I've been grappling with this question for quite awhile now & I thought I'd open the debate to the public: How do you create the creatures and/or monsters that appear in your story? Do you look for inspiration before you start the development process, or is it a little more spontaneous where you wait for that one special idea to pop into your head? Once you've got that idea, how do you bring it to life: do you draw it, make a D&D-style character sheet, or do you make a simple outline of what you want & start writing different scenarios to see which fits best. Is it just a creature/monster, or is it an allegory for some issue from real life? Below are some links to a couple articles that provide a pretty good stepping stone for creating a creature/monster, though they also apply to your regular characters as well. How to Create a Monster That Terrifies Your Readers How to Create Monsters Living in Your New World
A list of properties can help with the impressions that are felt with all senses. This would be the first step together with world building. A monster is not scary without a context explaining how it can make you helpless. A color sketch allow imagining the creature without accidentally ripping off something else or over-using the same descriptions. If not good at drawing monsters, it's easy to sculpt and vertex paint monsters in Blender after watching a few instructions on YouTube. I sculpted my first in one day without any idea of where it would end up. A nice way of brain-storming https://www.blender.org/
I always start with a visual. I'm no artist, so we're talking mind's eye here. If I can picture it, it comes to life. I write down physical attributes, behavioral traits, environment, etc. The more sentient it is, the more likely notes will also include some history, tribal or societal structure, that sort of thing, it's relationship to other peoples and creatures. I only have one fantasy project, which is really just an enormous outline and an encyclopedia of notes I'll likely never turn into books, but it was fun putting it together. The critters and monsters are just made up to fill niches in the world, but I did draw allegorical corollaries between the various peoples and races, none of them human, and a myriad of historical peoples of Earth from pre-columbian empires to medieval Europe.
I've gotten a lot of compliments about my monster descriptions in the monthly contests, but I write mostly horror stories. I guess it would depend on what you mean by monsters. Do you mean just a random species of creature that lives around a world like Orcs in Lord of the Rings, or is it the monster? As in, the main threat that the plot revolves around like Beowolf? I write the latter. I put very little thought into the monster itself. The goal of most of my writing is to scare the reader, so I work backwards from that. I try to figure out what I want the reader to be afraid of at any given point in the story, and I feed in monster details based on that. I think the best way to explain my process is to just provide examples. I wrote a story about a guy stranded in a small boat being harassed by a large shark. For the first encounter, I wanted the fear of being eaten to be the forefront thought, so I gave descriptions of it's shining white teeth, and just how big it was. I purposely leave things like size vague, just that it was easily big enough to topple the boat if it wanted to. After the first encounter though, I wanted the anxiety to shift into a slow burn, so I started to hammer in how invisible it was below the surface and that it could be anywhere at any time. That's where the true horror in any monster story comes from. Seeing the monster is not the scary part, it's not seeing it. In another story a mine collapsed and a lone miner feels like he's being stalked in the tunnels. The story's hook was that it took place in complete blackness, which I again used to build a steady sense of unease. I used the character's own mind to fabricate a monster, which is another tool that I use a lot. Lots of times, instead of describing a monster, you can describe a characters perception of the monster for a much greater terror effect. The reader and even character often know that what they think they saw may not be what they really saw, and that increases anxiety. Sprinkle in a few "and oh god it had fangs, they were huge. Oh man no they were the horns, did I even see a mouth?" I love that kind of self doubt about the very description, I always believe that over describing a monster removes all terror. Since all the character had were random sounds coming from the mine and his own eyes not working properly because of the extended blackness, I put the narrative lens directly in his mind, so that the reader was right there with him hallucinating.
@newjerseyrunner - I definitely agree that there's a difference between a creature and a monster. The way I view it, a creature is something similar in function to animals in real life. They can be dangerous, maybe even deadly, or even act monstrous. But, they aren't a freak of nature, ultra-aggressive or so territorial that they pursue the protagonist without mercy. A monster is something that is the embodiment of death. It can be a real animal/creature, but it's a super-apex version of that animal/creature. Let's take Moby Dick as an example here. The white whale is a real sperm whale, but it's such an extreme variant that it seems like a monster. The Pequod doesn't even encounter the white whale until around the halfway or 2/3rd mark of the book, but you get a sense of the danger through stories that the crew tells. When the white whale does appear, you truly feel its massive size & unmatched aggression. It's not just an animal trying to defend itself, it's a monster that seems as if it's intentionally targeting the Pequod. Other ships have encountered it, but none of them are targeted in the same way that Ahab & his crew are. It's not enough for the white whale to take out the harpoon boats, it has to destroy the Pequod & kills everyone aboard, except the narrator Ishmael. That is what makes a monster. Ruthlessness, unmatched aggression & an unrelenting anticipation that you'll be the next to be killed.
The only thing I will quibble with is the "you'll be the next . . ." wording. In some stories the protagonist is easily capable of defeating the monster, but someone they need to protect isn't. A monster needn't be a direct threat to the main character.
