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Horror stories are a genre of stories that appeal to both readers and writers. A good horror story will make you shiver, scare or haunt you in your dreams. The success of a horror story depends on whether the reader believes it enough to terrify, shudder, or terrify. A horror story that is considered good is not easy to write. However, as with any genre of fiction, you can master how to write a horror story with the right strategy, along with perseverance and practice.
Steps
Understanding the horror genre
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Christopher Taylor, Assistant Professor of English, said: “The key elements of horror stories include fear, suspense, surprise, and moment of premonition .”
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- “Monkey Hand,” a work by William Wymark Jacobs about three wishes granted by a mysterious monkey hand.
- “Confessed Heart,” a short story by master horror writer Edgar Allen Poe, about psychosis, murder, and obsession. [3] X Research Sources
- If you know English, you can look up the book “The Case of Four and Twenty Blackbirds” by Neil Gaiman, based on the idea of a poem for children. [4] X Research Sources
- You should not ignore the works of the king of horror stories Stephen King. He wrote more than 200 short stories and used a variety of writing techniques to make readers shiver in fear. Among his best horror stories [5] X Research Source , you can choose to read “The Moving Finger” (rough translation: Finger) [6] X Research Source or “The Children of the Corn (Children of the Cornfields) to understand Stephen King’s writing style.
- Contemporary writer Joyce Carp Oates also has a famous horror story titled “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (translation: Where are you going, where have you been?) uses psychological fear to great effect. [7] X Research Sources
- Nonconventional modern horror stories such as Stephen Milhauser’s “The White Glove” use the horror genre to tell the psychological and emotional development of a protagonist.
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- In “Fingers”, King sets the stage for the story: a man claims to see and hear a human finger scratching on the wall in the bathroom, then the finger follows him for a period of time. short as he tried to avoid it, until he was forced to face his fear. King also uses other elements such as the TV quiz Jeopardy and the protagonist’s dialogue with his wife to create a sense of suspense and horror.
- In the story “Where are you going, where have you been?”, Oates builds the main character, a young girl named Connie, with a description of the girl’s daily life, then a close-up depicting the date. her destiny, when two men arrived in a car while Connie was alone in the house. Oates uses dialogue to create a sense of fear and make the reader imagine Connie’s growing fear of the other two’s threats.
- In both stories, a sense of horror or terror is created through a combination of the art of shock and fear using supernatural elements (movable slicing human fingers) and elemental elements. psychological disturbance (young girl alone facing two men).
Generating ideas in stories
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- Make a list of the things you fear the most, then imagine how you would react if you were in that situation or forced to confront your fears.
- You can also open a poll to see what your loved one, friend or partner fears the most. Gather more of each person’s subjective ideas about fear.
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- Use your imagination to create horror in ordinary everyday activities or scenes.
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- Think about the kinds of narrow spaces that scare you. Where would you be most afraid of falling?
- Confine the character in a confined space such as a cellar, a coffin, an abandoned hospital, an island, or an abandoned town. This will create direct conflict or frighten the character and create an atmosphere of tension or suspense for the story.
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- Shock: The simplest way is to create a shock with a reverse ending, a sudden image or a moment of terror. However, scaring with a shock effect can turn your horror story into a cheap scare story. If abused, this will make the reader predictable or not afraid enough.
- Paranoia: The feeling that something is not right can confuse the reader, making them doubt about the world around them. When used to its fullest effect, it will make the reader question both their beliefs and ideas about the world. This type of fear is very effective for psychological horror stories and stories where the tension is gradually increased.
- Fear: This is the fear of something bad that is about to happen. This is quite effective when the reader connects deeply with the story and begins to care about the characters enough to feel fear before an impending danger. Arousing a feeling of fear in the reader is not an easy task, it requires a lot of effort to draw the reader into the story, but it will create intense fear.
- Create a balance between extreme negative emotions with extreme positive emotions. [12] X Research Source
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- Use creepy details like a severed head rolling down the stairs, a slimy green object clinging to your arm, or a character falling into a pool of blood.
