Christo)
Protagonists who die along the way
Societal chaos and disorder (novels set in a post-apocalyptic world)
Does anyone have any criteria or books to suggest?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/10555. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I was intrigued about the question, so I surfed around and came up with the following notions:
1.
Thriller:
The villains control the plot: they create obstacles/problems that the protagonists must overcome against the clock and while overcoming a personal difficulty/problem. There are usually high stakes.
Horror:
It's not necessarily clear where the obstacles/problems come from, that is, it isn't clear who the villain is. The villains may even be the protagonists themselves.
2.
Thriller:
It produces a sense of excitement or, more to the point, it produces a 'thrill'. There is hope it will end well for the protagonist while there is anxiety/fear about whether they will fail or, more likely, what they'll have to sacrifice to be successful.
In the end, the 'good' will likely win and, if it doesn't, the fiction will bring about a sense of being too close to the general concept of reality's unsatisfying justice.
The important thing is that, by the end, reason and logic pervail in keeping society stable and well-structured. People know the rules and know that breaking them will bring about consequences. If the villains manage to escape those consequences, the fiction becomes closer to reality, but the rules of the society and the world are not endangered.
Horror:
It produces a sense of fear. There may be hope it will end well for the protagonist, but it's less certain whether it will.
If it ends well, there will be this sense of the world having been shaken but it's still possible to come back to normalcy, or a semblance of it. If it ends badly, there will be this sense that the world is shattered and there's no going back to normalcy.
The important thing is that, by the end, reason and logic do not pervail in keeping society stable and well-structured. The rules have been overthrown. Even if they are once more imposed (eg. the villain is punished), it is clearly as a mask to hide the terrifying and unpreditable unknown (eg. a new villain - or the same - may pop up again at any time).
3.
Thriller:
There's a general atmosphere of threat, but a recognisable one. This can include death or life-threatening events, but not necessarily so.
Horror:
There's a general atmosphere of menace, but usually an unrecognisable one.
4.
Both require techniques to build up tension and suspense, as well as plot twists. The difference is in the intensity of responses ellicited.
Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind there are two main types of horror, one of supernatural origin (also known as dark or Gothic fantasy to avoid prejudice associated with the term 'horror') and one of non-supernatural origin (also known as psychological thriller to avoid prejudice associated with the term 'horror')
In reference to H.P. Lovecraft, there is no greater fear than the fear of the unknown so, in the end, one could say that the seminal difference between thriller and horror is that one ellicits fear of known threats while the other ellicits fear of unknown threats.
The tools to create the fear (and the excitement one derives from it) are fundamentally the same; whereas the theme and effect are different.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27353. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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(This is better now that it's been edited...)
It may sound odd, but I think the main criterion is how the story treats death.
If death is one possible threat among many (being captured, being tortured, the macguffin falling to the enemy, blackmail, heartbreak, public exposure, humiliation, political scandal, strategic losses, military losses, code being broken, plague being released), I'd call it a thriller.
If death or near-fatal injury is the main threat (nurse threatening to chop off feet, having to cut off your hand to get out of a bear trap, running through the woods to get away from chainsaw-wielding maniac, serial killer, rabid dog trying to break into car, psychotic supernatural clown drowning you in sewer), I'd call it horror.
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A genre is a promise from the publisher to the reader about the kind of experience that the book will give them. The definitions of genres therefore are not technical, they are emotional. A couple fighting monsters in Arizona in 2073. Is it romance, horror, or sci fi? It all depends on the kind of experience it gives. If the experience is romantic, it is a romance. If the experience is creepy or scary it is horror. If the experience is futuristic and sciencey, it is science fiction.
To put it another way, is a Tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Technically, biologically, it is a fruit. But it tastes like a vegetable. So it is sold as a vegetable.
Your novel is whatever genre it tastes like, no matter what its technical characteristics may be.
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