On Writing Horror · 3:43pm March 14th
I've written a lot of horror. Some of it good, some of it bad. I like to think I've gotten sort of okay at it.
This blog will be about my thoughts on how to go about writing horror. Note that these are my thoughts; they are all suggestions, and if they don't work for you or for your story, ignore them! But if you're looking for a place to start with horror, or looking to get better at it, here's my advice. I'll be using examples from my own stories (there will be spoilers) to support my points, and I'll try to make them as clear as possible.
Ready?
Let's go.
If you're an aspiring horror author, and you're looking for an idea: start with something that scares you.
This is the best piece of advice I can give, which is why I'm putting it first. The best horror comes from a place of genuine fear; good horror is personal.
I consider Meat and Bone, Sinew and Bile to be the best thing I have ever written. It came from a place of two very personal fears, and the conflict between them.
The first fear was of my own body breaking. I've always found body horror oddly compelling because it physically affects me; it makes me feel weak. It reminds me that I am made of meat. I like being reminded that I am made of meat; I think more people need to be reminded that they are made of meat.
Compounding that fear was an incident that happened earlier in the year I wrote it: I broke my little finger falling off a bicycle. It was a clean break. Too clean. I had to have surgery to put a titanium plate in to hold the bone together. It was the first major surgery I'd ever undertaken, and surgery terrifies me. To this day that finger still doesn't fold all the way out, and it hurts on occasion. It's another reminder that I am made of meat and bone, sinew and bile.
The other fear is one of surviving death. I've spent a good chunk of my life suicidal, for various reasons. But I never managed to actually go through with it because I was both deathly afraid of dying... and of what would happen if I survived. I came close more times than I can count (I actually stopped counting), but I could never actually do it.
These two conflicting fears combined in Meat. I decided that the best way to tell people that they are made of meat was to literally take a body apart. I decided the best way to convey that fear of survival was to... well, read the fic.
It's a story that's scary because it's a story that scares me, and so I could write it from a place of sincerity, and I genuinely think that's what separates a good horror fic from a great one.
The second best thing you can do is pick something that doesn't really scare you, but you know scares others and can understand where that fear is coming from. Basically what I'm trying to say in this section is that the better you understand your horror, the better you can write it.
Here's the way I think about coming up with horror stories: every horror story needs a Fear and an Angle.
The Fear is the topic; it's what horrifies your audience. It's what you're playing with. It's (at least one of) your theme(s).
As an example, the Fear in Hall of Mirrors is the fear of losing yourself to the mask you wear. Of becoming the person you try to appear as to others, and losing yourself in the process. There's also a sub-fear of mental illness, but that's neither here nor there.
The Angle is the way you approach your Fear. It's the twist, the premise of the story. It's how you represent your themes, make them concrete.
In Hall of Mirrors, the Angle is Pinkie being confronted by her reflection in a hall of mirrors. Her reflection, the Harlequin (the facade she presents to the world), is literally trying to replace her. Pinkie is the character in the show I feel fits the best to this Fear, as a pony who outwardly seems to be cheerful but inside may not be as she appears. And so this also ends up being a character study of her, too, brief as it is.
I feel the Angle is where the most creativity is required. It's hard to come up with new things that scare us; coming up with a new way to convey those things is crucial.
And so, my method for coming up with my horror fics is simple: find something that scares me, or that I'm ruminating on, and then think of a way to represent that fear symbolically. If it's a fanfic, I try to think of a character or characters who can convey that horror, or who could be made to work within the themes I'm going for.
If you ask me (and you're reading this, so you basically are), the most important things to a horror story are not the scares or the frightening imagery, but tension and atmosphere.
Tension in a literary sense is essentially the reader's feeling that something bad is about to happen, but you don't know when. It's an emotion you want to invoke because it keeps people feeling on-edge, and also keeps people reading. It is essential for horror (in most stories) because it is the base root of fear.
I like to think of it in terms of physics. You may recall from high school that a ball being held at the top of a ramp has a lot of potential energy (stored energy, due to its position), but not kinetic energy (the energy of a body in motion). When the ball is released and it starts rolling down the ramp, that potential energy is converted into kinetic energy as it moves.
It's the same with tension and fear. Tension is like potential energy; it's the potential for fear. Likewise, fear is like kinetic energy. As a story hits a scary scene, the tension the reader feels that we've been building is converted into fear. The more tension there was, the more fear the reader will feel (hopefully, if you've done a good job). This is why it's important to build tension.
