The Trope Thesaurus: Horror

Stephen King's It. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Jordan Peele's Get Out share one major concept. 

They twist tropes to create relationships with monsters. 

No one was more surprised than me to discover that the horror genre kills it with twisting tropes.

Why?

Because the horror genre reflects our fascination with monsters--- zombies, aliens,  or creatures that happen to look like us.

Why do audiences instinctively love tropes? Because they are based on relationships.

But unlike in the romance genre, which focuses on a happily ever after, or the mystery genre, which is about restoring order, the horror genre is about our relationships with monsters.

This book is for more than horror authors; it's for anyone who wants to create complex characters mired in dread and secrets.
       
Join me as we examine:

1). What is horror? What's a trope? Some applicable definitions and examples. How to avoid stereotypes and cliches.
2). An extensive look at how the amnesia trope in horror.
3). Fifty plus trope entries with definitions and examples in current horror movies and series.
4). Practice using goal, motivation, and conflict in conjunction with tropes to create unique horror-centric characters. By analyzing tropes in various horror subgenres, you will learn how to identify tropes.

The horror genre is the study of our relationships with monsters. Personally, I can't think of a better thing to study! Join me as we figure out what goes bump in the night.

From the USA Today Bestselling Author of The Trope Thesaurus comes a unique approach to crafting horror stories.

The Trope Thesaurus has over 200 Amazon reviews. Here is one sample review:

A.Customer
Fuel for thought  Jan 1, 2022
Forget everything you think you know about tropes. The author does a fantastic job of illustrating that not only do the obvious tropes exist in entertainment media, but if you dig deeper, you see a fast treasure trove of tropes bubbling beneath the surface.

She does a fantastic job of breaking down the bigger genres into their tropes, proving that, honestly, all genres share the same story beneath the trappings of the genre. It's about characters and tropes and GMC.

With humor and a deft touch, she explains how to find tropes, twist them, wiggle them, jig them to work for you in a story, and, most importantly, that not all tropes are All Important. Many secondary tropes can do some heavy lifting, too, to create compelling stories that readers will lap up like sugar.

This book is going into my writer toolkit.