...Thinking about it, I don't really write monsters. Villains, sure, but not predator beasts. Hm, though I guess the scariest thing about a monster is their lack of concern for you and complete emotionlessness in the face of brutality. People with feelings are affected by violence, but a monster that is willing to inflict damage on another and it doesn't occur to them to empathize at all is truly monstrous.
True, plus there's the reluctant hero who isn't defending someone/thing because they care about them (and even if they do, they won't admit it). There's also cases where a monster is known to exist, but until it's revealed, it really only feels like a thing that exists in the story, not any sort of threat. Maybe it's even presented in a way where people treat it as an allegorical religious story. Pretty much any rule/suggestion has it's exceptions.
You don't have to look far to find what you could turn into a fictional 'monster.' Just look at nature. There are some VERY scary critters out there. Especially if you look at insects, sea dwellers, etc. (I mean, take a look at a sea lamprey.) Now if you can imagine something like that, only really big? Maybe add some extra bits to make it a fantasy creature. But there is a lot of inspiration out there, for sure. Just google 'scary fish photos' for a start. Yoiks.
Indeed. This is the folkloric "sea monk" in Japanese legend. And this is the real thing: You tell me which one is scarier!
Exactly, the terror from the great whale isn't in the writer's description of it, it's of the characters' description of it. Melville did this brilliantly. I haven't read it for some time, but I seem to remember even in scenes with the whale, we got mostly descriptions through Ishmael's lens. He never says how big the whale is, we just know that it's way bigger than the boat. You bring up another important point: intent. It's important to really impress the intent of the monster to the reader. In Moby Dick, the whale was angry and was actively trying to kill. This by itself cane terrifying for an animal because it shows cunning and deep thought processes so you never know what the whale might do next. On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, the antagonist in Jaws (the book) was very explicitly just following instinct, which is another type of scary: it doesn't even realize you're a thing, you're just the food. Whichever you choose, you have to stick with it though, I'm actually not a huge fan of the shark's behavior in the last third of the book. I can only forgive it because Benchley wrote it before we knew a ton about sharks. Note though, that intent does not necessarily mean the reader has to understand it's overall behavior. A good example is Alien. The creature's important intent is to kill the crew, why is only partially explained and doesn't really matter. The sequel flipped it, the individual aliens lost their behavior and became cannon fodder with no intent, only the why of building a hive matters, which works for what it was: an action flick. It doesn't work as horror though. The stakes for most good horror is one or two lives.
BEWARE WALL OF TEXT! MAY BORE! Quick note about Jaws, I'm always amused whenever I watch the movie because, after reading the book about 5 or 6 years ago, I just can't help but notice the glaring differences between the two. The Police Chief's relationship with his wife (I can't remember any of the character's names) is soooo different in the book, it's actually a pretty important conflict-point. In the movie she's just sort of there, not important at all. The Shark Biologist is a little different as well. If I remember correctly, there's a scene in Jaws (book) where 3 of the mains (the Chief, the Biologist & the Shark Hunter) are at sea on the boat (at night?) & they chum the waters, bringing in some smaller sharks (don't remember if they say what species). The Hunter grabs one, cuts its belly open so the internal organs spill out & the shark starts trying to eat it's own organs, just to have them come right back out. This of course causes a feeding frenzy & the Hunter continues to grab sharks & disembowel them. I think there's a similar scene in Moby Dick as well. On to your mention of the different behaviors that the Xenomorph has in Alien & Aliens. If you start to get into the canon of the series, this difference is explained. When there is a single Xenomorph (Alien & Alien III), the primary goal is to find a suitable location for a hive, collect victims to be impregnated with Chestbursters & metamorphose into a Queen. When they have established a hive & have a Queen (Aliens, Alien: Resurrection & the two Alien vs Predator movies), the Xenomorph's behavior is more like a bee or ant, where food for the babies (or, in this case, things to put the babies into) & protecting the Queen are all they care about. They're not any smarter or dumber, they just don't have the same self-preservation instincts.
I went to folklore and myth for my novel. One of the creepiest critters I'm using is the Ahuizotl, from Aztec myth. "The Ahuízotl is thought by some investigators to be a mythical animal, bane of the water goers. It would lie in wait of a victim who, once in its sights, would be pulled into the water by the head on the end of the Ahuízotl’s tail. After a struggle that threw up fish, frogs and frothy water, the human was dragged below the surface and drowned. The Ahuízotl used its sharp fangs to pull out the person’s eyes, teeth and nails. After a few days the body would float to the surface" I mean, look at this creepy mofo: (yes, it has a HAND on it's TAIL)
This makes me think of a show on Animal Planet called River Monsters. This guy, Jeremy Wade, investigates stories of people being attacked or killed by fish. In one of the episodes he investigates a story in the Amazon of newlyweds standing in knee-deep water & the bride gets dragged into the water by something & drowns. It turns out there are large stingrays in the Amazon River & their barbs are large & strong enough to have made it the culprit. River Monsters - Monster Stingray
