FANTASTIC REALMS

Dark romance can take your readers into the realms of emotional nightmare, says Alex Davis as he explores writing love in the world of horror

W hen we start to consider love in the world of fiction, our thoughts may immediately turn to the romance genre, or some of the great tales of courtship through the history of literary fiction. You might first think of the earthier world of erotic fiction, but one of the last to cross our minds might be horror. However the world of darker stories can absolutely be replete with themes and explorations of romance – sometimes for the best, and sometimes for the worst…

In this article, we’ll explore some of the ways you might be able to include romance and relationships into your horror plots – from the obvious to the less considered.

Back to the gothic

This article wouldn’t be complete without a trip back to the early days of the Gothic, which from its very beginnings set the tone for the doomed romance that we still often see today. I’ve always been a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, and there’s an author who lived it as much as he wrote about it!

Lovers, couples and husbands and wives alike are torn apart in all sorts of way in the Gothic – by death, of course, but often by other means. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a novel that heavily features temptation and lust, the earthier side of relationships than can draw one away from the path of true love. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux explores a love that is fated to fail from the very start given the values and opinions of society at the time. The darkness is redolent in these tales, and many of those early Gothic texts were a huge influence on what was to come in terms of romantic elements in horror fiction.