: Re: Mixing humour with horror in fiction I got into trouble last year for submitting an assignment (Masters in Creative Writing) that included a story that sprinkled elements of humour (think Despicable

@Nickens642

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There's nothing fundamentally wrong with mixing genres. But like many things in writing, the issue is, do you do it well or poorly.

Of course I haven't read the story you wrote for your creative writing class. I have no way of knowing if you did it well and it was a brilliant story and your teacher is a stick in the mud, or if you did it poorly and the teacher's objection was not that you mixed genres, but that you did so ineffectively.

It's not at all uncommon to mix some humor into an otherwise very serious story. Shakespeare's Hamlet, for example, mixes a creepy ghost story with a political thriller, and inserts moments of humor to break the tension.

Almost every genre gets mixed with romance at one point or another. People add a romantic subplot to almost any kind of story.

I've seen horror stories that have early scenes where they build it up like some terrible thing is about to happen, the axe murderer is about to jump out and kill someone or whatever ... and then suddenly it turns out no, it's little brother pulling a prank. And the audience laughs. And it accomplishes a very useful thing: It means that the next time they build up to a horror scene, the audience isn't quite sure if this one will turn out to be another false alarm or if it will be real. If done well, it increases the tension because, like in real life, the audience doesn't KNOW that there is a crazed axe murderer.

Of course if overdone, if we never get to the real horror, the audience is going to feel disappointed and cheated. If every scene of horror is followed by cheap laughs, it breaks the mood.

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