My story Side Effects Include is all about tension. Aside from the general horror that's going on with Twilight's side effects (autobiographical, by the way; they've gotten a little better since then), the actual horror section of the piece comes at the very end:
The doctor pointed at a jar full of yellow liquid sitting on the table beside her. Inside was a grey piece of meat—Dr. Pons recognized it as part of the cerebellum.
A piece of her brain.
"They found it next to her," the doctor said. "They think she teleported it out herself. Maybe on accident. Who knows."
This segment comes five paragraphs before the end of the story. Everything else in the story is building up to this moment; things slowly get worse and worse for Twilight until she is forced to take drastic measures. This is a horror story; people aren't expecting a happy ending (side note: I love it when a horror story has a "happy" ending. More people should do it when appropriate). They know that things aren't going to end well. The gradual degradation of Twilight's health and mental state builds up until this one, pivotal scene, and that's what makes the story work.
Atmosphere, on the other hand, is the general feeling of your story. It's sort of the mood of your piece.
It's hard to convey what creates a story's atmosphere. It's all about how you write your sentences, what details you include, your setting. A cramped room at dawn with blue curtains conveys a different mood than a small brightly lit room at midday with red curtains. Yes, the colour of the curtains does matter, they aren't just fucking blue. Every detail you choose to include in a story matters, as does every one you leave out.
I think the horror story I put the most emphasis on atmosphere into is This Town Will Never Let You Go. While it is rough and unfinished (and will remain that way, although I have adapted it into an original novella that I'm afraid to start editing), atmosphere was its main focus.
The sun-baked wood of the train platform creaked and squealed under her hooves. Insects chirped and cried in the grass of the field across the tracks. The station clock, hanging large over the single ticket booth, tick-tick-ticked away.
This was the first time the station had ever been deserted enough for Apple Bloom to hear any of it.
She shadowed her eyes with a hoof, squinted. No one in sight. No train, either.
“Hello?” she tentatively called out. No reply.
She started forward again. Her hoofsteps echoed in the hollow space beneath the platform.
Rat-tat-tat went her hoof on the glass of the ticket booth. “Hey, anypony in there?”
She didn’t expect a response, and she didn’t get one; she could see that the little hut was empty, the angled sun casting light and long shadows through the window. It was morning, around eight. The station was meant to open at seven.
Sections like this build atmosphere. It's bright out, and hot, but you can feel that something is off. This feeling sits at the back of the readers' mind. Makes them uncomfortable.
Tension and atmosphere, I think, are the two biggest assets you have when you're trying to write horror. They're what actually creep people out, what make your actual horror scenes work. You must not ignore them.
I like to start in a place of normalcy when writing horror (or, at least, relative normalcy). What I mean by this is: start your story before the horror starts. In my experience, this helps to ease your reader into a story, get them comfortable. That allows you to build tension slowly, to exploit that sense of comfort and twist it into something terrifying.
As an example, my story You'll Be Just Like Me starts with a scene of the student six talking about their plans for summer vacation. It's light, it's comedic, and it's fun.
And then it ends in this:
"I'm happy for you, Gallus," Ocellus said, beaming. The conversation was good for her.
It was a distraction from the churning in her stomach at the thought of going home.
Why is Ocellus afraid of going home? That question cuts through the casual atmosphere of the scene like a knife. It catches the reader off guard; as horror writers, we can use this to our advantage.
This, as with everything I say, is a suggestion; throwing your reader straight into the action can work. If your aim is to disorient your reader, or to catch them off-guard, or just to have a killer opening, then that's great!
As a counterexample to my point, what I consider to be the best horror fic on the site, mushroompone's The Head opens with this:
On a chilly morning in early October, Ocellus came to class without a head.
It's a fantastic opening line which immediately grabs your attention. mushroompone could have started earlier, but instead they chose to start here, and the fic is better for it. The Head is less interested in building tension in its sequence of events and more interested in exploring the horror inherent in the situation and how the people involved react to it, which in itself creates a more character-focused sort of tension that really just works. Please read it, it's very good.
Continuing on from that last point, another thing I think a lot of people are afraid to do is include comedy or lighter scenes in their horror stories. Don't be! While for a shorter story it may be advantageous to maintain a grim tone throughout (and even for some longer ones, as always all advice given here is just a suggestion), a splash of humor here and there can help elevate your horror.
What I mean is, by including a lighter scene you give the reader a chance to decompress a bit. It doesn't reset the tension, the tension's still there in the background, but it acts as a brief reprieve to the horror. This can be a good thing! It allows you to come back twice as hard without overwhelming the reader, and it makes reading your story more interesting. A regular story benefits from variety, and so does a horror story.
Some more miscellaneous tips:
If you're writing horror, read horror! Look for actual published books and short stories, too, not just fanfiction. This is just a good idea for writers in general.
