There's An Awfully Fine Line...

>> Friday, August 22, 2008

...between fantasy and horror, at this point in my short story. I'm writing the first battle scene, and after some struggle, I need my main character to kill one of the cows in a way that sort of shows just how much power she has and what kind of person she really is. I have several ideas, some more gruesome than the others. I'm afraid of making it too gruesome or macabre in places, lest my story be recategorized to horror instead of fantasy in the short story contest I'll enter this in. I don't want to become known as a horror writer, because that's not what I consider myself. I don't write horror, I write fantasy.

However, given how many people will enter the contest, the chances of my story winning are low, given the odds. I could then try and market the story as a dark fantasy if I so chose.

I always wonder, though: what is the difference between dark fantasy and horror per se? The line looks awfully blurry sometimes.

1 comments:

Unknown August 22, 2008 at 12:53 PM  

To me, the difference between horror and dark fantasy is that in horror the characters are besieged by evil that does exist in real life. In dark fantasy, they are besieged by evil that are created from fantasy (killer cows for instance). That's my thought anyway.