How funny horror books can hook younger readers

This made me sit up. Of course, there was no way that the actual book itself was going to be as interesting as the blurb, but I decided to take it to the back room to give it a proper peek. 

The room was lit with sunlight when I started, and, when I emerged from the pages, hours later, I was squinting in darkness, desperately needing a wee. 

The Bad Beginning threw open the doors of literature for me, showing me that reading can be as exhilarating and thrilling as riding an ill-tested rollercoaster. 

I was hooked in by the sense of impending doom on every page, but also the jokes, which get better and richer with every re-reading. The Bad Beginning was my first glimpse at how horror and humour can work together to hook younger readers. 

When you strike the right balance, these seemingly opposing genres enhance the effects of each other. Comedy acts as a release chamber for the tension created by horror, and horrible villains appear all the more heartless if they are able to conduct their atrocities with a smile and a wink. 

Another reason that horror and comedy work together is because they are both goal-oriented genres. If you tell a joke and no one laughs, you have failed; if you tell a scary story and your listener doesn’t tremble just a little bit, you have failed. 

This interaction between writer and reader creates a constant sense of anticipation – where the reader is always looking forward to the next gag or the next ghoulish thing to keep them awake at night. 

There will be situations that will forever be ripe for comedy, in the same way that haunted houses will always be perfectly pickled for horror. 

But, in order to elicit genuine terror or chuckles from the reader, the writers also need to find a way of subverting expectations. The punchlines and the sucker punches need to arrive in unexpected ways if they are to have any hope of surviving in the reader’s mind after the book is closed. 

I think it is the necessity for surprise that hooks younger readers on funny yet fearsome books, because it can make them feel like they are reading something that’s genuinely different from what’s on the shelves. 

As an author, I feel like I am constantly writing for my younger, reluctant reading self – trying to tell stories that strike that balance between the mischievous and the macabre. My book Jekyll vs Hyde: The Potion of Doom (illustrated by Holly Swain) is a gothic comedy about a spoiled child who accidentally turns himself into a monster by reviving an old family potion recipe. 

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is my favourite Victorian spine-chiller – shh, don’t tell The Island of Dr Moreau – and for years I’ve been fixated by the idea of transforming this story into a monstrously funny book that could work for reluctant readers. 

The first draft I wrote was exclusively jokes, prompting my agent to ask whether I’d considered adding a plot. The second draft had plot aplenty, and quite a bit of nasty plot at that, prompting my agent to ask whether I’d considered going to therapy. 

Eventually, we found a balance – a way of blending the humour and the horror to make sure the book now contains certified giggles and gasps on every page. 

I’m enormously proud of this gleefully ghoulish little thing, which contains absolutely no picnics or pixies. But the biggest compliment would be paid if it does for one reader what The Bad Beginning did for me all those years ago. 

Jekyll vs Hyde: The Potion of Doom by Jack Meggitt-Phillips, illustrated by Holly Swain, is out now.