Kill Your Characters Profile Guide

🔪 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕷𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖘

Here at the Kill Your Characters Support Group, we aim to promote all things dark and macabre. Sometimes, horror just isn't enough, and some characters from other subgenres have to die, too! Here's a breakdown of what we're looking for here:

🕸️ Gothic - If you love castles, people in peril, vulnerable people in distress, and haughty nobility with some deadly family secrets, then this is the genre for you. Think Dracula, Frankenstein, the Monk, the Castle of Otranto - stylised fiction with a blend of romance and misunderstandings, flawed heroes, and more mysteries than you can keep track of.

🕸️ Slasher - Murder everywhere! If your characters just can't seem to keep their footing in life, this is your place. Knives in the night, camping trips gone wrong, and some good old fashioned family cannibals make up this slashing genre and evoke images of Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. As dark and twisted as you like, just don't expect the whole cast to make it to the end.

🕸️ Grimdark - Dystopian worlds with a blend of gruesome fantasy are just a few bones needed to build a grimdark world. Books like Gideon the Ninth, the Poppy War, and A Game of Thrones bring to life the morbid and murderous worlds of necromancy, dragons, and war in settings that would make Mordor look like a fun place to stay.

🕸️ Dark Fantasy - Veering away from the dystopian aspects we reach Dark Fantasy, a genre that captures original worlds in eagre-to-torture detail. Whether you have medieval elves and werewolves, or gods and monsters fighting one another, these invented lands bring nighttime stories right under the bed. Shadow and Bone, the Lights of Prague, and Coraline send chills up your spine as you sneak through maddening worlds of magic and wonder.

🕸️ Psychological - Psychological horror delves into the abyss of the mind, testing the limits of our human capabilities. Serial killers and their victims, cat-and-mouse games, and trails of bodies across case after case leave little room to breathe. Books like The Silence of the Lambs, The Shining, and American Psycho all deal with the scariest monsters: ourselves.

🕸️ Cosmic - H. P. Lovecraft brought Cthulhu to life and inspired hundreds of deliciously crafted tales of scientific madness across the world. Podcasts abound that tickle the perceptions of the human mind and open us up to more alien influences. Stories like Annihilation, The King in Yellow, and House of Leaves all display the uncanny ability to drives us insane with things we can't understand, and sometimes with something as innocent as your own house...

🕸️Folk - Are villagers luring and killing your poor characters to their isolated homes? Appalachian monsters lurking beneath the surface of a strange town? Mysterious pagan religions dominating the scene of your story? Folk horror comes in many sizes, but shining novel examples include the Lair of the White Worm, the Shadow over Innsmouth, and the Folk Eaters.

🕸️ Paranormal - A wide genre of ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and more, these stories go beyond the mortal world and bring to life superstitions and myths. The Haunting of Hill House, the Amityville Horror, and The Hellbound Heart are shining examples of things coming to life that shouldn't, things you thought you once trusted.

🕸️Erotic Horror - Sexy, steamy, and a lot a bit scary, these stories bring to life all the complicated feelings you had for the monsters in the movies. Whether vampires, werewolves, or simply the tortured villains, erotic horror bridges the abyss between passion and terror, especially with stories like the Contortionist, the Curse of Dracula, and Lost Souls.

Of course, there are more genres and subgenres for every kind of horror, and while we would love to include them all, we are confident most can fit under these brief categories. If you are unsure where you think your story would go, don't hesitate to ask us here or fill out this form and see what the cards have to say...

Reading List submissions here and in the online comments: https://forms.gle/RZUAsafZkzqbDaSJ9