As a horror fan, I've always wanted to write my own scary stories. Whenever I try, though, it always feels empty, somehow. I blame that on the fact that, while I love horror, none of it really scares me. That means I don't have a frame of reference for how to make something scary. So what do you guys do? How do you scare your readers?
I hide behind their chairs and jump out and go BOO in their faces... No, seriously, I let them scare themselves. I hint at things, and let their imaginations fill in the rest. A phone call from a dead person. A child's laugh coming from nowhere. Or I describe something and let them contemplate the horror of the situation, e.g. a living mind trapped in a dead body, unable to move, unable to speak - just there, potentially for EVER. There's never any need to explain the mechanics of how your horror works. Not "oh, we read the forbidden scroll of Glargribratwurst and it summons Satan, but we can defeat him with a goat and a chihuahua", or "ah, the old Indian pet sematary in the basement is causing it". If you want the happy ending resolution, you can do that, but why bother? Leave it open, again to the reader's imagination. Suggestion is a powerful thing. Use it and abuse it.
Zen and the Art of Writing is a great book for this! Bradbury talks a lot about how he'd sit and write down the things that scared him as a child, remember all the spooky things that lurked at the top of his stairs. Children are a lot easier to frighten than adults, so try to target that inner child.
I've gotten two Creepypastas published, but neither of them really felt right. The first (Graybark Drive) was really long and very...visual, I guess you'd say. I didn't leave anything to the imagination. Some people commented that it felt like reading somebody's bad acid trip, which I took as a compliment. The second (The Dead Man's Mouth) was very short and offered no explanations at all, but nothing really happened in it. I explain a weird ritual I made up, but that was it.
That's the weird thing, though: what I found creepy as a kid (and still do today) is almost purely visual. So much so that I'm not sure I can even describe it with words. Ghosts are the spooks that always keep me up at night. Not because of what they are, but because of how they look. Remember how in scary movies the ghost will be at the end of the hallway and just slowly drift toward their victim? No body movement, they're as stiff as a board, but HOLY CRAP HERE IT COMES RUN RUN FREAKING RUN! That's the kind of thing that if I saw it in real life, I'd want it to kill me so nobody would find out that I'd pooed my pants. But you see how hard it was just to describe that with words? That's why it works better as a visual scare, which obviously you can't do with a book.
I think that's a really good point--you can't really describe that visual image with words. But you might be able to describe it with feelings--with the absolute terror and frozen bones you feel root you in place so you can't even run. In all honesty, it might be a better play: the ghosts that scare you might not scare me, but the feelings of raw fear we experience might be the same. You can bring that out of me reading your story, but it won't be a visual description. It'll be an emotional one.
That's what I'm trying to learn how to do here. I have a hard time describing feelings. It becomes...really metaphorical, haha. Like, I can't just say "He was scared" over and over again, so I try to get creative with how to describe their feelings, and it always becomes awkward. "It felt like my blood had turned to ice, my heart freezing mid-beat. Her dead eyes drilled into my core, making my very soul shiver," etc.
Not much of a horror person, but I would note one thing that is important I think is that it's just as much about what you don't say as what you do, similarly to what @Naomasa298 said about explanation. Not only do you not need to explain where the monster came from, you don't even need to give much of a description of what it looks like. Leaving some things up to imagination can be more powerful. Choose carefully what details you want to describe. And mystery is often an important part of the plot of horror: because the threat is mysterious we don't know when the characters are safe. The serial killer could be anyone. The shark could show up any moment. Did the monster die when it got shot?
I'm trying to figure this out too. I tried to read the book "Writing Scary Scenes" by Rayne Hall but it didn't really resonate maybe... Or perhaps I just grew lazy and decided to read fiction instead. I personally think the biggest things are to build suspense, use macabre descriptions, and make the reader feel unsure what it is they are supposed to be afraid of ("is this the moment something happens? I have no idea"). I attempted to start a short horror recently. I had a girl knocking on a door of a house at night. There was a rat and the girl thinks about smashing bugs with her feet which unintentionally leads to her thinking about the sounds and sensations of trying to stomp on a rat. It's not scary, but I feel like it's these types of things that prep the reader for dread suspense. I suppose it's about teasing the reader with things they don't want to happen. Constantly remind them of these things and slowly show them the things they really don't want to happen. I can't get this one book's prologue out of my mind. The book is called Stolen Tongues and in the prologue they go on about a parrot his friend has that knew all sorts of tricks and games. One night the bird plays hot/cold (someone is getting closer and farther away) but there's nothing there. The dogs whine and act nervous. The bird screams "ugly ugly" like it used to for their Halloween masks. I think it's pretty common to use kids and animals but this was particular interesting. I guess what makes it scary is you realize there is something horrible but there's no knowing what is really going on. You just know it's not good and that the characters are not safe.
