Oh I see re-timing. Ooops? Anyway, I can't say now since it's been decades since I picked up a King book but as a teenager I very much liked his ideas. I think it was nhope's comments that resonate best when I think of Stephen King's stories and how he can bring you into the psyche of the average 'not so normal' person. I also remember enjoying Richard Laymon and Dean Koontz - can't remember which one of these got a lot of criticisms for being too formulaic, might have been Koontz. I assume these authors sell because they provide good entertainment to their readers and they didn't need to get over-complicated about it.
I had much this same question in another thread I created. It's difficult to define scary as everyone has their own fears. Blood and gore gets the shock value for certainty but that feels like a cheap out to me personally. Anyone can write the most "horrific" disgusting detailed atrocity or abuse that can happen to people but would you you really want to read that?
I personally don't find masses of gore scary. In the face "Look at my horror story its so scary this lady is in pain Ahhh " Are not scary I find, and I'm sure a lot of people have very vivid imaginations (Must do if we write) horror like this is purely for people who cannot create their own horror, they have to be spoon fed (so to speak) For me horror must give just enough details to paint a picture but leaves enough room for the imagination to play tricks and churn over the information over to create something worse than what was possibly intended. Anything that plays on my mind and leaves me over thinking the situation scares me because then it is engrained into my mind. Even if the writer hasn't told me what I should be scared me and they just gave me tasters it can send shivers down my spine.
I do think there's some merit in work that's designed to be grotesque. To reference film for a moment, I would recommend Audition, Martyrs, and a little-known Hungarian film called Taxidermia. These films are both artful and grotesque and deserve their spot in horror along with more subtle work. To get back to fiction--a book that needs more accolades is Jack Ketchum's Girl Next Door. It's beautifully written, yet horrifyingly repulsive. This isn't the type of material you'll want to watch or read over and over again (once is plenty), but it still has plenty of merits. Extreme horror has gotten a bad rep, and maybe deservedly so. What do people have to draw from but a lot of Z-grade exploitation and genuinely bad slasher films? The quality stuff is hard to find. I guess my point is that extreme horror, while it's probably not designed to scare, can be just as artful as horror that isn't extreme.
I also don't understand why some horror have naked girls being tortured to look scary. Am I suppose to be scared or get a boner. Torture porn should only belong to porn, not in a horror story that is trying to be serious.
