How to Write to Subgenres

The difference between a scary movie and a SPACE scary movie!

In a previous post, I talked about the efficiency of scene work. This was an extension of James Cameron defending some self-indulgent skyfish flying swimming/whatever in Fern Gully: The Way of Water. His stance was opposed to the very common rhetoric that teaches/says that every scene must be written to advance the plot. He argues you should see characters living in their worlds.

My response was one of agreement, though I am opposed to a 15 minute beauty flyby unless you’re inspecting the Enterprise-A. I would argue your scene work should be centered on the idea of doing, MINIMUM, one or more of these four things:

1. advancing the plot

2. deepening a character or advancing their personal arc

3. building the world of the script

4. exemplifying the genre

What does it mean to “exemplifying the genre?” Every genre comes with hallmarks that it is known for. Usually they focus on tone, setting, a handful of expected tropes, and some sort of old school literary allegory. Bit in the simplest terms possible, writing to genre means a comedy has jokes, a scifi-story should have some fancy technology, etc.

Horror movies are obviously based around being scary, which— self plug, I have a whole lot of thoughts on here:

13 Thoughts on Scares

If you used to hang out in a video store, or have searched through categories on a streaming service, you know the basic Hollywood genres. There’s of course outliers and mash-ups of genres, but one of the reasons horror has never fallen out of fashion is because you can make any genre scary. Horror is like the X of scary movie algebra. Take any genre, add X, get a new type of scary movie.

A subgenre, officially, is what it sounds like, a subcategory of a particular drama. Genre: Western. Subgenre: Civil War, revenge, golden age, etc. Genre: Comedy. Subgenres: buddy, odd couple, slapstick, college, etc. If you're reading this I don't need to break down horror.

Here’s where it gets fun though— another way to look at subgenre is to apply a specific trope, setting, situation, or set-up. if you caught the other thread, people started to get awfully weird and specific, and not to toot my own horn, but I managed to find a movie in most cases that represented it. You could say scifi-horror is a subgenre. That could cover anything from Frankenstein to Alien. But you could also be very specific and say space-based cosmic horror is a sub-genre (and I'd say go watch Event Horizon).

Regardless of how we define it, we’re talking about the idea of introducing very specific settings, tropes, and situations, maybe from another genre, and using them as in conjunction with the main genre. I’m starting to fell like a food blogger hiding a recipe after my blog post about going to Tuscany or whatever, so how do we write subgenres effectively?

Assuming horror is the root genre, (cause why else would you listen to me) you're going to want to still make sure all those hallmarks come first. Your setting, your scares, your key character-horror beats, these come first. Next, look at headline tropes/visuals/vibes of your subcategory. If it’s another genre, look to its hallmarks. If it’s a specific set-up, what are the elements of that set up?

The next step is to look for two key things: how are these two things alike, and how are they actively contrary? The ones that are alike are easy— merge those ideas. The ones that are contrary are the thing that’s going to make your subgenre stand out, so lean into it. I recognize that is is very academic and conceptual, so let me throw out a few examples.

Frankenstein is a perfect example of horror-scifi. On the horror side of things, it’s very gothic setting— castles, dungeons, thunder, lightning, etc. Forget the actual story of how it was written and lets say I'm Mary Shelley. I start my planning knowing I want this to be a gothic horror story with a monster, and the creature is humanoid, so I know the core theme/allegory is going to play around the ideas of where does man end and monster begin.

Knowing I want scifi elements, I start making a list of known scifi tropes, set-ups, themes, etc. I’m looking for the things that work well together, and the things that seem contrary. Things that work well: the scifi trope of a man made by technology, the hubris of man playing god, technology gone wrong, etc. These would match up perfectly to a humanoid monster unsure of what it is. Something wildly contrasting— a scifi high tech setting— devices, sciency things, doesn’t seem to jive with the whole gothic vibe. But, that extreme contrast is something that would really be striking-- so we put a fancy high tech lab inside an old castle, mad scientist style.

Let me try a more off-beat example or two… two of my favorite subgenres— spaceploitation and mall-horror.

Is mall-horror a for real literary genre? No. It's just my love of horror movies set in malls. Dawn of the Dead. Chopping Mall. A good chunk of Night of the Comet. Phantom of the Mall. The definition is pretty clear-- a horror movie that is set in a mall. My horror tropes, if set in a mall, would preclude things like gothic castles, spooky forests, or haunted houses. I’m definitely going to be modern. So what sort of horror tropes align with this? The first that comes to mind is teen-angst, a mainstay of horror. There’s also mass-consumerism, commercialism, and all the tropes you get with social critique horror films. These all go great together as this is what a mall represents.

So what doesn’t belong? Looking at my scare-topics, one of the best scares you can employ is the violation of a safe space. A mall, in theory, is a safe space if you buy into safety in numbers and the fact that most of the time in horror, you put your leads into isolation. Granted— a crowded social space can turn to chaos quickly with a shooter or other horrible event— but that bit of sad reality put aside, the idea of a monster of some sort in a big safe public space is jarring. So throw some zombies, comet mutants, or laser bots in there.

Another contrarian set-up: as a public space, malls are designed with the movement of crowds in mind. In theory, there are a dozen ways to get in and out. It's pretty much a standard of horror, when isolating your lead, to trap them. The idea of being trapped in a mall seems absurd, but if you remove the crowds and lock all the doors that absurdity becomes uniquely scary.

Hopefully this doesn't read as just rando things mashed together-- it's all about what tropes you can combine or contrast to make things scary in unique ways. You only need a few, and if they click, you're golden and it holds together.