What Defines a Monster?
When I was a kid, monster movies confused me. Okay, yes—I’m neurodivergent, so a lot of things confused me. But two things in particular always stood out:
Why my reaction to monster stories was so different from other people’s, and
Why the monsters in those stories behaved in ways that just didn’t make any sense.
Take Jaws, for example. I didn’t come out of that movie afraid of the shark. I came out afraid of people’s reactions to it. I empathised with the Wolf Man. I saw the Creature from the Black Lagoon not as a villain, but as a misunderstood hero.
Why? Because their behaviour either made perfect sense (they were protecting their territory) or made no sense at all.
Let’s use Jurassic Park as a clearer example, since most people know it, and it beautifully illustrates my point.
A billionaire hires top-tier geneticists to bring dinosaurs back to life. Amazing. But then, they massively underestimate what it takes to contain those creatures, because they don’t actually understand them. That’s already a stretch—but okay, call it a plot device.
Eventually, all hell breaks loose. Dinosaurs escape. Chaos ensues.
Now we’ve got a T-rex—an apex predator weighing somewhere between 5 and 9 tonnes—roaming around looking for food. But in real life, a T-rex would’ve hunted triceratops or edmontosaurs (which were way bigger than the gallimimus shown in the film).
So why would a T-rex be interested in chasing down humans—tiny, unsatisfying snacks—when there’s more substantial prey right there?
The answer, of course, is: because it’s a monster. And monsters, by definition, want to eat us.
Except… It’s not a monster. Not really. At least not if we go by the original intent of the book. It’s an animal.
So why do we assume that just because something can kill us, it automatically wants to?
What does that say about us?
Because honestly, the go-to human move in every monster story is: kill the monster. Even when we’re the ones who invaded its home. Even when we’re the ones behaving like prey in a predator’s domain.
It’s like swimming in crocodile-infested waters and blaming the crocodiles when you get eaten. That’s not evil. That’s nature.
The word monster comes from the Latin monere, meaning “to warn,” “to remind,” or “to foretell.”
Back in the day, monsters were cautionary tales. We told stories about sirens and selkies and russalki to keep people away from dangerous waters. We invented cannibalistic monsters to remind each other that eating each other is a bad idea (which, frankly, says a lot about us).
Creatures in the dark warned us to stay away from the real predators—other humans.
Monsters weren’t evil. They were omens. Warnings. A way to stay alive.
Somewhere along the way, we twisted that meaning. Monsters became evil. Hideous on the outside, to reflect the supposed hideousness within.
But the function stayed the same: to scare us into staying safe.
In their own strange way, monsters protected us.
Now, fast-forward to how we use the word monster today—when we apply it to people.
If someone says “you’re a monster,” they don’t mean you’re keeping them safe by warning them away. They mean you’re a predator without empathy. A threat to your own kind.
And to me? That’s way scarier than a giant shark biting swimmers who wandered into its living room and acted like lunch.
That’s why in my books, you’ll find three kinds of “monsters”:
The kind that protects.
The kind that isn’t evil—it’s just doing what it was made to do.
And the kind that is predatory, cruel, and malevolent.
The last kind?
They’re usually human. Or at least, human-adjacent. Because they have human motivations.
In my stories, you’re not a monster because of how you look. You’re a monster because of how you behave.