The Writer's Guide to a Good Story

Scary Stories

I never thought I'd be much of a scary movie person, but a couple of weeks ago, I started watching horror movies and now I'm addicted. So far my favorites have been The Shining, Scream, and Saw (for some reason all of my favorite horror movies start with the letter S). But all of this has got me thinking about what makes a good scary story. 

In my opinion, horror/thriller is one of the hardest genres to write in. There are so many stories that have already been done, so many cliches, and how can you properly scare someone without the use of CGI zombies and demonic music?

But you shouldn't let that discourage you. Although it can present a challenge, horror can most certainly be written. Not only that, but it had be written well. Stephen King, for example, is a pretty well-known horror novel writer. 

I don't have much of an experience in writing horror, except maybe with a few short stories, but there are some important things to remember when you're trying to write a scary story.

First of all, you may think that the main objective in writing horror stories is to scare the living sh*t out of your readers any chance you get. While scaring the sh*t out of your readers is fun, however, it's not the only thing that goes into the recipe of a good scary novel. 

One of the more important things to remember is that there's also different types of horror. For example, there's gory and bloody horror, like in the Saw movies where someone's head gets chopped off or someone's cheating girlfriend gets sliced in half every two seconds. There's the supernatural kind of horror, where demons take over a little girl's body and make her projectile vomit onto a priest. And there's the more psychological takes on horror, with ax murderers who wear their mother's clothes or high school kids that kill each other because they're jealous of each other's hair (okay that last one wasn't a reference to any movie but they should totally make it into one). The psychological stories may fit more into the thriller category than the horror category. 

 Any of these can be made into good scary stories. There are plenty of good horror stories out there that are known for scaring the crap out of people without the use of decapitated heads and poked out eyeballs. Choosing a sub-genre is all about your personal preference. Many stories combine aspects of different sub-genres as well.   

I think this is also an important place to stop and talk about horror vs thriller. What is the difference? Well, to me there isn't a huge difference. There is no clear or definite line that separates a horror from a thriller. But if there had to be a difference, it would be that a thriller would be a little more character-based and suspenseful, while a horror would rely slightly more on the shock/gore/supernatural value of the story. For the purposes of this chapter and just to simplify things, though, I'm not going to treat horror and thriller too differently. 

Just for fun, I think we should start off with some of the things you shouldn't do while writing horror.

1. Not developing your characters. Yes, while horror/thriller admittedly doesn't always have as much detailed character development as other genres (like romance), the reader should still have some reason to root for your characters, making the idea of something bad happening to them all the more suspenseful/sad/scary. If the character I'm supposed to be rooting for is a total a-hole who is mean to animals, I'm probably not gonna be too sad if they get eaten by a ghost. On the other hand, if you want to make the character a total a-hole for whom the audience cheers when he/she dies, that's up to you. Sometimes the author doesn't really care how the audience feels about their character, which is fine as long as it's what's intended. 

2. Trying to explain everything. While some exposition is important and it's important for the story to make sense in the context of whatever world it's taking place in, you don't have to explain every little thing as a writer, like why scary monster #2 has nine claws instead of ten. But if you're writing a purely real-world based psychological thriller about a serial killer, you probably wouldn't have a character start flying and having lazer beams come out of their eyes at the end of the story. 

3. Too much gore. While there's nothing wrong with having someone's finger get chopped off, in my opinion, having a story with little to no gore is still better than overdosing on it. Many great and well-known scary movies and books have little to no gore. While having too much gore, on the other hand, tends to get a little gross after a while instead of scary. If gross and cringe-y is what you're going for, that's a different story, but if you're going for more of a spooky, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck factor, gore is not a necessity. Some gore here and there works to induce shock in your readers, but using it too much makes the shock factor eventually wear down as it gets repetitive. 

So what should you do?

If you want to scare your readers, don't just think about what scares you. Ask other people, like your friends or family, what scares them. There are certain things that universally scare humans. Like the unknown. Why is death really scary? Because as humans, we still can't say for certain what happens after you cease to breathe. 

Isolation is another thing. Most horror stories play off of the common fear of being trapped somewhere with no one to help you. Or worse, being trapped in a place where everyone is crazy and wants to kill you (cough Texas Chain Saw Massacre COUGH). 

Possibly the most infuriating thing in horror is when a character makes a stupid mistake like opening that door, or turning off the lights, or not calling the police, etc. There is nothing wrong with having a character make a mistake. However, avoid falling into the "seemingly-intelligent-character-makes-really-dumb-mistake-for-no-reason" trap. For example, the young boy who hears a strange noise in the house after hearing there's a killer on the loose and runs toward the noise right away without carrying a weapon or heading for the phone. If your character does something foolish, it should be justified, just like with any other story. 

Also like with anything else, try to be consistent. If a mom suspects her child is secretly a serial killer, would she leave him alone with his younger sister later on in the story? 

Make sure there is something for the character to lose. In other words, make the stakes high. If Jeff doesn't escape from the killer, he will die (painfully). If Sandy doesn't defeat the evil supernatural spirits in her house, they will take over her child, etc. Ultimately, in horror stories, the stakes are  usually either that someone dies, is trapped in an eternal cycle of torture in hell, or is taken over by some supernatural creature.

One of the most important things is suspense. Suspense is actually important for all genres, but in horror, it's one of the things that makes or breaks the "fear" factor. Suspense creates dread in the reader, and gives them a reason to keep reading. There are a few ways you can create suspense.

The first few I've mentioned already. Create characters that your readers will care about, and raise the stakes for them. Suspense usually means that there probably isn't going to be a huge amount of action/gore/whatever going on in the story at that moment. However, that doesn't mean that nothing is taking place. Suspense is apprehension. It's more a fear of what might happen later than what is happening now. 

But of course, if you have suspense you should follow up on it. If you have a woman in the story say "I think something horrible is going to happen", then something big had better happen, whether necessarily horrible or not. Without following up on it, suspense means almost nothing. 

Another way to follow up on suspense: twist endings. I've always been a little disappointed when I was halfway through a story, predicted what was going to happen, and then it ends up happening. For example, a woman is bitten by a werewolf, and starts growing claws. I suspect she's gonna become, a werewolf, and at the end of the story, she's a werewolf. Yes, it's kind of cool, but readers generally like to be wrong about what's going to happen at the end of the story. Twists in the story, just like gore, though, should not be overused. Like the woman who turns out to be an alien, who turns out to be a movie actress in disguise, who turns out to be a vampire, who turns out to be Satan, etc. Twists, like anything else, can get old very quick. 

So one last piece of advice. Like I've said a lot of times before, you can't please everyone. What will scare the hell out of one reader will probably make another one yawn. But if you play your cards right, you probably will scare at least one person reading your story.