Guest Commentary: Horror and Romance, Sitting in a Tree

By Joyce Ellen Armond

Horror and romance? Get out.

Go ahead, say it. Pretty much everyone else does. But let
me try to convince you how charming a couple they would
be.

First off, remember that there is little physiological
difference between the effect of terror and the effect of
sensual arousal. The same thudding pulse, the same
breathless sense of suspense. Horror does it with threat.
Romance does it with sexual tension. With a little
hybridization, an author or filmmaker can create a
positive feedback loop. Create sexual tension between
characters, and you hook an audience’s empathy. Once the
audience cares about the characters, you can ratchet up
the suspense and the threat, delivering a stronger horror
high. The suspense and threat pressure cook the sexual
tension between the characters, so the threat level goes
up. The horror high spirals. The character’s relationship
intensifies. Rinse and repeat.

Okay, I hear you thinking, that’s sort of neat. But come
on, romance fans aren’t going to read about monsters and
zombies and blood and serial killers and mutants…

They already are. The most popular hero in the sub-genre
of paranormal romance is the vampire. Although romance
authors like to spin it by creating alternate explanations
for their hard and handsome bloodsuckers, what we’ve got
is ladies laying down with the undead. And I bet you
didn’t know that a popular series among romance fans
features a heroine sleeping her way through a series of
inhuman hotties, one of whom has tentacles instead of
rippling abs. Tentacles. Consider the horrifically erotic
potential. Romance readers are already primed for
supernatural elements and weird tales.

But while they will accept almost any strangeness if it’s
presented in the context of a romantic relationship, the
happy ending is non-negotiable. We even have a short-hand
for it in the industry: the HEA (happily ever after.)

Horror audiences are looking for endings that echo with
lingering creepiness, ironic reversals and often enough
strewn corpses. Romance audiences are looking for endings
to reassure them that love triumphs over any threat.

This, you think, might be the deal-breaker.

But consider it this way. When I jump between the
horror/suspense and romance aisles I’m often left
unsatisfied by both. I rarely feel safe enough caring for
characters in horror, because there’s a high probability
that one or both will be dead before The End. I mean,
excepting earnest virgins who save the day and mothers who
put up the feisty fight to save their offspring from
Eeeeeeeeeeeeevil, horror has not been kind to women. And
if she gets involved with boys, dear Barbara here comes
the guy with the hook. But then again, romance hasn’t been
traditionally kind to the non-virgin heroine — an
unexpected shared weakness. But while romance has begun to
let women with modern sex lives get the HEA, in its
attempt to keep the genre lady-like, it rarely delivers
the intense experience I’m looking for when I crack a
paperback. Dissatisfaction ensues, and after a while I say
screw the both of you, horror and romance, and go re-read
a favorite out of the genre that does deliver on both
counts, like Stephen Donaldson’s GAP series.

Both horror and romance genres miss the obvious. If a
reader, like myself, is assured by virtue of genre
convention that the main characters in love will survive
to The End, then the author or screenwriter or filmmaker
can pretty much DO ANYTHING to those two characters. There
is virtually no limit to what I will endure on their
behalf, if I know that before the last page they’ll be HEA
and not DOA. This simple revelation opens up a synergy of
genre to create an entertainment experience with maximum
impact on every level.

So will it work? Will there ever be a cross-genre
offspring that makes me scream for two reasons? Whoever
finally gets it right can count my entertainment dollars
on the bottom line. What about yours?

Or maybe what I’m looking for is already out there,
waiting for you to tell me where to find it.