“The Monkey’s Paw”, an 18th century tale by William Wymark Jacobs about three terrible wishes granted by a mystical monkey’s paw. “The Tell-Tale Heart”, master horror writer Edgar Allan Poe’s psychologically disturbing short story of murder and haunting. Neil Gaiman’s take on the nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty in “The Case of Four and Twenty Blackbirds. ”[3] X Research source You’d be remiss not to read a horror story by arguably the master of the genre, Stephen King. He has written over 200 short stories and uses many different techniques to scare his readers. While there are many lists of his greatest horror stories[4] X Research source , read “The Moving Finger”[5] X Research source or “The Children of the Corn” to get a sense of King’s style. Contemporary writer Joyce Carol Oates also has a famous horror story called “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” that uses psychological terror to great effect. [6] X Research source Modern non-standard horror, like Stephen Milhauser’s “The White Glove,” uses the horror genre to tell a coming-of-age story.
In King’s “The Moving Finger”, King takes a premise: a man who thinks he sees and hears a moving human finger scratching a wall in his bathroom and then follows the man closely over the span of a short period of time as he tries to avoid the finger, until he is forced to confront his fear of the finger. King also uses other elements like a Jeopardy game and a conversation between the main character and his wife to further create a feeling of suspense and dread. In Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Oates establishes the main character, a young girl named Connie, by providing scenes of her daily life and then zooms in on one fateful day, when two men pull up in a car while Connie is at home all alone. Oates uses dialogue to create a sense of dread and allows the reader to experience Connie’s growing sense of fear of the threat of these men. In both stories, horror or terror is created through a combination of shock and dread, using elements that are possibly supernatural (a moving human finger) and elements that are psychologically disturbing (a young girl alone with two men).
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 could also take a poll of what scares your family, friends, or partners the most. Get some subjective ideas of horror.
Use your imagination to create a horrifying spin on a normal, everyday activity or scene.
Think about what kind of confined spaces scare you. Where would you dread or fear being trapped in the most? Trap your character in a confined space like a cellar, a coffin, an abandoned hospital, an island, or an abandoned town. This will create an immediate conflict or threat to the character and set your story up with immediate tension or suspense.
Shock: the simplest way to scare the reader is to create shock with a twist ending, a sudden image of gore or a quick moment of terror. However, creating fear through shock can lead to cheap scares and if used too much, can become predictable or less likely to scare the reader. Paranoia: the sense that something is not quite right, which can unnerve the reader, make them doubt their own surroundings, and when used to its full effect, make the reader doubt even their own beliefs or ideas of the world. This type of fear is great for slow tension-building and psychological horror stories. Dread: this type of fear is the horrible sense that something bad is going to happen. Dread works well when the reader connects deeply to the story and begins to care enough about the characters to fear something bad that is going to happen to them. Inspiring dread in a reader is tricky as the story will need to do a lot of work to keep the reader engaged and involved, but it is a powerful type of fear. Balance intense negative emotions with intense emotions of wonder or positivity. [9] X Research source
Using gross-out details like a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, something green and slimy landing on your arm, or a character landing in a pool of blood. Using unnatural details (or fear of the unknown or impossible) like spiders the size of bears, an attack from the living dead, or an alien claw grabbing your feet in a dark room. Using terrifying psychological details like a character who comes home to another version of him or herself, or a character who experiences paralyzing nightmares which then affect their sense of reality.
You can use Freytag’s pyramid[11] X Research source to create an outline, which begins with exposition of the setting and life or day of the character(s), moves into the conflict of the character (a severed finger in the bathroom, two men in a car), shifts upward into rising action where the character tries to solve or work against the conflict but meets several complications or roadblocks, reaches the climax, and then falls downward with falling action, into the resolution where the character is changed, shifted (or in the case of some horror), meets a terrifying death. Think of a short title that hints at the terror in your story.
Determine the age and occupation of your character. Determine the marital status or relationship status of your character. Determine how they view the world (cynical, skeptical, anxious, happy-go-lucky, satisfied, settled). Add in specific or unique details. Make your character feel distinct with a certain character trait or tick (a hairstyle, a scar) or a mark of their appearance (an item of clothing, a piece of jewellery, a pipe or cane). A character’s speech or dialect can also distinguish a character on the page, and make them stand out more to the reader. Once your readers identify with a character, the character becomes a bit like their child. They will empathize with the character’s conflict and root for them to overcome their conflict, while also realizing that this rarely happens. This tension between what the reader wants for the character and what could happen or go wrong for the character will fuel the story and propel your readers through the story.
In order to create conflict in a character’s life, you need to introduce a danger or threat to the character, whether it’s a moving finger, two men in a car, a mystical monkey’s paw or a murderous clown. For example, in King’s “The Moving Finger”, the main character, Howard, is a middle-aged man who enjoys watching Jeopardy, has a comfortable relationship with his wife, and seems to live a decent middle class life. But King does not let the reader get too comfortable in Howard’s normal existence as he introduces a scratching sound in Howard’s bathroom. The discovery of the finger in the bathroom, and Howard’s subsequent attempts to avoid it, remove it, or destroy it, creates a story where a seemingly normal, likeable man’s life is interrupted by the unknown or the unreal.
