18 of the Best Subgenres and Tropes for Scary Books
Bella Rose Emmorey
book editor, rogue behaviorist, digital marketer, writer, brand builder, plant aunt, and cheese enthusiast.
Amazon is actually doing something right for authors nowadays! They’re including a wider range of subgenres and tropes for scary books, which of course helps readers find books to suit their tastes and helps authors get discovered.
Whether you’re a career author looking for ideas for your next horror novel or you’re a first timer trying to figure out where your book belongs in the Amazon categories, we’ve got some info that’ll help.
Why do subgenres and tropes matter for scary books?
Because labeling your book as "scary" doesn't do jack spit for telling a potential reader if they’d like it. There’s not a reader alive who only wants "scary" in the book’s description before deciding to read it.
We all have tastes and preferences. I like scary if it includes serial killers, but if you write books about demons or possession, I’m out. Both are scary. One I will not buy.
Ensuring you have the right subgenres and tropes for your scary books helps the right readers find you and helps you understand where to publish on Amazon.
The latter alone can dictate your book’s sales numbers.
9 Core Subgenres for Spooky Books
Your $ subgenre $ differs from a trope. The subgenre is essentially the elements of your story, along with the setting and some of the plot. Importantly, the trope can help dictate the subgenre, but the subgenre won’t necessarily change a trope.
For example, you can have a Dark Fantasy horror novel that also includes the Creepy Kids trope, which we’ll get into down below.
Keep in mind that most scary books will fall under the "horror" genre, so many of these are subgenres within that and differ from each other.
1. Ghost fiction
Ghost stories are plentiful! It’s one of the largest subgenres for scary books and you can find ghost stories ranging from children’s to young adult. People love to tell these around a campfire, but they’re also classics to read.
Amazon has an entire category dedicated to $ ghost fiction$ and they can range from your average haunted house to romance stories.
2. Psychological thriller/horror
The mind benders will always mess a person up. They’re scary because they can happen! Psychological thrillers and horrors make for some of the most interesting scary books, because you can do just about anything.
Take any mental illness and twist and bend until you have a story that’ll keep a reader up at night, questioning their own sanity.
This scary subgenre often involves other people inflicting psychological trauma on the main character. Trapping them, things happening to them, or the main character being caught up in uncovering disturbing details about someone and is now in the middle of it.
3. Occult horror
Occult horror is another popular subgenre in scary books. It can include things like witchcraft, dealings with Satan, paganism, spirituality, mysticism, and other arcane matters.
Most scary stories you read as a kid could fall under this subgenre, and it’s one of the more popular ones to write.
4. Supernatural / Paranormal horror
Supernatural and paranormal are basically siblings. Or at least cousins. They’re similar even though they’re separate genres, but you can find a lot of books where the author has listed them as both.
Essentially, the difference between the two is this:
The supernatural subgenre deals with phenomena that could never be explained or proven. The afterlife, demons, spirituality.
Paranormal stories deal with things beyond our current explanation capabilities, but that could potentially be proven someday. For example, Big Foot is a myth—but if he exists, we could find him. Aliens likely exist in some form, but we currently don't have hard, tangible proof of them. These are paranormal.
A book like a ghost story could be considered both paranormal and supernatural.
5. Gothic horror
Imagine horror, but with thick eyeliner and always wearing black.
I’m kidding. That’s not even what being gothic is about. Specifically with this scary book subgenre, gothic horror refers to stories that center on more dramatic, horrific themes, including love and strong emotions. It’s a haunting look at real-life tragedies in terms of theme, but it can still include supernatural and paranormal creatures.
Dracula is an example of a gothic horror, as is The Legends of Sleepy Hollow.
6. Survivor horror
Staying alive is scary. Or rather, the attempt at staying alive is. Survivor horror stories are a great subgenre for scary books because they play on an emotion we all feel deeply.
Running away when your life is in danger has a ton of tension. There’s plenty of opportunity to introduce characters who don’t make it. The "count down" element of a larger cast as it dwindles to one—or none—makes for a page-turner.
7. Dark Fantasy
Dark fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, but it can actually be really scary. I’m not talking about your fantasy having blood and death meaning it’s "dark" fantasy.
$ Dark fantasy can also be a subgenre of horror$ if it contains dark magic, evil creatures, and disturbing imagery. Oftentimes, you’ll find dark fantasy that deals with sacrifices and other dark elements like torture, psychosis, and generally unhinged magic.
8. Vampire
Technically, vampires are paranormal and can fall under that subgenre, but because they’re so popular to write scary books about, they have an entire $ horror subgenre on Amazon dedicated to them$ .
Of course, we know there are plenty of romantic vampire stories, but there are still people who maintain the horror of vampires, who are decidedly un-sexy. But even Sheridan Le Fanu, the OG vampire writer, understood the inherent horniness of the spectacle, as is clear in his slutty sapphic short story Carmilla (1871), which predates even Dracula.
Speaking of:
9. Erotic horror
I imagine there are some authors that even combined the vampire and erotic horror subgenres and write some pretty wicked stories with them.
Hey, to each their own! Write your sexy scary stories! Amazon even allows you to niche down and focus on what kind of creatures you want to read about, so you can see that these selections are the most popular.
Amazon wouldn’t make it a feature if it wouldn’t be used—and be effective.
9 Tropes to Use in Your Scary Books
Let me start right away by saying that "stereotypes in scary stories" and "tropes" are not the same thing. We don’t need more people of color or the couple having sex dying off first, okay?
