Horror stories can be fun to write and read. A good horror story can disgust you, scare you, or haunt your dreams. Horror stories rely on their readers to believe the story so they are frightened, disturbed, or disgusted. However, horror stories can be quite difficult to write. Just like any other genre of fiction, horror stories can be mastered with proper planning, patience, and practice.
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Part 1 of 5: Understanding the Horror Genre
Step 1. Understand the subjective nature of a horror story
Just like comedy, horror is a difficult genre to write about because what scares one person or screams can make another person bored or feel nothing. But, as well as crafting a good joke, the masters of the horror genre have managed to craft a spooky horror story time and time again. While your story may not appeal to all readers, or generate screams of fear, at least one reader will respond to the horror nuances in your story.
Step 2. Read different types of horror stories
Familiarize yourself with the genre by reading examples of effective horror stories, from ghost stories to contemporary horror writings. As the famous horror writer Stephen King once said, to be a real writer, you have to “read a lot and write a lot.” Think of the ghost stories or urban legends you used to talk about at campfire shows when you were a kid, or all the award-winning horror stories you read at school or alone. You can look at some specific examples such as:
- "The Monkey's Paw", an 18th-century fairy tale by William Wymark Jacobs, tells of three bad wishes granted by a mystical monkey's palm.
- "The Tell-Tale Heart", which is the work of master horror writer, Edgar Allen Poe, which tells about murders and hauntings that are very psychologically disturbing.
- Neil Gaiman's view of Humpty Dumpty's nursery rhyme in "The Case of Four and Twenty Blackbirds."
- Don't forget the horror stories created by the master of this genre, Stephen King. He has written more than 200 short stories and uses a variety of different techniques to terrify his readers. While there are many versions of his list of the best horror stories, read "The Moving Finger" or "The Children of the Corn" so you can familiarize yourself with Stephen King's writing style.
- Contemporary horror writer Joyce Carol Oates also produced a well-known horror story entitled “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, which maximizes the use of psychological terror.
Step 3. Analyze the horror story examples
Choose one or two examples that make you read fun or find interesting, depending on how the setting, plot, characters, or changes to the story to produce a feel of horror or terror. For example:
- In Stephen King's The Moving Finger, he writes a story centered on: a person who thinks he sees and hears a human finger scratching his bathroom wall. The story then follows this person for a short period of time as he tries to avoid the finger, until he is forced to confront his fear of the finger. Stephen King also uses other elements, such as the game of Jeopardy and the conversation between the main character and his wife, to create a sense of suspense and horror.
- In the story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates' work, the author determines the main character, a young girl named Connie, by describing events in her daily life, then shifts the focus of the story to a fateful day. Just then, two men pulled over in a car while Connie was home alone. Oates uses dialogue to create horror and allow readers to experience the fear Connie feels, as she feels threatened by the presence of these two men.
- In both stories, the element of horror or terror is created through a combination of shock and horror, with elements that may be supernatural (such as a human finger moving on its own), and elements that are psychologically disturbing (such as a girl alone with two men).).
Part 2 of 5: Creating Story Ideas
Step 1. Think about the thing that scares or horrifies you
Dive into feelings of fear of losing a family member, of being alone, of violence, of fear of clowns, demons, or even killer squirrels. Your fear will then be written on the pages of the book, and your experience or exploration of this fear will attract the attention of the reader.
- Make a list of your greatest fears. Then, think about how you would react if you were trapped or forced to confront these fears.
- You can also conduct a poll to find out what scares your family members, friends, or colleagues the most. Gather some subjective ideas about the feel of horror.
Step 2. Turn an ordinary situation into something scary
Another approach is to look at a normal everyday situation, such as taking a walk in the park, cutting fruit, or visiting a friend, and then adding a strange or scary element. For example, finding an ear that was cut off while you were walking by accident, cutting a fruit that turned into a finger or a tentacle, or visiting an old friend who doesn't know you/thinks you're someone else.
