Summary Of What Is The Horror Genre By Sharon A. Russell

Although monsters are a significant feature of many horror stories, in “What is the Horror Genre?” the author, Sharon A. Russell discusses how there are more effective way to explain the categorization of the horror genre itself. Russell mentions five ways horror can be categorized: suspense, setting, organization, source of horror, and theme. The first category, suspense, talks about how tension is created because of the readers’ knowledge of the horror genre in that they know that the characters always meet something bad. This creates the build up of anticipation to see what happens next. Another way Russell categorizes horror is the setting. The setting of a story connects to the events that occur, and there are traditional settings in horror,