Try to create a false sense of security and concentrate of atmosphere and pacing, figure out what fills with reader with awe, we can all use cheap scares to frighten, but you need to dig a little deeper than that. Horror is a hard one because it's specific to their own experiences, just like humour. So just focus on scaring yourself and the rest will follow. Play with your characters fears. It needs to be personal. So have the one person in their life who loved them turn out to have never loved them at all and been manipulating them, then have that person turn out to be some monster of a human being. The Paranormal and the supernatural do not frighten me because I don't think they exist. What does frighten me the idea of me losing my mind due to believing I see these things. Losing something or someone I love. Telling the truth but not being believed with major stakes involved to my life or the life of others. Lastly think about the stakes. What does the character have to lose? The more on the line the more people will care. Or pick just one thing and make it really matter to them. Make it all they have.
I feel you! I was told to describe the showing with the real words. Blood turned cold makes you think of the icy feeling inside without saying ice. What is the medical term for "...heart freezing mid-beat" when you're scared? If you use the real words for showing, it intensifies the reading cause the brain can imagine it faster, and the feeling they feel will express the phenomena.
Cosmic horror works best on adults, I imagine. The grand mysteries of something old, something beyond understanding, and something that has just noticed you. Beings both too powerful to fight and so ancient that a mere human is but an ant blipping out of existence in the long, dark and endless reaches of time. They leave the fragility of the mind shattered, bent, the sanity withered. Dreams are a thing of the past now. Every night brings new sets of nightmares, and you begin to notice changes in your personality, more irritability in your moods. Your teeth start rotting yellow and your hands shake, and you can’t help the feeling that for every day that passes the webbings around your fingers are slowly expanding outwards, more and more. You measure them rigorously now, just to be certain. You look into the mirror to find your skin is losing color. Is it the lack of sleep? Every night you stay awake until sleep pulls you in — and every night you walk the halls of that fallen city drenched in shadow. The words echoing around you, once unfamiliar and alien to your ears, are starting to make sense now. Starting to sound agreeable. Is this really you? You can’t even remember the days anymore, and you no longer fight the temptations of sleep, you embrace them fully. Sometimes you wonder which is the dream and which is the real world. You ask the voices and they whisper more agreeable words. They want you to stay here.
I actually disagree with this. As much as I love cosmic horror, it's kind of an acquired taste. Cosmic horror doesn't really mesh with "popular" horror. There usually isn't a monster chasing the heroes in cosmic horror the same way there is in popular horror. In fact, the monster usually doesn't even know the heroes are there, it just goes about its business and anyone around it suffers as a result. The end result is that the characters (and reader) realize just how powerless and inconsequential they are in the face of the universe. Take "The Color Out of Space" for example. The color crashes on earth and takes residence in the family well, not because its hunting the family but because that's just where it happened to end up. It begins sucking the life out of the land and people around it, not out of malice, but because that's just what it does. And when it leaves, it's not trying to escape the consequences of its actions, that's just the next stage in its life. It couldn't give a rat's bald heiny about the people who were around when it happened any more than a tree cares about the guy it hits on the head with an acorn Most people want horror where the monster, the ghost, the psychopath, or whatever is actively gunning for the heroes, and a story where the heroes aren't even on the monster's radar just sounds boring. A lot of people claim yo like cosmic or Lovecraftian horror without knowing what it actually is. They just assume that it's anything with giant tentacle monsters.