- Use unnatural details (or fear of the unknown or unreal) like giant bear-sized spiders, zombie attacks, or outsider claws the planet snaps at your feet in a dark room.
- Uses scary psychological details, such as a character coming home with a completely different version of a human, or a character experiencing nightmares in a state of paralysis, and from there affect their sense of reality.
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- You can use the Freytag pyramid scheme [14] X Research Sources to build the skeleton of the plot, starting with a description of the setting and life or a day of the character(s), and then transition to the character’s conflict situation (a severed finger in the bathtub, two men in a car), progressing to the development of a conflict, as the character tries to handle or cope with the conflict but there are obstacles and unforeseen situations that arise, followed by reaching a climax, then descending with descending action, finally ending when the character changes, transforms (or in a horror stories) is a gruesome death.
- Come up with a short title that can allude to the horror in your story.
Build characters
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- Choose your character’s age and occupation.
- Select the character’s marital status or relationship.
- Choose their view of the world (cynicism, pessimism, anxiety, carefree, contentment, maturity).
- Add unique features or details. Create a unique character with a personality trait or cue (hair style, scar) or a physical trait (a costume, jewelry, a pipe or a cane). A character’s words or dialect can also create a character on the page and make the character stand out in the eyes of the reader.
- Once identified, the character is like a child of the reader. They will empathize and support the character, hoping for the character to overcome the conflict, even though they know that this will be difficult.
- The tension between the reader’s desire and the possible uncertainty will make the story interesting and stimulate the reader to finish the story.
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- To create conflict in your character’s life, you need to portray a danger or threat to the character, whether it’s a moving finger, two men in a car, a monkey hand. occult or a murderous clown.
- For example, in “The Finger,” King describes the main character Howard as a middle-aged man who enjoys watching the quiz show Jeopardy on television, has a good relationship with his wife, and leads a decent life. king of the middle class. But King doesn’t let the reader get too comfortable with Howard’s ordinary life when he describes the sound of scratching in the protagonist’s bathroom. The discovery of the finger and Howard’s attempts to avoid, eliminate, or destroy it have left the man’s seemingly normal and pleasant life disturbed by a paranormal or bogus force. .
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- The key here is to create enough motivation for the character to justify their wrong decision instead of making the reader just see it as a stupid or unbelievable decision. An attractive and young babysitter reacting to a masked murderer not by running to the phone to call the police, but by rushing out and running into the dark woods not only speaks volumes of stupidity. stupidity of the character but also a detail that is difficult to convince the reader or viewer.
- But if you let your character make a seemingly logical decision in response to fear, even if the decision is flawed, the reader is willing to believe and support the character.
- For example, in “Fingers,” Howard first decides not to tell his wife about fingers because he thinks he’s hallucinating or mistakes the sound for a mouse or an animal stuck in the bathroom. . In the story, Howard’s decision not to tell anyone is explained by the reaction of most people when they witness something unusual or outlandish: it’s not real, I’m just imagining it.
- The author then justifies Howard’s reaction by having his wife walk into the bathroom and say nothing about the existence of the finger. As such, the author uses Howard’s realistic perspective and suggests that he may just be hallucinating the finger.
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- Fear is built on the perception of the consequences of actions ascribed to the character or the risk of their actions. So, if your character decides to face a clown in the attic or two men in a car, the reader will have to understand what the character might lose because of that decision. Better yet, the character’s risk should be at stake with something important or harsh, such as loss of sanity, innocence, loss of one’s own life or the life of a loved one.
- In King’s story, the protagonist fears that if he confronts the finger, he may lose his sanity. The “bet” for the character in the story is very high and clear to the reader. Thus, when Howard finally confronts the finger, the reader will be terrified of the possible loss to Howard.
Create horror climax and reverse ending
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- Lead to the horror climax of the story by providing clues or small details, such as a sticker on a bottle that later becomes a useful item for the protagonist, or a sound in the room. which then signals the arrival of something unusual, even a loaded gun in the pillow that will later explode or be used by the protagonist.
