Help! I am writting a horror story/novel for my creative literature class and...?

Question

I need help. Ok, I decided it would be more about psychological / emotional / mental horror NOT the gory / bloody pulp kind of thing. So, I chose to base my story around the archetype of Japanese horror. Please tell me what are the archetypes / components of Japanese or asian themed horror? (i.e. themes like found in "The Ring", etc.)

Answer 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Horror
this is very insightful, i find this interesting without having any prior knowledge of psychological horror. audiences assume the author is knowledgeable in the field when reading the authors work....always research if you dont know, and when necessary cite those sources!! very good theme to choose, good luck

Answer 2

Psychological, emotional, mental is good. The gross out is bad. Try to find things that "everyone" fears. Then have that something impending. The closer it comes, without any one "seeing" it, the more horrifying. A good way to keep it at a distance while horrifying is to have the narrator sense that something is happening or may happen to other people. Then: Never let the thing appear. The story closes just as.... A good example is, "The Music of Erich Zahn," by H. P. Lovecraft. A tenant in a rooming house hears another roomer playing the violin every night. There are reasobns that he fears that the wilder and wilder nightly playing is a harbinger of some awful cosmic horror. The reader never learns what happened to Erich Zahn. If the author had described what finally came for Erich Zahn, it would have been a total letdown.

Answer 3

Check out the bio of Eric Van Lustbader. He is the guy who wrote NINJA and other stories about Japanese and Chinese and even some sci-fi/fantasy that contained literature about the fighting styles of the peoples and some of their philosophies.