Writing Tips: Horror

What is horror? When you think of horror stories what do you think of? For most people one of three things seems to be the first answer they think of: Vincent Price, Stephen King, or Dracula and the other Universal Studios Monsters. Okay. So these things/people/movies/books embody all that we think of when we think of horror, but what exactly IS this thing called horror? What is it about Vincent Price, Stephen King, and Dracula that sends shivers down your spine, and thrills and enthralls you with mesmerizing fear? Is it blood? No. Can't be, rarely do we see blood in connection with the three kings of horror. Guts and gore? Nope, those aren't there either.

You are now scratching your head and wondering...well, if it isn't blood, guts, and gore, that makes good horror stories good, than what?

Lets take a look at what the dictionary has to say about horror, shall we?

horror:

noun;

1. Intense and profound fear

2. Something that inspires horror; something horrible.

3. Intense aversion.

fear:

noun;

1. An emotion experienced in anticipation of some specific pain or danger (usually accompanied by a desire to flee or fight).

2. An anxious feeling.

verb;

1. Be afraid or feel anxious or apprehensive about a possible or probable situation or event.

2. Be afraid or scared of; be frightened of.

So, What is horror? Horror is what scares you. You want to write a good horror story? Don't fill it with blood, guts, and gore, that is not horror, that is just graphic violence. If your readers want graphic violence, all they need to do is turn on the 6:00 news. No, your readers want horror. They want to be scared out of their wits, they want to be afraid...very afraid.

But how do you go about scaring your readers, if you don't splatter your pages with blood and gore? Well, think about it this way, doesn't everyone always say "Write what you know"? Well, what are you afraid of? What scares you? Pick your worst fear, the thing that sends you to bed with all the lights on. If it scares you, than it sure as hell, is gonna scare your readers too.

Real people have real fears. You as a writer, have the ability to take those very real fears, and dress them up, use your reader as you main character. Psychological fears create psychological terrors, equals a story so horrific that your readers won't dare sleep at night.

I have provided here a list of common real phobias that send shivers of terror down the spines of everyday humans on a daily basis in the real world. I have listed them in the order of what seems to be the most common or most prevalent fears first, and ending with the least common and more rarely seen fears last. It should inspire some fearful subjects for you to scare your readers with. I hope.

Fear of the dark.

Fear of bridges.

Fear of things unknown.

Fear of the end of the world, natural disaster, or other impending doom.

Fear of being judged.

Fear of going to hell after death.

Fear of small rooms, elevators, and closed in spaces.

Fear of being followed.

Fear of death, or the threat of being killed.

Fear of being lost, either in the forest or a large city.

Fear of squishy things, especially stepping on, or reaching into a dark place and grabbing one.

Fear of snakes.

Fear of bugs, insects, ticks, and spiders.

Fear of rats and mice.

Fear of strangers.

Fear of closed doors.

Fear of bathrooms, toilets, and tub drains.

Fear of stairs, attics, basements, closets, under the bed, and that little room down the hall...

Fear of water, esp. lakes and rivers.

Fear of being alone.

Fear of dogs.

Fear of eating something that was not supposed to be in your food...i.e. poison, bug, a rat's tail, a human finger, etc.

Fear of sleeping or working on the 13th floor or in room number 13.

Fear of manholes, dug wells, and elevator shafts.

Fear of noises, creaks, bumps, and bangs, esp. at night.

Fear of subways, trains, and planes.

Fear of high places.

Fear of doctors.

Fear of the police.

Fear of black dogs.

Fear of old buildings.

Fear of cemeteries.

Fear of ghosts, spirits, and demon possession.

Fear of alien abduction.

Fear of thunder or lightening.

Fear of birds.

Fear of black cats.

Fear of ladders.

What scares you? Pick a fear. Write a story based on that fear. If you scare yourself, than you'll scare your readers and isn't that what horror is all about?

Cruising the NaNoWriMo forums today, I found this question to answer:

Necessary Elements of Horror - Help?

I've never done horror before, and it's hard to find much genre-fiction tips for inexperienced writers.

Are there certain plot elements or structural conventions that one generally needs to follow when writing horror?

Any and all help is welcome.

Thanks!

I think the only really *necessary* element I can think of is this: In order to be horror, your readers must be horrified in some way or another. This can range from mild tingling chills of suspense to out right screaming terrified. In other words, events must be eerie, which can range from childhood fears of an imagined bogyman under the bed to the actual terror of finding your best friend half eaten by zombies.

