First of all, defining a work into a genre is tricky. Most books belong to most than one genre, others don't belong to any and end up "inventing" a whole new genre.

I personally have a small grudge against dark fantasy because I feel that it is not well-defined enough and being used to draw readers. "Look at this, it's not regular boring fantasy. It's (suspense) DARK fantasy!".

But, rants aside, yours is a great question so here's my answer. Please notice that there's no "genre manual" and this is based mostly into what I feel is common knowledge.

Dark Fantasy

Dark fantasy is generally considered to be deeply unsettling and/or scary fantasy. It takes many elements of high-fantasy and puts a twist on them to accomplish this.

The most common twists are in the lines of "the hero is actually an asshole" or "the villain is just a guy trying to survive like us all". This kind of twist makes the story more gray in moral terms and that is "dark", because the choices the heroes make keep haunting them and us, readers. There are also very weird, but surprisingly effective twists. I recently saw a story where medieval knights rode dinosaurs instead of horses.

Other twists might affect or discuss the typical stereotypes from traditional fantasy. I have seen a dark fantasy book written from the POV of orcs. This is "dark" not only because archetypal orcs are brutal killing machines, but also because they are the heroes and you are rooting for them. You want them to be brutal killing machines. And that's scary, discovering such bloodlust within yourself. The orc main characters are also effective because they put everything you thought you knew about fantasy through another perspective. What if the Fellowship of the Ring were the bad guys, after all?

Dark fantasy also is frequently paired with a glorification of violence rarely found on more traditional fantasy. While a "light fantasy" book might simply say an enemy was killed, a dark fantasy one will say it was brutally stabbed, dark blood spraying from the uneven cut while its limbs trembled and an horrid dying cry came out of his mouth while it drowned on its own blood.

There's also huge emphasis on the various forms of suffering and human imperfection. Expect a lot of cruel characters, ugly characters, crippled characters, homeless characters, outlaws, prostitutes, assassins, tyrants, war, plague, pollution, famine, death, you name it. If it's something bad (or an indicator of something bad), there's a good chance it will show up in dark fantasy.

Paranormal

As the name implies, paranormal stories focus on something from out of what is considered "normal".

However, "normal" is an incredibly subjective matter. What is normal for you might not be normal for your characters and vice versa. Lord of the Rings has dwarves, elves and dragons, things very far from our reality, but the characters barely bat an eye at them.

Paranormal stories are about the paranormal element, why it is paranormal and what consequences it brings to what was normal. Paranormal things disturb the normal reality and that's what makes them disturbing. Ghosts are disturbing because they can do very unusual things (traversing walls being the classical example), they are beyond any explanation and they prove there is life beyond death, which raises a lot of unsettling questions. When you are being pursued by a ghost, you're not only being followed by a sheet with holes for eyes. You are being pursued by something you cannot evade, who can kill or harm you, even being dead itself, and challenges your very notion of reality.

Also, keep in mind that simply showing something out of the reality is not enough. If a ghost shows up, says "hey" and then disappears, never to be seen again, it is not a paranormal story. It's a story with a paranormal element. For it to be a paranormal story, you have to focus in how the character's reality is being threatened by the paranormal event. Fear and paranoia are good places to start.

---

(0)

Login to post a comment!