Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Can disgust be a key component of horror?

The feeling of disgust is often used in horrors, exspecially visual medias (where is arguably easier to shock the audience with great effect). Often horror stories revolve around one scary element...

2 answers  ·  posted 5y ago by Liquid‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question emotions horror
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T11:56:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43911
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T11:28:31Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43911
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T11:28:31Z (almost 5 years ago)
The feeling of disgust is often used in horrors, exspecially visual medias (where is arguably easier to shock the audience with great effect). Often horror stories revolve around one scary element (a villain; a monster; a disease) that carries along a lot of repulsive traits.

The alien in _Alien_ is slimey and it drools a lot; the ambience in _Silent hill_ movies and games presents often narrow corridors, covered in filth; in Stephen King's _Insomnia_ the protagonist has to explore the crampled, dirty nest of the main antagonist, and so on.

Disgusting elements often leverage our natural instinct; e.g. I remembered reading that seeing internal organs up close evokes repulsion since evolution has thaught us that it's not good if those things get out of your body.

## This said, is disgust - rather than fear - enough to be used in an horror story?

Probably some genres of horror have a higher component of repulsive elements (I'm thinking of body horror), but my question holds.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-03-22T07:31:31Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 12