Tropes are different in that they’re common and recurring plot devices, settings, and character scenarios used in a story to help attract a specific type of reader to it. You’ll always make it your own, even if it is a recognizable trope.
If you’re trying to write your scary book and aren’t sure how to craft the story, here are a few tropes to use and work around.
1. Stuck in a Hotel
You can just use a hotel as a setting and get away with calling it a trope.
Scary stories that take place in a hotel are always popular. They’re distant enough from real life, while still containing an element of "it’s possible" to make it even scarier.
There are countless books with stories of character becoming trapped in a hotel while guests are slowly disappearing, one by one. Try your hand at this one, and combine it with another trope for a unique twist!
You could try using the Creepy Mirrors trope along with this one.
2. Carnival Carnage
Perhaps it’s the fact that carnivals come and go that makes them so scary. That, or the people who work there are a bit off their rockers. Either way, this is a scary trope you can take and run with.
Or rather, you can take and have your characters run with.
A lot can go into a horror story at a carnival. Rides can stop working, sending characters plummeting to their deaths. People can disappear. Then they can reappear having something wrong with them, walking around like zombies.
3. Isolation
Stranding characters in remote or isolated locations, like a cabin in the woods, a remote village, or a deserted island, creates a sense of vulnerability and intensifies the fear of being alone with no escape.
Doing this and placing them in a foreign country can add another layer of scary to the book.
The point with these is to separate your main characters from society as a whole so they can only rely on themselves to escape the situation they’re in.
4. Creepy Kids
We all know this trope. It’s extra scary because kids are supposed to be innocent. When we give children creepy and dangerous qualities, it’s even more terrifying than if an adult had those same qualities.
Use the creepy kids trope in your next scary book. See how you can take this trope and turn it on its head, making it more unique than what’s out there right now.
5. Mirrors
The story of Bloody Mary is one almost all of us grew up knowing. There are a ton of other scary stories featuring mirrors and they’re creepy because we all have mirrors in our home. Whenever we read a scary story with this trope, we end up walking around a bit more aware of just how many mirrors we own.
Almost always, this trope involves something coming out of the mirror, or something trapped inside that you don’t want to awaken.
6. Rituals & Sacrifices
Some teens go out into the woods. They sacrifice their friend for riches. Horror ensues.
We all know this trope. The main character—or someone close to the main character—sacrifices something or is at risk of being sacrificed for some gain. But with this trope, it’s more about the consequences of the ritual.
Most often, the characters aren’t aware of what they got themselves into by opening a doorway with the sacrifice. They might get what they want, but they’ll also get a lot more than they thought.
Jennifer’s Body is a movie with this trope. Let’s just keep out the virgin-ness of these sacrifices. It’s overused, and stupid, because sex (or a lack thereof) doesn’t do anything to a person to make them more or less worthy of sacrificing.
7. Curses & Legends
There’s a lot of creative freedom with these tropes for spooky books. You can completely make up the curse, the parameters, and how it gets broken.
You can also dictate the legends and how they were created. Perhaps a legend leads into a curse and somehow it has to get broken. You’ll see curses specifically a lot in scary stories because teenagers, for some reason, always have to test the curses!
8. Nightmares
The stories in which the main character has a nightmare and then that nightmare turns out to be real are all too familiar. What makes this trope interesting is that the dreams can be based on whatever you decide.
They could have had a run-in with a spirit. They could have moved into a new house and the dreams began. They could even turn a specific age and be the descendent of some cursed relative and now are receiving nightmares.
This trope works best when used in combination with another. I have an example of that below!
9. Haunted Objects
It’s accidental, usually. The main character stumbles upon an item in an attic or buys it at some thrift store or even steals it from that abandoned mansion outside of town. No matter how they get it, there is something else "attached" to the object.
It’s haunted and whatever’s haunting it wreaks havoc in the life until it’s satiated, or returned to where it belongs.
This is another trope for scary stories that does well when merged with another, which I’ll show you how to do now.
Generate a Story with Subgenres & Tropes
Let’s take it to the test now! Here are just a few examples of how, if you need a scary story idea to write about, you can mix and merge the subgenres and tropes to create a unique and interesting concept.
1. Ghost fiction + Curses + Isolation: Your main character is on vacation to an island in the Bahamas. The family takes a private excursion with two guides and the boat’s driver to an isolated island with a single castle on it. There are rumors of a ghost that wanders the property, awaiting the one who finally breaks the centuries-old curse. The requirements to break such a curse are horrifying.
2. Survivor horror + Creepy kids: Your main character is babysitting for a new family in town. There are seven children, all under the age of 12, and the property is fifty acres just outside of town. One kid starts acting strange as soon as the sun sets. The others soon follow, until your main character has to run and hide on the property, avoiding whatever fate awaits them if they stay around those kids.
3. Erotic horror + Haunted objects + Nightmares: Your main character keeps having…odd dreams. No, nightmares. Ever since they visited that little cabin shop on vacation a week ago. The talisman looked unique, and it seemed to capture the light in its all-black body as it hung in the window above their bed. But the nightmares your main character’s been having leave them waking up satisfied, but feeling scared. Then one night, a creature from those nightmares shows up in their bedroom.
See! It’s easy. Now you try. Use these subgenres and tropes for scary books to formulate a plot concept and start $ planning your novel now$ !
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