Cosmic/eldritch horror doesn't work for me. It never has, perhaps because the premise is that humanity is nothing but a mote of dust in a cosmic being's eye. That being so, what the hell is great Nyarlothep doing on this backwater planet anyway? People go mad because their minds can't handle it? Sorry, doesn't gel. It takes more than the knowledge of a super-powerful alien being to send someone mad. We've been dealing with the concept of Satan for centuries, the number of madpersons has remained relatively low. The Color out of Space is basically a 1920s localised outbreak of coronavirus. The Thing is scarier than that, because suddenly, someone who was human isn't anymore, even without the mouth-in-the-belly, and the fear and paranoia it created. Now I want Aliens vs Yog-Sothoth.
Okay, but consider the fact that very few people, if any, have actually seen Satan. There's a difference between hearing about something or looking at a picture of it and seeing it with your own eyes. Also consider that when angels appeared to people in the Bible, the first they said was usually "Don't be afraid" otherwise they would start screaming and pulling out their hair. And when you take into account what the Bible says angels actually look like, that's totally understandable. They're practically eldritch horrors in and of themselves! So no, I dont think the idea of people going insane just by looking at a Lovecraftian monster is too farfetched, as things go.
Thing that are tangible to 'reality' that play on the mind. Not the implication of some kind of mythical creature that never really exists outside the mind's eye or in the physical sense. Darkness and obscurity go hand in hand, since they play on the unknown. Which is part of why Alien was so effective. The notion that you see something that may or not be alive, along with the unknown intention of shapes creates a sense of dread and terror. The uncanny valley can also cause unease due to it being familiar and yet off just enough to make one keep their distance. Kidnapping and the loss of a relative/lover/friend can drive the mind wild since there is no way of knowing if they are alive or dead. Further more you don't know if they are being simply held, or if they are slowly being mutilated and suffering at the hands of their captor(s). The inverse could also be just as horrifying, of having to cope with allowing oneself to fall into such brutal/gruesome/depraved acts, that even they never thought or wanted to enact in the first place. Basically becoming the monster that did the former. Stalkers and the hunter/prey relationship can get the old ticker racing. Falling back to not knowing intent, with an unsettling feeling that it will end in murder/torture/etc. The effect of having to keep running and hiding from a seemingly relentless force that never lets one truly feel safe, can do the trick as well. Added bonus when there are known elements added to the mix for the party, giving weight to the implications of being discovered/captured by the predatory being. Phobias are also a good way to play on. I mean just look at how many people are afraid of clowns, in relation to how many Horror movies and books involve them. It all comes down to some instinctual set of fears, or traumatic experience(s) that lead to the individual developing the more 'realistic' phobias in the first place.
This is a great thread! It's definitely a hard thing to do. But I think the unknown is always scary. I found Bird Box scary in some places because the monster/creature/thing was steeped in mystery.
I agree that suggestion, atmosphere, mystery, and fleeting glimpses- not gore, not hideous monsters popping out, etc.- are the way to go. Provide enough hints to let the reader's imagination do the rest of the work. For a master class on genuinely scary storytelling (at least for me) I recommend the following stories: The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood The White People by Arthur Machen Count Magnus by MR James
I remember reading through a lot of Lovecraft's works relatively recently and noticing how often his stories ended with a jump scare-esque horrific reveal at the end. For example The Shadow Over Innsmouth was scary enough with the chase sequence and conspiracy, but the real kicker is the end Spoiler when the protagonist realizes he's developing the Innsmouth-look. There is also a strong theme in Lovecraft's works about the unknowable. Not necessarily in the sense that human's can't comprehend it, though there is that, but more so in the sense that should you lift back the veil and see the true reality then there is no turning back. Forever will you have to reconcile that the world is a far scarier place than you thought possible. And that no one can help you, since no one else would ever believe your story until they've lived it themselves.
Being raped by ANYTHING can cause significant damage to a person's psyche. What makes Lovecraft's monsters so intimidating is that they don't have to do anything to you, a mere look at them will melt your brain. And what's disturbing is that most times, the characters in his stories bring it on themselves. They find some piece of forbidden knowledge, can't leave well enough alone, and dig deeper until they catch a glimpse of unfathomable horror and either die or go bonkers.
Complete and total isolation (no phone, computer, or internet), that will eventually drive even the most dedicated mad.
