I'm having some trouble with a short story I'm currently working on. I wanted to try my hand at horror, since my first self-published short story had a horror vibe. However, I'm a scaredy-cat and every time I try to describe a scary situation it ends up feeling truncated and too blunt. I'm not very good at tension. Does anyone have any tips on how to make a horror story more... I dunno, horrific?
Maybe not so much of a tip, but if you go to the horror section and do some reading you may pick up on some of the ways that other people are writing horror. Watch some older horror movies as well. The new one rely to much on cgi to tell a story. Watch some of the old black and white ones. They were more concerned with a good story.
Gonna say that is the bread and butter of Horror. The unknown is far more terrifying than the big reveal, or immense amounts of gore or torture. You know dread, that feeling of skin crawly goodness. You have to play on the raw emotion itself rather than will the monster scare the poo right out of the reader. Cause the unknown and unpredictable elements are what will really play on the reader's mind. Take some time to read some decent Horror, to get a feel for how this is pulled off. (Steve King is really not that scary compared to people who actually apply themselves). Good luck.
Some of the best Horror stories actually never HAVE a 'big reveal.' People disappear, and nobody knows what happened to them. Or they open the front door to a knock ...and their hair turns white and they never speak to anybody again. Or somebody appears, does damage, and then vanishes ...and nobody ever knows who or what they are or where they came from. I'm not a fan of Horror, as such (I can scare myself ...don't need to wait for somebody else to scare me) but I've encountered quite a few Horror stories in my life. One that made a deep impression, when I was 14 years old as a freshman in high school English, was The Monkey's Paw. We never found out what was on the other side of the door, when the man finally opened it—expecting that it might actually be his dead son. But it scares me today, even to think about it.
As others have mentioned, quiet build-up, mystery and cliffhangers can all be effective horror, so description isn't always better. However, one thing that comes to mind is to think of things that have a spooky atmosphere to you. Places you had a weird feeling about, morbid or liminal spaces typically, things you thought looked a little off, uncanny valley, the subversion of nice things with bad things, themes you think are impactful in that way. I assume you have something of that if you already have an idea but you look to that field of experience to find more inspiration The other part is to find what is that is more uncomfortable about things, if you want the moment to be scary or unsettling when you are describing something (not every moment should be uncomfortable in horror, pacing is good, in relation to the subtlety techniques). If you want it to be more vivid and immersive add the most relevant or interesting other details, paying attention to a theme of your description. Description works better when you decide what to describe and how to word it based on theme, mood and interesting technique so it seems less boring or forced. If it's horror and this is a vivid moment of horror, like seeing a monster or finding a body, then you have some latitude to write one of your more elaborate descriptions.
The possibility of something horrible is more scary than the acts themselves by denying closure and acceptance. That's why fake executions using blindfolds and blank shots are effective at scaring people.
I'm no expert, having written exactly one (1) horror story. There are different techniques, but I'd say, just describe what's happening. Let the reader create the tension in their own minds. "He could hear the creaking of the rocking chair inside the empty room. Slowly, he pushed the door open." Dunno how well that works. I'm thinking of a scene in a particular movie here, so it probably feels creepier to me than it actually is.
Thanks, everyone! I've been drawing on my favorite horror/thriller computer games (there's one scene especially that I'm planning on that might be too niche but it scared the crap out of me so I want to see if I can capture the moment without copying the scene), but those usually rely on the speed of the player, not the pacing of the story. Does anyone have specific examples of books/movies that I should check out? I've read a couple thrillers but they didn't really stick with me.