- Create an atmosphere of tension by transitioning from a moment of suspense or eerie to a moment of stillness, when the character can take a breath, regain composure, and feel safe again. Then you need to increase the tension by bringing the character back into the conflict situation, further pushing the conflict to a terrible or scary level.
- In the “Finger” story, King deals with this by having Howard panic about the finger, then calmly talking to his wife while listening to the quiz show on television and still thinking about the finger, Then he tried to avoid the image by going for a walk. Howard was beginning to feel safe or certain that the finger was an illusion, but of course when he opened the bathroom door the finger was still there, growing even longer and moving faster than before.
- King gradually builds tension for both the character and the reader by introducing a threat, which then foreshadows the rest of the story. As readers, we know that the finger is a sign of bad luck or disaster, and we are now in a position to watch Howard try to avoid, and eventually confront, this peril.
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- You may want to create a happy ending for the reader, but the ending should not be so round and smooth that it allows the character to get out of the situation without any lingering feelings of insecurity.
- You can give the character a moment of recognizing the conflict or knowing how to resolve the conflict. Disclosure should be the result of details accumulating in the story and should not be offensive to the reader or appear to have been chosen at random. [21] X Research Source
- In “The Finger,” Howard’s moment of realization occurs when he learns that the finger could be a harbinger of something bad or wrong in the world. And when the police came to arrest him because of a neighbor’s complaint about the noise, he asked the officer one last question on the quiz show that was under the theme of “unexplainable”. “Why do terrible things sometimes happen to the kindest people?” Howard asked. The officer then went back to open the toilet, where Howard kept his severed finger, and “bet it all” before opening the toilet to see the unknown or inexplicable.
- This ending leaves the reader curious to wonder what the officer will see, and whether the finger is real or just Howard’s imagination. Thus, this is an open ending, not too surprising or confusing for the reader.
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- Focus on creating a story of your own fear. Or you can modify a familiar horror motif for something a little different, such as a vampire who likes to eat cake instead of sucking blood, or a man locked in a trash can instead of a coffin.
- Remember that too much gore and violence can reduce the effectiveness of the scare, especially if the image of a pool of blood is repeated over and over in the story. Of course, a little gore is a good and often necessary element in horror stories. But you should only use blood in influential and meaningful passages that make the reader shudder instead of boring and emotionally numb. [23] X Research Sources
- Another way to avoid cliché is to focus more on portraying the confused and restless mood of the character instead of images of gore or puddles of blood. Memories of images often do not linger in the reader’s mind for long, but the impact of those images on the character will cause a persistent sense of dread for the reader. Therefore, you should not aim at the reader’s imagination but should focus on creating a disturbance in their mind. [24] X Research Sources
Re-read and edit the manuscript
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- Look up the thesaurus and replace duplicates with synonyms to avoid repeating a word or phrase in the story.
- Make sure to use language that matches your character’s tone of voice. A teenage girl will use different words than a middle-aged man. Creating dialogue that matches the personality and perspective of the character will make the character more convincing.
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- If the story uses a lot of dialogue, when you read it aloud, you’ll know if the dialogue sounds natural and convincing.
- If your story has a reverse ending, estimating the reader’s reaction by observing your audience’s facial expressions will help you know if the ending worked, or if you need to work on it further.
Warning
- Avoid “re-cooking” of copyrighted content or published stories; otherwise, your behavior will be considered plagiarism.
Things you need
- Paper and pencil or pen, typewriter or computer with a word processing program such as Microsoft Word.
- Dictionary and thesaurus.
wikiHow is a “wiki” site, which means that many of the articles here are written by multiple authors. To create this article, 160 people, some of whom are anonymous, have edited and improved the article over time.
There are 14 references cited in this article that you can view at the bottom of the page.
This article has been viewed 27,763 times.
Horror stories are a genre of stories that appeal to both readers and writers. A good horror story will make you shiver, scare or haunt you in your dreams. The success of a horror story depends on whether the reader believes it enough to terrify, shudder, or terrify. A horror story that is considered good is not easy to write. However, as with any genre of fiction, you can master how to write a horror story with the right strategy, along with perseverance and practice.
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