What makes a book scary? It’s hard to say, since there isn’t one answer that could be true for everybody. You’d come across the same problem trying to define good comedy – people either like it or they don’t, and that’s kind of it. But that ambiguity, to me, is what makes the horror genre so fascinating in its potential. Essentially, it’s a study of humans and society. What really makes us tick, as a species? The more we see things in the world that we don’t understand, the more we become obsessed with finding out.
Horror raises questions that demand intimate answers: what, specifically, scares you? Why? Does that affect the way you live? Should it? How do we handle feelings like shame, and guilt, and the understanding of how fragile sanity really is? There’s an exhilarating fascination in reading (or writing) a scary story and exploring the darker, often purposefully overlooked corners of the mind. Horror explores those corners with no holds barred.
And often, discovering your own answers to those questions can yield empowering results. This side of horror fiction is rarely considered when the subject of the literary worth of the genre comes up for debate.
Likewise, the world of teen fiction is no stranger to the ongoing conversation around “literary worth”. Despite YA’s massive literary and commercial successes, opinion pieces that rip apart the validity of YA literature pop up with frustrating frequency across the web. Horror sometimes carries that same burden – the danger of being misunderstood and met with knee-jerk reactions from those who don’t understand what the appeal could possibly be. So, from a distance, it could seem that YA horror would have an especially hard time finding success.
But, with darker fiction, teens are able to find material that exposes hard truths without any sugarcoating, which they can appreciate after being constantly told that their teenage problems are trivial in society. And recently, YA horror has seen a bit of a spike in popularity. Publishers seem less afraid to put out material that tests the boundaries of true terror. And, with the recent reboot of the legendary Fear Street series, it’s as though those gates have opened even wider. For a while, a good amount of YA that was labelled as horror was actually closer to paranormal, but now you can easily find several titles that stay terrifyingly true to their genre.
That being said, there is such a vast amount of territory left to be explored. Content-wise, there are few YA horrors that really push the envelope to the extent of adult horror. I don’t particularly believe that the terror factor needs to be toned down for a novel to be accepted as YA.
So where is the YA equivalent of Hannibal Lector or Patrick Bateman or Norman Bates? Where is the horror mixed with science fiction, the horror mixed with western, the horror mixed with fantasy? The possibilities for cutting-edge horror stories for teens are endless, as is their literary potential.
Amy Lukavics is the author of Daughters unto Devils. Find out more about Amy and her work at her website. Buy Devils Unto Daughters at the Guardian bookshop
