Best Horror Story Tips for Writers: Part 1
Writing is difficult. Writing in a way that makes your readers feel truly connected to the story and evokes emotion is on another level. In the case of writing horror stories, beginners often want to jump straight to gore and strong, descriptive visuals to try and evoke feelings like disgust and discomfort. However, scary stories like that often fall flat and end up being unimpressive.
As a horror writer you definitely want to make your readers feel:
- Disgust
- Fear
- Discomfort
- Paranoia
- Shock
- Uncertainty
- Etc.
If it is a bad feeling, you want to nurture it. Not to say that you shouldn't have some hope or good things in your story if you can help it. The best horror stories are well-rounded, but the overall theme and most major events should center around the darkness and terror of your tale.
Horror is a fine art that requires tact from the writer. Your readers should not realize that they are becoming scared all at once. Instead, it should be a slow, creeping sense that things are going seriously wrong and they don't know what is going to happen next.
Horror Writing Tip: Let Your Readers Do the Heavy Lifting
The worst thing you can do when writing a horror story is be too direct with your details.
"The masked man burst through the door. He was wielding a machete and he was covered in blood. Sarah screamed her face off right before he sliced her damn face off. There was blood everywhere."
Blood, blood, blood. I don't know why it is mentioned so much, since it is usually the sight of it that makes people feel faint. Also, including all the details about your killer or monster gives your readers a very clear image of what they are up against. It gives them understanding of your horror element, and that is a bad move.
Never show your hand. Play with your readers' fear of the unknown and let their imaginations do the work. It will terrify them. I am not a psychologist and I have done no polls, but I am decently confident when I say that 9/10 people are fully petrified of the unknown. It's why so many people fear death. We do not know what is going to happen.
If you write a story with clear visuals of everything except what's supposed to be scaring the reader, they will imagine something more awful for themselves than you can write.
The Ritual by Adam Nevill scared the shit out of me because I already have a deeply ingrained fear of the woods. Not necessarily the woods, but what is in the woods. In The Ritual, there was something in the woods and Nevill's characters could never get their eyes on it. They heard it, they saw what it left behind of the bodies, and they sensed they were being hunted.
The woods and their contents were described in crisp detail, but what was lurking within them was nothing but an idea. I didn't even want to get up to take a piss when I was reading that book in the middle of the night, because I didn't know what the hell I was even supposed to be scared of, and that terrified me.
Horror Writing Tip: Put Your Characters In a Relatable, Uncomfortable Situation
Using The Ritual as an example again, remember that I am afraid of the woods. It is a very common, human thing to be uncomfortable with. Use those kinds of discomforts when deciding on your setting and plot. Things like being the new kid in town, an abusive and unpredictable relationship, being stranded when the car breaks down, or being stuck in a confined space are realistic situations that put people on edge.
You want to have the realistic elements of your story be something that puts your readers' minds on high alert mode. This will trigger a subconscious reaction to be emotionally invested before supernatural horror elements are even introduced. Once you begin to scare them, the effect will be amplified because their minds are already in a state of stress.
I am writing a short story that takes place at the beginning of a zombie outbreak. Sounds cliche, right? Boring. Let's make it interesting though. Let's say that the main character is a young woman on her second week of the job in a diner at the edge of town. The cook is a dirtbag that makes her uneasy. In the diner at the time the story begins, there are six customers:
- Grandma and diabetic granddaughter.
- Lone, quiet man.
- Teenage couple.
- Over-the-road trucker.
It's a sweltering summer afternoon. Our MC catches dirtbag staring at her ass. The TV in the dining area plays a news broadcast. The bathroom is out of order, but the owner was nice enough to have a port-a-john placed in the parking lot to accommodate customers. Granddaughter has to use the restroom, and grandma can see the parking lot potty through the big window from her booth, so she tells her to head out there real quick.
Lone man has his hood up, but it becomes obvious to trucker that his face is on the TV. He is wanted. Trucker tells MC to turn the TV up and confronts the man. An argument ensues. It starts to get loud before the TV gets even louder and an emergency broadcast blares. Explosions can be heard in the distance as everyone stops to see what it is all about. The broadcast loses signal and everything goes quiet.
Now there is a woman stumbling into the road from the trees. She doesn't look right. Everyone is watching her when granddaughter tries to exit the outside bathroom, but is forced to retreat back inside when the obviously crazed zombie lady pursues her.
They all panic until teenage couple starts banging on the windows to grab the undead's attention. MC locks the diner doors as the pounding on glass begins. Teenage boyfriend soon reveals that he and his girlfriend were in the city earlier and everything seemed fine. Girlfriend isn't looking so good though.
The sun is setting.
Does it sound like an interesting and uncomfortable set of events outside the zombie element?
Horror Writing Tip: Lead Your Reader Down the Road to Fear One Step at a Time
Earlier I listed a set of emotions that horror writers should set out to make their readers feel. I like to use that entire list and incorporate it into every scary story I write. The order looks something like this:
- Discomfort
- Uncertainty
- Shock
- Disgust
- Etc.
- Paranoia
- Fear
If you introduce your readers to an already precarious situation with your plot and setting, you can then lead them down the road to full-blown terror, with fear being the final step in the process. It will subtly manifest itself if you can craft your story in a way that each new scene begins setting them up to take the next step down what I call the "Road to Fear."
Let me use an example of a very common trope that I used to see in the subreddit r/nosleep all the time. For a while it was trendy to write a horror story centered around a mysterious set of rules given to the narrator at the beginning of the story. Usually the story started off with an uncomfortable situation like a new, solo, night shift job at a creepy location, or house sitting for someone out of town.
We have discomfort. An unfamiliar environment.
The narrator would then reveal that their employer had left them a set of instructions on how to care for the home or do the job. These instructions would include a set of esoteric rules that seemed arbitrary. The reader's, would start to wonder why these rules could possibly be important, but it is made clear that they are to be deviated from at the narrator's own peril.
We have the reader's mind already turning against them with uncertainty and the seed of paranoia planted.
The story would then start slowly building to the first moment of shock when it was revealed why one of the rules was so important, showing some aspect of supernatural horror at play. Hopefully there would be some disgust or complications sprinkled in, because they only add more layers to the discomfort factor.
Finally, by the end of the story, the reader is in the full swing of paranoia as each mysterious rule has proven to be vital up until this point, but they just don't know why the next one will be important as well - or what will happen.
Like I said, these stories were trendy, so there were a lot of swings and mostly misses. However, if done correctly, plot devices and structures like this can easily lend themselves as a tool for driving your reader down the Road to Fear.
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