Its important to create enough motivation for the character so their bad decision feels justifiable and not merely stupid or unbelievable. An attractive young babysitter who responds to a masked killer by running not to the telephone to call the police but outside into the deep, dark woods is not only a stupid character move, it also feels unbelievable to the reader or viewer. But if you have your character make a justifiable, though flawed, decision in response to a threat, your reader will be more willing to believe and root for that character. For example, in King’s “The Moving Finger”, Howard initially decides not to tell his wife about the finger in the bathroom because he believes he may be hallucinating or confusing the scratching noise for a mouse or animal caught in the bathroom. The story justifies Howard’s decision not to tell anyone about the finger by playing off what most people who tell themselves if they witnessed a strange or bizarre event: it wasn’t real, or I’m just seeing things. The story then justifies Howard’s reaction by allowing his wife to go into the bathroom and not comment about seeing a moving finger by the toilet. So, the story plays with Howard’s perception of reality and indicates that maybe he did hallucinate the finger.
Fear is built off of understanding the consequences of an action for a character or the risk of their actions. So if your character decides to confront a clown in the attic or two men in a car, the reader will need to be aware of what the character could lose as a result of this decision. Preferably, your character’s stakes should be extreme or major, such as loss of sanity, loss of innocence, loss of life, or loss of the life of someone they care about. In the case of King’s story, the main character is afraid that if he confronts the finger, he may risk losing his sanity. The stakes of the character in the story are very high and very clear to the reader. So, when Howard does finally confront the moving finger, the reader is terrified of how the outcome is going to create a loss for Howard.
Hint at the horrific climax of the story by providing small clues or details, such as the label on a bottle that will later come in handy for the main character, a sound or voice in a room that will later become an indication of an unnatural presence, or even a loaded gun in a pillow that may later go off or be used by the main character. Build tension by alternating from tense or bizarre moments to quiet moments where your character can take a breath in a scene, calm down, and feel safe again. Then, amp up the tension by re-engaging the character in the conflict and then making the conflict feel even more serious or threatening. In “The Moving Finger”, King does this by having Howard freak out about the finger, then have a relatively normal conversation with his wife while listening to Jeopardy and thinking about the finger, and then attempt to avoid the finger by going for a walk. Howard begins to feel safe or assured that the finger is not real, but of course, once he opens the bathroom door, the finger seems to have grown longer and is moving much faster than it was before. King slowly builds tension for both the character and the reader by introducing the threat and then having it overshadow the rest of the story. As readers, we know the finger is a sign of something bad or possibly evil, and are now in a position to watch Howard try to avoid, and then eventually confront this evil.
While you want to create a satisfying ending for the reader, you also do not want to make it so closed and settled that the reader walks away without a lingering feeling of uncertainty. You could have the character experience a moment of realization about the conflict or about how to solve the conflict. The revelation should be the result of a build-up of details in the scene or story and should not be jarring or feel random to the reader. [16] X Research source In “The Moving Finger”, Howard’s moment of realization occurs when he figures out that the finger may be a signifier of an evil or wrong in the world. He asks the police officer, who is there to arrest him after noise complaints from the neighbors, a final Jeopardy question, in the category of the “inexplicable”. “Why do terrible things sometimes happen to the nicest people?” Howard asks. The police officer then turns to open the toilet, where Howard stored the slaughtered finger, and “wagers it all” before opening the toilet seat to look at the inexplicable or unknown. This ending leaves the reader wondering what the officer sees in the toilet, and if the finger was real or a figment of Howard’s imagination. In this way, it is open-ended without being too surprising or confusing for the reader.
Focus on creating a story that feels personally terrifying to you. Or, add a twist to a familiar horror trope, like a vampire who enjoys cake instead of blood, or a man trapped in a dumpster rather than a coffin. Remember that too much gore or violence can actually have a desensitizing effect on the reader, especially if the same pools of blood keep happening over and over again in the story. Of course, some gore is good and likely necessary in a horror story. But make sure you use gore in a spot in the story that is impactful or meaningful, so it can punch your reader in the gut, rather than numb them or bore them. [18] X Research source Another way you can avoid cliches is to focus more on creating a disturbed or unsettled state of mind for your character, rather than images of gore or pools of blood. Pictorial memories often don’t stick in a reader’s mind, but the effect of these images on a character will likely create a lingering creepiness for the reader. So aim not for your reader’s imagination but for a disturbance in your reader’s state of mind. [19] X Research source
Get out your thesaurus and replace any redundant word use with synonyms to avoid using the same words or phrases over and over again in the story. Be sure to make your language use and word choice fit the voice of your character. A teenage girl will likely use different words or phrases than a middle-aged man. Creating a vocabulary for your character that fits their personality and perspective will only add to their believability as a character.
If your story is dialogue heavy, reading it out loud will also help you determine if the dialogue sounds believable and natural. If your story contains a twist ending, gauging your reader’s reaction by watching your audience’s faces will help you determine if the ending is effective or needs more work.
