How Brandon Sanderson Incorporates Horror Into Fantasy | Writing & Worldbuilding 

I feel like George R. R. Martin does a great job of adding horror into the world of Ice and Fire as well. There's not just an element of Lovecraftian Eldritch with Euron's desire to make some huge sacrifice, the greasy black stones that are used to build some of Old Town and the strange city in that jungle. The Deep ones are mentioned. Then there's also Valeria and it's doom. Especially with the tale of the princess who flew Balerion the black dread and returned with some crazy parasites inside her. You also have the weirwoods and a lot of cannibalism. Outside of Lovecraftian horror is the zombie undead horror style he has with the others, Lady Stoneheart, and the Mountain. With a kind of mad Frankenstien-like scientist. There's also elements of serial killers like Ramsey Bolton. There's so much more beyond all this. It's so deeply layered that it's impossible to dissect all at once. Robert Jordan also added elements of horror to the Wheel of Time series such as that town in which at night everyone goes crazy and starts murdering each other. Only to come back during the day time as if nothing ever happened. Anyone who dies in the town gets stuck there. It leaves you feeling a bit disturbed. Even Harry Potter adds elements of horror with Aragon and his children, the spiders. The Dementors and whatnot. Of course, Lord of the Rings has Shelob and the Ring Wraiths with some even darker lore points in the other novels.

Even though I've been enjoying your new format, it's still nice to get a little flashback to the fantasy roots every now and then. Keep doing you, I'm here for it.

I've always called "Shadows for Silence and the Forests of Hell" Brandon's horror story. It was very spooky and I loved every minute of it 😁👻

100% agree with everything you said. This is actually one of the things that make me respect and appreciate Brandon most. He is able to write stories that are very accesible to a lot of people (and have elements of say horror which for some could be a turnoff but because of the way he uses them they aren't), and despite that his stories don't feel flat. Tbh I've never realised just how grimdark Warbreaker was though. Now I really want a purely grimdark story set on Nalthis ;)

I'll never forget the first time I read the first meeting between the godking and siri in warbreaker. Absolutely wonderful

I love writing horror. My trouble is how to integrate into a non-horror story. I don’t want the rest of my writing to feel boring in comparison.

I did absolutely love Stormlight's Unmade. They were really interesting and added a cool element of darkness to the story.