Use your imagination to create fear loops in normal daily activities or events
Step 3. Use the setting to limit or trap your character in the story
One way to create a situation that will instill a sense of terror in the reader's mind is to limit your character's movements, so that the character is forced to face his fear and find a way out.
- Think of the kind of enclosed space that scares you. Where is the room where the fear of being trapped in the intensity is strongest for you?
- Traps your character in an enclosed space such as a cellar, a coffin, an abandoned hospital, an island, or a dead city. This will create an immediate conflict or threat to the characters in your story, and add an immediate element of tension.
Step 4. Let your characters limit their own moves
Maybe your character is a werewolf who doesn't want to hurt anyone during the next lunar eclipse, so he locks himself in a cellar or a room. Or, your character may be very afraid of a cut finger in the bathroom. He did everything he could to avoid the bathroom, until the finger haunted him too often, causing him to force himself into the bathroom and face his fears.
Step 5. Create extreme emotions in your readers
Because horror stories depend on the reader's subjective reactions, they must be able to create extreme feelings in the reader, including:
- Surprise: the easiest way to scare the reader is to create a surprise with an unusual ending. You can use a fleeting image or a brief moment of terror. However, creating fear through shock can make for a cheap horror piece. If used excessively, this method becomes predictable and more difficult to scare the reader.
- Paranoia: a sense that something is not right, which can frighten the reader, make them doubt their surroundings. When used well, this paranoia effect makes readers doubt their beliefs or ideas about the world. This type of fear is great for gradually building tension and creating psychological horror stories.
- Horror: this type of fear is a feeling of worry that something bad will happen. Horror is most effective when readers really dive into the story and begin to care about the characters in the story. Thus, these readers are horrified that something bad will happen to the characters of a story. Instilling horror in the reader's mind is difficult because the story has to be interesting enough for the reader to get involved. However, horror is a very strong type of fear.
Step 6. Use scary details to create a feel of horror or terror in the minds of your readers
Stephen King argues that there are several main ways to create a sense of horror or terror in a story, which can produce different reactions in the minds of readers.
- Using disgusting details, like a severed head rolling down a ladder, something slimy and green landing on your arm, or a character falling into a pool of blood.
- Using unnatural details (or fear of the uncertain/impossible), like bear-sized spiders, attacks from zombies, or alien claws grabbing your leg in a dark room.
- By using psychological details such as a character who returns home and encounters another version of himself, or a character who experiences a nightmare that paralyzes him and affects their perception of reality.
Step 7. Outline the plot
Once you have determined your premise or scenario and setting, decide which extreme emotions you will play with, and decide what kind of horror details you will use in the story. Outline the plot roughly.
You can use Freytag's pyramid to create an outline, starting with an exposition of the setting and life or important days for the character, then moving on to conflict in the character (eg with a cut finger in the bathroom or two men in a car). Next, you move up to the next level by developing more exciting actions, where the character tries to resolve or deal with the conflict, but encounters some complications or obstacles, reaches a climax, and then experiences a slowdown with less significant actions. Next, take the character to the resolution stage, where he transforms (or, in some other horror stories), meets a terrifying death
Part 3 of 5: Developing Characters
Step 1. Get readers to care about your characters or identify themselves with your main character
Do this by introducing detailed and clear descriptions of the character's habits, relationships, and perspectives.
- Determine the age and occupation of your character.
- Determine your character's marital status or relationship.
- Determine how they see the world (cynical, skeptical, anxious, passionate, world-loving, or complacent).
- Add specific or unique details. Make your character different by a certain characteristic (such as a hairstyle, a scar), or a special accessory that defines their appearance (such as a certain type of clothing, jewelry, pipe, or wand). The way of speaking or dialect of a character can also distinguish him from other characters, and make himself more prominent in the eyes of the reader.
- Once readers can identify with a character, this character will become like a child to them. They will empathize with the conflict in the character and they want this character to be able to overcome the conflict, although they also realize that this rarely works.
- The tension created between what readers want for the character and what happens to the character will provide the "fuel" that keeps readers "going forward" as they read your story.
