Introducing: Editing Horror
I’ve edited a fair amount of fiction over the years, but I’ve never edited horror. I’m not a horror reader and I don’t understand the genre. But ever since I started teaching at Club Ed, I’ve wanted to add a horror class because I know it’s a hugely popular genre and it feels like a missing piece of the puzzle. We have romance, we have mystery/thriller/suspense, we have science fiction and fantasy. But until now, we haven’t talked about how to edit horror.
How to Edit Horror Manuscripts
A while back, veteran editor James Gallagher and I were talking about our genre niches (I edit a lot of romance and so does he), and he remarked that horror and romance are very similar.
Well, you know that piqued my interest! How on earth could horror and romance be similar?
“It’s about the emotional payoff,” he said. (This is not an exact transcript of our conversation). “Readers want to feel the emotional ups and downs of the protagonist. In both romance and horror, the goal of the author is to elicit a specific emotional response from the reader. In horror, that response just happens to be dread.”
This was a light bulb moment for me, and I felt that for the first time I began to understand what horror is about and why readers seek it out. Later, James gave a terrific talk on copyediting for Club Ed, and I realized that he would make a great teacher for how to edit horror. I asked him to join the fun, and he agreed.
I expect there will be many more light bulb moments for all of us when James teaches his class, Editing Horror (starting October 22). I hope you’ll be able to join us!
