alice quinn // writing help

fear

This is aimed (why does that look like it's spelled wrong?) mostly towards the It fandom, and the next chapter I think I'm doing will be as well. Fears are a very, very important part in It, the book and both movies. Pennywise's whole dynamic relies solely on fear. If you aren't afraid, he has no power over you. So, picking your character's fear and portraying it correctly is an extremely important part of writing a successful It fanfiction.

Fear is never exactly the same for everyone because we all react differently. Some people have active imaginations which make it easier to think you've seen a demon in the dark shadow of your bedroom at night, some might be scared of past incidents such as a car crash, going into war, abuse, etc., and some are simply rationally or irrationally afraid of something. Rationally being falling down the stairs or something of the sort, irrationally being bananas or realtors. You have to know what motivates the fear in order to manipulate it and take advantage of it. Why is your character afraid? Or, if you haven't chosen a fear yet, what might be a reason your character would be afraid?

There's also the physicality of it. Not everyone screams when they're afraid of something, or when they're jump scared. Some people freeze up and cant move or talk, let alone scream. Usually, your body starts releasing adrenaline, you can enter "fight or flight", your heartbeat and breathing rate goes up (hence why you can have a heart attack or an asthma attack when you get scared), and your perception of time might increase.

Please, please, please, don't forget the detail. That's what's fun about writing horror. You can go into deep areas that no other genre usually goes into and make the readers scared along with your characters.

The whole point of this chapter was to just list some different fears that your character could have, but I got a little carried away, so here we go:

- Coulrophobia: Fear of clowns

- Arachnophobia: Fear of spiders

- Entomophobia: Fear of insects

- Acrophobia: Fear of heights

- Ophidiophobia: Fear of snakes

- Claustrophobia: Fear of enclosed spaces

- Trypanophobia: Fear of needles

- Hydrophobia: Fear of water

- Pyrophobia: Fear of fire

- Hemophobia: Fear of blood

- Anginophobia: Fear of angina or choking

- Dentophobia: Fear of dentists

- Hypochondria: Fear of illness

- Iatrophobia: Fear of doctors

- Necrophobia (not to be confused with necrophilia): Fear of death or dead things

- Nyctophobia: Fear of the dark

- Pediophobia: Fear of dolls

- Aichmophobia: Fear of sharp objects

- Wiccaphobia: Fear of witches and witchcraft

- Sanguivoriphobia: Fear of vampires

- Lupophobia: Fear of werewolves

- Kinemortophobia: Fear of zombies

- Phasmophobia: Fear of ghosts

- Alienophobia: Fear of aliens

For me, there's a few options Pennywise might turn into. Aliens, Diana from Lights Out, the demon from Evil Dead, the gravedigger from Gerald's Game, or the one thing from Pan's Labyrinth (you know what I'm talking about... I haven't even seen the movie but I've seen pictures and I cannot handle that thing). I'd like to add that I'm pretty hard to scare; I can watch any Conjuring universe movie and immediately go to sleep right after. One movie I cannot watch (I've seen it four times though because I constantly trick myself into watching it by remembering it as not scary when it's actually terrifying) is Evil Dead. I think you'll understand if you've seen it.