Jump scares in my opinion have always had a gray area in the horror genre. On one hand, if done effectively by making the scares completely unexpected, you can make them work quite effectively. There is a reason why when the first Five Nights At Freddy's game came out that people were genially afraid. Back then, no one knew what the heck they were going to be hit with when the freaking chicken or fox animatronics suddenly entered the security room undetected. People experienced real fear whenever they saw the game over screen. Jump scares like these are not just reserved for gaming either. They can work quite well in a novel as well, especially one with strong plot twists that are equally terrifying. Like with The Five Nights At Freddy's video game, it is the event in the story being taken by an off-guard audience. Annie Wilkes from the Stephen King novel Misery has to be one of the best providers of jump scares period. You never know exactly when The Dragon Lady is going to strike the poor Paul Sheldon with her cruelty, all because of her outlandish obsession with his writing as an author. Try reading the notorious scene in the middle of the book where Paul Sheldon loses his leg because of Annie's wrath without flinching at least a little bit. Jump scares can work when done correctly.

Then there are the terrible examples of jump scares that lead us to this editorial today. These are the instances where jump scares are not used sparingly by the writer of a horror story and they choose to overuse it thinking it will always scare people. While like with the first game of Five Nights At Freddy's, it will work effectively in the beginning, the quirk will stop working after the hundredth use. As seen with the seemingly unending sequels of the Five Nights At Freddy's franchise, jump scares can become quite tiresome after a while. The audience becomes completely numb to all of the jump scares, eventually feeling cheated of becoming truly frightened. After frustrating the heck out of the audience multiple times over, they leave to read or play something else. It is similar to trying scare your friends everyday with a fake plastic hook. They will be scared at first, but eventually they will see the act as juvenile. The same can go for jump scares.

Yet despite the fact jump scares can wear out quite quickly, writers more times than not erroneously still use the trope. The result is the creation of a cliché that not only is frustrating as heck, but has become so entrenched into the horror genre, outsiders view it as a staple trait. Out of all of the literary clichés I have reviewed so far, jump scares have to be perhaps the most irritating due to the overuse having no sign of ever truly going away. In fact, over the years, the use of jump scares has perhaps tripled in usage. Well received films such as It and 2018's Halloween are plagued with jump scare after jump scare. Don't even get me started on books, the main subject matter of this editorial, as well. Any horror book after the nineties has at least one frustrating jump scare that cannot be avoided. Darren Shan's novel collection of The Demonata, a book series I adore for its creativity, even suffers from this trope itself, especially after a particularly gruesome discovery is made by protagonist Grubbs after the first chapter in Lord Loss. It is so entrenched in horror fiction that even experienced writers can fall for it.

Jump scares have the esteemed honor of not only irritating millions of horror book readers everywhere, but actually causing me to particularly tear it apart in the preface of this editorial to make a point. This cliché not only deserves to die in a fire, but boil in hellfire where its screams can be heard by nobody.  This is a special type of cliché that deserves the utmost care in handling.  Horror has become so much better thanks to this awesome trope!  Give a cheer to the cliché that may have even been too much for an "experienced" writer like me to handle without cracking and becoming a narcissist.

  The only thing we can really do as writers for jump scares as an issue is to stop using the trope entirely.  That way, the fad can start dying down over the years and sparingly it can be reintroduced as effective in small doses.  It is much better than just fueling the fire this cliché has become.  Trust me, it is only to become more of an irritating rash if we continue to scratch it.  Just ignore the rash until one day hopefully it goes away entirely.