If you're writing a story with lots of scares, I think it's important to make sure that each of those scenes is scarier than the last. Start with your least scary scene, then work your way up. Remember to build tension in between.
Don't neglect your characters! They're important! Characters are the eyes through which we experience a story, and the more personal the horror is to the characters you're writing about, the harder it will hit them and the reader.
Make sure your story actually makes sense! If you have a scene you think is really scary, but you can't make it work logically within the story or it doesn't fit the pacing or whatever, kill that darling!
Don't be afraid of using gore (I was for a long time), but also don't rely on it. Gore is hard to write in prose and easy to mess up, and it often doesn't have the visceral impact it would in, say, film.
Try and be original with your scares! Cliches kill horror. Kill it dead.
The best genre to pair with horror in my opinion is mystery. Keep your readers guessing.
(The second best genre to pair with horror is comedy.)
So that's my thoughts on writing horror as of March 2024. This isn't the first blog of horror writing advice I've written (and it probably won't be the last), but it is the most comprehensive. Let me know what you think!
Yours in spooks and specters,
-RB
Tension and atmosphere, yes! Exactly! It's where so many horror stories fall down!
I could not help but notice the timing of this blog with a certain review I did recently. 👀 Or that the other story you mention at the top I have also reviewed. And now I know what RB stands for, tee hee. :3
Also, goddammit do I really need to read The Head. >_<
I personally feel that, and of course this is different for most horror stories of course sometimes it just can't happen, a 'Happy Ending' to a horror story should feel like a reward to The Reader. That they've managed to get through the story and were able to stomach whatever horrors and tension you've given it and deserve that release that they can be allowed to breathe again. As said not EVERY horror story deserves that of course some just end up sad and dark and terrifying but for the ones that it CAN work with I say go for it.
5772279
Yes, you really do
Iʼm unlikely to ever write horror stories, but I still appreciate the tips. Thank you for this.
5772279
Seconding RB_: yes, you do. It's one of the best horror fics on this site, and very high up there as a top-quality fic overall.
This is a great bunch of writing advice! Horror can be so difficult get right particularly because of what you said: when you start with something that scares you, you can't always know when you've turned the screws enough for someone who might not have that innate fear of the topic. This is something Stephen King is a bit obsessed with - how do you take a scary concept and turn it into a story? Of course, he's Stephen King, so his solution was "I don't really know, I just sit down and start writing and sooner or later it happens." Complete madman. But, to be fair, I don't have an answer either! It seems to happen differently every time. Many of my horror stories (including The Head - thank you for the shout out ^^) we're written using King's method. A few though, were much more rigorously planned (such as my latest, which sadly had to be hosted off fimfic). The day I find out the secret formula is the day I... Well, the day I quit my job, probably!
I think being a horror author requires a certain amount of masochism, honestly. Have you ever had a thought that freaked you out? Something that came entirely from your own mind and just chilled you to the bone? Being a horror author is falling down a rabbit hole after that feeling where others turn tail and run. You have to be able to sit with fear for long periods and pull it apart. You also have to enjoy it to a certain extent. I've always been that sort of person! It's nice to be able to chase those fears to their core and pin them to the page. Twice as nice when the finished product causes that fear to light up in someone else ;)
Also, I'm humbled by my mention in this blog. It means the world to me that one of my favorite pieces has stuck with you (and a few in your comments section)!! Strange as it may be to say about something like The Head, it's heartwarming to see how many people it affected. Thank you so much for continuing to pay that forward! It means the world to me!
5772362
Thank you for the wonderful comment!
Not to, like, gush or anything, but I actually had drifted away from horror for a while before I read your fic. Reading it made me want to write horror again, and that led to me writing Meat, which is my favourite thing that I’ve written! So The Head actually had a big impact on me outside of it just being a really good story, too. Thank you for writing it!
'Less interested in building tension'?
I think the story builds tension that's about the characters who still have heads wondering what is going on, and how they are to handle it, and having to make decisions or choices about that while it's difficult or impossible to know that those decisions will be correct.
And THAT is why the story is good, imho.
But I say this as someone who sometimes writes a relatively intellectual or conceptual sort of horror (or at least some people keep calling it horror) so maybe I'm biased.
5772405
Good point. I’ll clarify my statement.
5772451
I felt that my own statement was kind of unclear too, and that if I'd had more time to edit it (and maybe to reread the story in question) I might have improved my statement.
Don't you dare link The Trees Are Scre… you did. You categorised The Screaming Trees as a bad horror fic. I couldn't be more insulted.
On an actual note, it is a bad horror fic, but I honestly like it somehow