Zombies! discussion

Tammy K. wrote: "This is off topic and I probably should start up a thread to discuss it but your recommendation brought up something that I have been thinking about which is gory book covers.
I have seen the title that you have suggested before and not download it because the cover is gorier then I like.
Since I do not like heavy gore in my books, if I see a cover that is particular gory, no matter how many reviews it has, or how high the ratings, I do not pick it up.
Is anyone else like that?"

She never started that thread, and I don't think our mod is going to anytime soon, so I did.

I would have thought this an odd topic for the Zombies! discussion group. If you like zombies you must love gore, right? Apparently, Tammy doesn't care for it and someone else said that they weren't a fan. I wouldn't say I hate it, but I really don't seek it out. If it's there that's fine and if not than I can use my imagination. Of course this only applies to books. I love gore in movies and TV, but not so much when I'm reading.

I would tend to agree with the no-gore thing.

Let me be clear. Violence, good. Heavy violence, still good. Lots of danger and death and destruction, very good. No problem.

But I don't see the need to wallow in the bloody details. Honestly, it doesn't do anything for me. If someone gets shot in the head, I know it's bad. I don't need two paragraphs that graphically describe how their brains are leaking down around their shoulders and so on and so forth.

Movies/TV, same way. Love action, love violence. Don't see the need for gore. Doesn't do a thing for me.

And for the record, I loooooove zombie stories. Love them. But a good zombie story, IMO, does not need an X rating of gore. R is fine, but gore-wise I'd prefer it shade towards the PG-13 side of R; not dance just inside the X line of R. If that makes any sense.

Gore is unnecessary in a good zombie survival horror story. It's all about the chase, thrills, suspense, human ingenuity and human behavior. Sometimes the bad guys are worse than the zombies. That's my opinion and I'm stickin' to it ;)

David, that makes perfect sense.

I've actually found myself skipping over or skimming through overly detailed gore in a few books. Yeah, yeah, blood, brains, yuckiness, yadda yadda, I get it.

Love the Gore. When I read a Zombie book I want the details of the sinew being ripped from the bone and the bits of flesh being gobbled up. Lately the books I've read have definitely went towards the PG-13 side of things and it pisses me off. The details are important to me and when you remove them to broaden the demographic it cheapens the novel imo.

I like the gore if it's done right. For example, there needs to be a great story first that happens to have gore. Joe McKinney comes to mind.

I don't like books that are written just to be gory for the sake of being gory and gross.

Since I think zombie books are more about the survivors than the zombies, I can do without the gore. But it doesn't really bother me.

What I have found that DOES bother me is graphic descriptions of women being turned into sex slaves and raped. Even though all of us know that would be happening. I HATED Tony and Dave on The Walking Dead when Tony asked Rick in the bar if his group had any "cooze".

So I guess that makes me one sick puppy. I don't mind if the women are ripped apart by zombies, but I do mind if they are being raped by humans.

I suppose it's kind of like the old quote attributed to Shelley Winters about movie ratings -- "kiss a breast and get an X, cut one off and get an R".

It makes you stereotypically American; violence good, sex bad. We've still got a significant percentage of pseudo-Puritans in the States that are silly like that. ;)

As for loving the gore, well I guess you'll have to make do with Rob Zombie horror films. He wallows in the gore.

I'm pretty sure he's catering to a very niche audience though. Numbers prove there are more people who like indicated gore rather than graphic gore.

I like a balance. If you don't have some details, then it feels like the story has been sanitized. If I had to go one way, it'd be for more thrills and less gore.

Since you have already posted my thoughts here, and since the majority of you have said what I would have added, I am not gonna comment on the gore factor. Other then to say Go David! Go Carl! Go Randy!

Last night I joined NetFlix. I took over 45 min to fill out all that preference stuff and rate movies and so on..
I learned a lot about genres and sub-genres. Stuff that many of you might already know but were eye openers for me.
Did you know that they have 8 sub genres under science fiction alone? (Alien, classic, cult, foreign, Sci fi adventure, Sci fi drama, Sci fi horror, sci fi thrillers.)
Yes, you probably did but I am a reader not a movie lover so it came as a surprise to me.
It turns out that I am a lover of Science fiction adventure, Science fiction thrillers, Aliens (of course!) and only some of the Sci fi horror and Sci Fi Drama.
I enjoy very few science fiction foreign (mostly the more modern releases) and only couple of the classics and cult.

All that might seem random to throw at you, but it goes to a point that some have made here in this thread and in other threads.
We all look for different things. Zombies are not just Horror Zombies, they are also: cult zombies, alien zombies, action-adventure (survival), thrillers and even now drama (LOVE) (Heaven forbid!)
Zombies can now be the protagonist of a story, as opposed the antagonists. They can be the pawns of a voodoo queen, or the victims of discrimination (yes, I see that coming in the new wave of zombie drama books/movies).
So to "love zombies" does not necessarily equal "to love reading about limbs being torn off the living, or brains going splat".
Zombies do not belong to only one genre, or any one nation (foreign titles).
My perfect zombie (book) is not necessarily your perfect zombie (book).
Eh, just my thoughts and to quote Carl "That's my opinion and I'm stickin' to it ;) "

My thoughts on it, if it enhances the scene, then anything is acceptable to get the point across.
Gore being the question here, Its more powerful when used sparingly. If every other scene is a discussion about intestines and the like, then it simply loses its shock value. If however there was "that scene" where there was Gore, then that scene becomes far more intriguing and powerful when contrasted with other elements.

So ya..less is best, use some, use it effectively, and like sugar, too much will just make you sick of it..but a bit here and there will sweeten the overall recipe of horror.

I gotta have gore. It's odd... I can watch a person get torn to shreds but a show of drs doing surgery totally makes me squeamish. I love descriptive writing. The more there is, the better I can picture it in my head. The description makes them more threatening and real to me. I wouldn't judge a book by its cover but I haven't read a story too gorey for me to handle, but I gotta have gore/ good description to stay interested.

I looove excess gore. The more the better. Ridiculous amounts of detailed excess. When I read a zombie story and a person is being eaten, I'd be really happy if the description was so vivid that I'd have to move the book away from my face because buckets of "B" movie blood might come splashing out of it :).

Only if it works with the story. Gore for the sake of gore does nothing for me. If the covers are too gory, I tend to avoid them because usually that is a cover for bad writing.

As a reader I don't mind a bit of gore. After all, we are talking about the end of the world, right? Or at the very least the world having a bad day.

As an author, I dial the gore way back and certainly wouldn't include it in a cover. I don't want to alienate potential readers.

Either way, I don't like gore when it's not realistic - instant decapitations and limbs being sliced off cleanly.

Good answers. Having seen what would be perhaps more than my fair share of real life gore in my professional life, I am afraid a zombie story would seem too disingenuous, too fake, to me if it didn't have gore.
In a way seeing gore on TV does help, at least to a tiny extent, prepare one for seeing it in person, at least in the visual sense.