I’ve saved “Monster in the House” for last in my series of posts about the ten genres in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat books. Partly because it’s not a genre I’ve ever written personally, and partly because it seems to require the least explanation. It’s so primal and easy to understand. Something terrible is killing people and the goal is survival. The stakes couldn’t be higher and the problem/goal for the main character(s) is obvious and pressing.

And yet… there are still a lot of ways one can go wrong here. And some key things to keep in mind. 

First let’s back up for a second and talk about these ten genres as a whole. I personally think they’re an extremely helpful tool for writers during the all-important first phase of writing anything — where you’re settling on an idea and making sure it’s viable. I’ve yet to see a project that wasn’t helped by considering which of these ten genres might be the best fit and then really making sure it is a fit. Writers I work with (actually all writers, including myself) have a tendency to not fully examine how these ten story types work, and to think they’re meeting the criteria for a certain genre but missing something that is foundational to that genre.

The most common example of this I’ve seen is thinking your genre is “Dude with a Problem” (one of the other ten on the list). Here’s the thing: every story is about someone with a problem. But that particular genre is about a life-and-death battle and is reserved for action movies like Die Hard or other “we’re all gonna die” movies like Apollo 13. It’s not just any kind of problem, it’s that very specific type of problem. 

“We’re all gonna die” is obviously at the core of Monster in the House, too. Which brings me to the biggest question I’ve been asked about this genre: “What if your main character is the monster? Can that work?”

My simple answer is “No.” Because the whole experience of watching this type of movie is relating to someone being attacked and pursued by a monster — specifically, according to Snyder, a monster you can’t really escape (because you’re trapped in a “house” with it, or some other closed arena). He also says the monster ideally has its origin in a “sin” of some kind.

So if your main character is a “monster,” that means we’re in the point-of-view of that character, and are supposed to feel what they feel and want what they want. They’re not threatened by a monster. They want something else. Like in the movie Monster with Charlize Theron. She wants love with her girlfriend character. So I see that as more of a “Buddy Love” story.

It’s important with genres to think about the entertainment experience audiences are paying to have. And in this genre, it’s all about fear. The vicarious thrill of watching people stalked, attacked and killed, and identifying with their situation. So first and foremost, you’re looking to SCARE THE HELL OUT OF THE AUDIENCE. This might sound simple and obvious, but we writers often bypass the simple and obvious for the complex and obscure. And we tend to forget about our main job being to entertain, meaning to provide an emotional escape of some kind for the millions of strangers we hope pay to consume our work.

And this genre is one that people do pay to consume. It’s tried and true. And some say it’s the best genre for writers to try to break in with, because there’s always a market for it, at many different budget levels. “Contained horror” is a subgenre you often hear that production companies want, which simply means a horror film that wouldn’t have too high of a budget.

So does Monster in the House equal “horror film”? Essentially, yes. But if you look at the five subgenres in the very helpful Save the Cat Goes to the Movies book, you’ll see that this genre goes beyond what most of us probably think of when we think of horror. Sure, you’ve got your classic “serial monster” as in Friday the 13th, your “supra-natural monster” like The Shining, and your “nihilist monster” like in Saw. But you’ve also got movies about animals and other creatures like in Jaws and Jurassic Park, and “domestic monsters” that might threaten murder but not actually commit it, as in Fatal Attraction. I think of this latter type of “threat and suspense” movie as more of a “thriller,” as opposed to the actual carnage fests we get in “horror” movies. But of course it’s a continuum and the two can overlap.

But here’s the real key: you don’t need to completely reinvent the wheel here. First and foremost it’s about providing that scary situation, that scary “monster,” starting in the first act, and making sure the hero or heroes really are trapped and vulnerable to it, where the entire point of the movie and focus of all the scenes is on “what are we going to do to avoid death?” That probably means threatening death early and often and building the situation, like in any story, through a “punch-counterpunch” process in which the good guys are never really winning, and defeat becomes more and more likely as the second act wears on.

And somehow, all of this needs to be believable. This is one of those genres where it’s easy for things to fall apart at the concept level, where the audience doesn’t buy into or understand the threat, where they can’t quite experience it as if it’s happening to them because it stretches credulity too much or is obscure to the point of not really delivering the scares. As a writer here you really are being somewhat workmanlike in your need to provide those threatening moments and violence, but to do it in a way that’s easy for anyone to grasp and buy into. Maybe there’s some mystery behind the monster and what it really is, and maybe there’s one fantastical element about the monster that has to be accepted early on, but the overwhelming fear and threat should be easy to understand and experience.

So I would say don’t make the desire to be original and interesting overshadow the need to be both scary and believable. Of course you want to break new ground in some memorable way, but as with any genre, I think it’s first important to understand and deliver that genre’s elements, which tends to be harder to do effectively than writers think. And so often it comes down to making both believability and entertainment a priority, which is challenging because those two goals can often seem to be in competition with each other.

But hey, if this was easy, anyone and everyone could do it, right?  🙂

To read my thoughts on the other nine genres, check out the links below:

Fool Triumphant

Golden Fleece

Whydunit

Buddy Love

Dude with a Problem

Out of the Bottle

Rite of Passage

Superhero

Institutionalized