How to Start a Horror Story

Describe something that makes you afraid or shudder. Think about your worst fear, such as fear of losing a friend, fear of heights, fear of clowns, even fear of thorny tape. You can then tap into this fear and exploit it as a story idea.

• Use your fear as material for a story telling about something scary or gruesome. Think about how you would react if you were a character pushed into a situation where you faced those fears.
• Another option is to ask a loved one or friend what scares or disgusts them the most and borrows their fears as story ideas.

Turn an ordinary situation into something terrifying. You can also use an everyday situation, such as a walk in the park, a cookout, or a visit with friends, and add an element of fear to the situation. Use your imagination to bring the horror into an ordinary action or scene. ^[1]

• For example, maybe you came across a severed ear on a morning walk in the park, or the vegetable you were cutting for dinner suddenly turned into a finger or a tentacle. Get creative and think about how to distort or transform a seemingly ordinary situation into a horror.

Confine your characters in a terrifying situation. You can also confine or surround the protagonist in a horrible or macabre situation. The method of restricting the movement of the character will allow you to create a tense and creepy atmosphere in the story. ^[2]

• Thinking about a tight space makes you panic or panic. Ask yourself where you would be most afraid of being locked up.
• You can place the main character in a narrow space such as a coffin, a cold and wet cellar, an abandoned police station, an island or an uninhabited town. The scene where the character is confined in a terrible space will bring fear into the story and create an atmosphere of tension and suspense from the very beginning.

Build distinct protagonists. You can also start a horror story by focusing on character development. Try to create one or several main characters that are distinct and detailed. You can sketch out a personality profile of each character to get a feel for their lifestyle, understand how they think, and how they might react in a conflict. While not every detail in your sketch will appear in the story, they can still impact how you build your character and how your reader perceives the character. A well-rounded character will be recognizable and memorable to the reader. Begin the sketch by asking questions about aspects such as: ^[3]

• Character’s age and occupation
• Character’s marital status or romantic relationship
• The character’s way of seeing the world (skepticism, pessimism, anxiety, optimism, satisfaction, composure)
• Any characteristic or unique detail about a character’s appearance, such as a certain hairstyle, scar, or style of clothing.
• How to speak, dialect or language of the character

Create extreme emotions for the character. The horror element revolves around the character’s reaction to the details in the story. You can push the reader’s emotions to the extreme by giving the character an extreme emotion they struggle with throughout the story. Shock, paranoia, and terror are all intense emotions that can motivate a character to act or have violent inner thoughts. ^[4]

• Having a character go through a terrible shock, such as the death of a loved one or the loss of a job, is also a way to create conflict for the character. It can lead a character to a decision they wouldn’t normally make without experiencing a shock or aftershock after a terrible event.
• You can also instill in the character a paranoia or a feeling that something is wrong. It will make the character always suspicious and see things through a distorted lens. This is also an easy way to establish the protagonist’s relationship with other characters. Paranoia also evokes a sense of bewilderment in the reader and causes them to begin to doubt the events happening in the story.
• Another option is to give the protagonist a fear or premonition of an impending bad omen. The feeling of terror also helps to create tension in the story and a sense of suspense for the reader.

Create an outline for the plot. Once you’ve come up with a story idea, you should build a plot framework to get an overarching idea of the characters’ direction. Outlining the structure of your story in advance will make your story more convincing in the long run. The framework of the plot can act as a map or guide in the story, although you can deviate from that framework when inspiration strikes while writing the story.

• You can use a plot diagram to make an outline. The plot map will consist of six distinct sections, forming a triangle with the vertex at the top of the triangle. These six sections include: introduction of context, motivating events, climax, climax, decline and end.
• You can also use the snowflake method to outline. Write a plot summary sentence, followed by a plot summary, and finally a storyboard.