The Thin Line Between Horror and Romance
Author Rebekah Faubion discusses the thin line between horror and romance, including the commonalities in both.
On the surface, romance and horror look as different aesthetically as Enid Sinclair and Wednesday Adams. Romance novels are packaged with brightly colored confectionary delight, a couple in a clutch filled with yearning and connection, and cover copy that details the obstacles standing in the way of the couple’s promised happily-ever-after ending.
Horror is dressed up like romance’s weird goth cousin: rarely presenting a couple (even if the book contains a romantic subplot), often drenched in richer shades, and with some sort of ominous something that lets the prospective reader know that the insides might give them nightmares. There is no promise of a happy ending.
Exhibit A: My very own book covers.
As a Gemini rising (twin of the zodiac), writing both horror and romance novels is a duality that’s perfectly attuned to my nature. And I’d like to let you in on a little secret learned from spending years immersed in both genres:
Romance and horror have more in common than meets the eye.
Every good story needs to keep the reader turning pages. From a craft perspective, there are a lot of ways to create that desire. Hook them fast (meet cute in a romance, inciting incident in horror). Keep a steady pace while doling out the thing readers came to the genre for (thrills of all kinds!) but also withholding just enough to keep them enticed. Employ short chapters or cliffhanger chapter-endings—you get it. We have our tricks, and we love to use them.
But whether it’s pining or anxiety, whether it’s chemistry or the creeps, getting a reader to the edge of their seat is a staple of both the romance and the horror genre. It’s part of what brings us to these stories in the first place. Sure, we may know in a romance that eventually we’re guaranteed a happily ever after; in horror, there is a promise of a showdown with the villain/monster/killer. But if we get there too fast, or without enough buildup, the moment falls flat.
The fun is in the yearning, for a kill or for a kiss, and sometimes we can even get both.
You know what they say about love and hate, right? There’s a thin line between them. I know, I know, it’s a cliché, but there’s truth in even the corniest cliches.
The genres of horror and romance exist on that thin line.
Consider the enemies-to-lovers trope, where the lovers start out hating each other, or any number of other popular romance storylines. The story of falling in love is a battle often fought until that first kiss. The fight is the tension, the tug-of-war between the heart and the head, society and desire, responsibility and want. And when two characters on their way to falling head over heels dare to speak to each other, banter is like a boxing match.
In horror, the range of antagonists is broad—it could be a serial killer with a knife, a ghost, a vampire, werewolf, an entity of ancient evil—but the dynamics between the antagonist and the main character can feel very much like a love story gone wrong. It’s a fight not for the heart, but the very life in your blood.
In my novel Lost Girls of Hollow Lake, my main character Evie receives a creepy voice note letting her (and the other Lost Girls) know that someone is out to get them. As they try to uncover what or who the antagonist is, increasingly they are persuaded to engage in the antagonist’s ultimate game: to get the girls back to the island together. Awww.
And it’s in that climactic ending that we get the payoff. Whether that payoff is one of romantic bliss or horrific anguish, both genres promise everything and everyone must come together. The climax is where the battle is won or lost. Often in romance, the climax includes a sexy scene or a romantic grand gesture, or both. The characters crash together, flesh on flesh, finally releasing the reader from the shackles of yearning. The horror climax is usually just as fleshy, but with a lot more blood.
In horror and romance, suspense, tension, and anticipation look very different, but the purpose that they serve in the story is pretty much the same: Get the reader on the edge of their seat, keep them engaged through yearning or yikes, and then satisfy the hell out of them with a climax they won’t soon forget.
Check out Rebekah Faubion's Lost Girls of Hollow Lake here:
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