Step 2. Prepare for bad things to happen to your character
Most horror stories talk about fear and tragedy, and whether your character is able to overcome their fear. A story that describes good things that happen to good people is a story that is comforting, but won't frighten your readers. In fact, the tragedy of bad things happening to good people makes much more sense, apart from being filled with anxiety and tension.
- In order for you to create conflict in a character's life, you must introduce a danger or threat to the character, whether this threat is a moving finger, two men in a car, the palm of a mythical monkey, or a killer clown.
- For example, in King's The Moving Finger, the main character, Howard, is a middle-aged man who enjoys watching Jeopardy, has a good relationship with his wife, and seems to be living a settled, middle-class life. However, King doesn't allow readers to get too comfortable with Howard's normal life. King began to introduce scratching sounds in Howard's bathroom. The discovery of the finger in the bathroom, and Howard's repeated attempts to avoid, get rid of, or destroy it, have created a story that turns a normal, pleasant man's life into one that is interrupted by things that aren't real or make no sense.
Step 3. Allow your characters to make mistakes or bad decisions
Once you've determined the danger or threat to a character, you must then make him respond with the wrong action, while making the character convince himself that he took the action or made the right decision to deal with the threat.
- You have to create enough motivation for the character to feel that his bad decisions are justifiable, and that he's not stupid or hard to believe. An attractive babysitter, who responds to a masked killer by running into a dense dark forest instead of calling the police, is not only foolish, but also unbelievable to readers or viewers.
- However, if you get your character to make a justifiable (even if it's actually a bad) decision about a threat, readers will be more likely to trust and support that character.
- For example, in Stephen King's The Moving Finger, Howard at first chose not to tell his wife about the finger in the bathroom. This he did because he believed he was hallucinating or thought the scratching sound was exaggerated, that in fact the sound was just the sound of a rat or animal trapped in the bathroom. This story justifies Howard's decision not to tell anyone about the finger, by representing the decisions that most people usually make when they witness a strange or unusual event: "No, it didn't really happen", or "I was just making it up." there is".
- This story then justifies Howard's reaction by letting his wife go to the bathroom and not commenting on seeing the finger moving in the toilet. So, the story plays on Howard's perception of reality and indicates that maybe he was just hallucinating about the finger.
Step 4. Create a clear and extreme challenge for your character
A character's "challenges" are things that will disappear from him if he makes certain decisions or choices in a story. If readers don't know what challenges a conflicted character is at stake, they can't experience the fear of loss. A good horror story centers on generating extreme emotions such as fear or anxiety in the minds of the readers, by creating these extreme emotions in the characters first.
- Fear is built on understanding the consequences of a character's actions, or the risks of his actions. So, if your character decides to face the killer clown in the attic or the two men in the car, readers should be aware of the risk of loss these characters face. This risk must be something extreme or great, such as loss of sanity, loss of chastity, loss of life, or loss of the life of someone they love.
- In King's story, the main character is afraid of losing his sanity if he decides to confront the finger. The challenges that the characters put on this story are huge and obvious to the readers. So when Howard finally decided to face the moving finger, readers feared the end result would have dire consequences for Howard.
Part 4 of 5: Creating a Creepy Climax and a Hanging End
Step 1. Manipulate the readers but don't confuse them
Readers can be confused or scared, but not both. Deceiving or manipulating readers through omens, changing character traits, or pointing out plot points, can create tension as well as anxiety or fear in the reader's mind.
- Give clues about the scary climax of your story, by providing small details or clues, such as a label on a bottle that will come in handy for the main character, a sound in a room that would be an indication of the presence of something unnatural, or a gun filled with bullets in a pillow that the main character in your story might later use.
- Build tension by alternating tense or awkward moments into calm ones. These quiet moments are when your character can breathe a sigh of relief in a scene, calm down, and feel safe again. Then, increase the tension again by bringing the character back into the conflict and making the conflict more serious or scary.
- In "The Moving Finger", King does this by scaring Howard of the finger, then conversing with his wife normally while listening to Jeopardy and thinking about the finger, then trying to avoid the finger by walking around. Howard was beginning to feel secure or certain that the finger wasn't real, however, when he opened the bathroom door, it seemed to have grown longer and moved much faster than before.
- King creates suspense for both the characters and the reader by introducing threats and then leaving them in the shadows throughout the story. As readers, we know that the finger is a sign of something bad or evil, and now we are in a position to watch Howard as he tries to get away from the finger, then ultimately faces the finger's evil threat.
Step 2. Add the hanging end
A change like this to a horror story can make it more interesting or completely destroy it, so create a dangling ending that connects all the ends of the character conflicts but still leaves one big question in the reader's imagination.
- While you want to create an ending that satisfies the reader, make sure you also don't make it so closed and clear that readers leave your work uninterested.
- You can make your character aware of the conflict or how to resolve the conflict. This awareness should be the result of the details developed throughout the story and should not feel foreign or random to the reader.
- In the story "The Moving Finger", Howard's consciousness arises when he discovers that the finger's presence may be a sign of evil or that there is something wrong in this world. Howard asked the cop, who was there to arrest him after hearing complaints of disturbing noise from neighbors. He posed the final Jeopardy question, in the “inexplicable” category. “Why do bad things sometimes happen to the best people?” Howard asked. The cop then turned around to open the toilet, which was where Howard kept the finger he'd beaten, and "risked it all" before opening the toilet seat so he saw the inexplicable or unfamiliar.
- This ending makes readers wonder what the cop saw in the toilet, and whether the finger is a real object or just a product of Howard's imagination. In this way, the ending is open-ended, without being too surprising or confusing for the reader.
Step 3. Avoid cliches
Like other genres, horror has its own set of figures of speech or clichés, which writers should avoid if they want to create a unique and interesting horror story. From familiar images like a crazy clown in the attic to a babysitter alone at night, or common phrases like “Run!” or “Don't look back!”, cliches are hard to avoid in this genre.
- Focus on creating stories that feel personally terrifying to you. Or, add an alternative to familiar horror figurines, such as a vampire who eats cake instead of blood, or a man trapped in a trash can instead of a coffin.
- Keep in mind that too much blood or violence can have a bad effect on readers, especially if the same pool of blood keeps recurring in a story. Of course you can use a bit of gore, which might be necessary in a horror story. However, make sure you use it at an impactful or important point in the story, so that it grabs the reader's attention instead of boring them or numbing them.
- Another way to avoid clichés is to focus on creating a disturbed or restless state of mind in your character, instead of using images of blood. Image memories don't usually stick with readers, but the effects these images have on a character are likely to create a creeping sense of dread in your readers. So, don't aim at the reader's imagination, but focus the target on the reader's disturbed state of mind.
Part 5 of 5: Revising the Story
Step 1. Analyze your language usage
Read the first draft of your story and look at sentences with repeated adjectives, nouns, or verbs. Maybe you prefer the adjective “red” to describe a dress or a pool of blood. However, adjectives like “rume, mauve, scarlet”, can add texture to language and turn a conventional phrase like “pool of red blood” into something more interesting, like “pool of scarlet blood.”
- Prepare your thesaurus and replace all repeated words with their synonyms to avoid using the same words or phrases over and over again throughout your story.
- Make sure your use of language and words matches your character's voice. A teenage girl will certainly use words and phrases that are different from those used by a middle-aged man. Creating a vocabulary for your character that fits his personality and perspective will make readers feel that your character makes more sense.
Step 2. Read your story aloud
You can do this in front of a mirror or in front of people you trust. Horror stories started out as an oral tradition of scaring someone at a campfire, so reading the story aloud will help you determine if the storyline has developed steadily and gradually. It also helps you to analyze if there's already an element of shock, paranoia, or horror, and if your characters have made all the wrong decisions before being forced to face their fears.
- If your story contains a lot of dialogue, reading it aloud will also help you determine if the dialogue sounds reasonable and natural.
- If your ending is hanging, watching readers' reactions by watching the listeners' faces can help you determine whether the ending was effective or should be changed again.