If you are looking for a basic outline to follow, here is how most horror novels unfold:

Usually a horror will start out with a nice happy, boringly normal person, living a predictably dull life, in a predictably dull town, where nothing out of the ordinary ever happens, but by the fifth page, s/he'll start noticing that today is not an ordinary day - a few out of the ordinary things have happened, and out of curiosity s/he decides to investigate. By chapter 3 his/her life in turned upside down by *INSERT EVIL FORCE-MONSTER-VILLAIN-BAD GUY HERE*, and now his/her *life-friends-family-school-town-or-world* is in eminent danger. Your main character for whatever reason is the only one that can stop the evil force and save the day. Evil force seems unstoppable and gets progressively creepier, scarier, and seemingly more undefeatible with each chapter. In the next to the last chapter, all hope is lost, and it seem the evil force has at last won, but that somehow your MC takes control of the situation and defeats the evil force. The last chapter is reserved for tying up lose ends and show how your main character picks up the pieces and gets back on with their ordinary dull boring life once again.

Of course you can change that, but that is the basic story board that most * published* horror novel use.

As for determining what horror elements you should use, I think of it this way: Ask yourself what would scare you if you met it face to face, and write about it. For example, me, I've always been scared of the dark so my stories are always set not only at night, but also in a secluded dark place with no street lights - say in the middle of a forest - on a night with no moon. I've never felt to well about rats either, not after a weird childhood experience of living in a house infested with hordes of them, and as such, my horror stories tend to have rats scurrying here and there. I've been a fan of the Universal Monsters for 30+ years now - resulting in me writing lots of stuff with vampires, werewolves, and their kin. I've also a morbid fascination with insane asylums and escaped serial killing psychos - so these run rampant in most of my horror stories as well.

Long story short, my point here is - write what you think of when you think of horror. If you think of haunted houses and ghosts - write haunted houses and ghosts. If you think zombies - write zombies. What type of horror do you read? What type of horror do you watch? Reread and rewatch your favorite horror books and movies and see if you can find any reoccurring elements in them. Chances are good that those elements are the ones you are personally most attracted to, and thus the ones you are best suited to writing about.

Best book for anyone looking to write horror is On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association

Read the Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe to get a feel of how classic horror is written. Also watch all of the Vincent Price movie remakes of Poe's stories. I get most of my inspiration from Poe and Price. Nothing can inspire me to wite horror the way they can.

And another question asked on the same note was this:

Stories from the Afterlife: Supernatural or Spiritual?

So, my tentative idea for NaNo this year is actually a warm-up story that I was working on for NaNo '08. The main character dies within the first page, and the entire story is about his exploits in the great beyond. Now granted, it's not the usual heaven and hell, reincarnation and nirvana, purgatory and redemption sort of afterlife; it's sort of like what the afterlife would look like if it was run on capitalism, with how "good" you are as currency . . . vague as that might be. On the flipside, you really don't want to know what happens when your "bad" far outweighs your "good" quota . . . let's just say that filing for bankruptcy is not an option.

The real question is, where the hell does this story fit? I'm quite sure it's a Supernatural type of thing (with plenty of horrifying moments to add some spice), but couldn't it also fit in the Spiritual genre, even if it's not about a particular religion?

What my novel is not:

A soapbox for my own views of morality and the afterlife--I don't like to make assumptions about something I'm sure I cannot fully understand.
An insult to any religions out there--I just thought it would be a fun setting to play with.
What it is:

A story about a complete nobody that can change the world, with deceit, betrayal, love, life, death, and everything that makes a human being human. Also comes with unthinkable demonic horrors and spiritual enlightenment.
. . . because happens to be set in the hereafter.
For now I'm going to keep sitting in the Supernatural section because I'm pretty sure it's the right one, but it did get me thinking . . . with a setting like this, where do you draw the line between genres?

To classify as horror, you have to be scaring the daylights out of your readers in terrifyingly horrific ways. Frankly, I just don't see that in your synopsis.

Supernatural, implies vampires, faeries, are other supernatural beings that do not exist in the real world. They can exist in any and all genres. When in Horror, supernatural beings tend to be evil, blood thirsty and violent - vampires, werewolves, zombies, and poltergeist style ghosts, whose purpose in being in the story is the scare your reader into hiding under the covers and sleeping with every light in the house on. Ghosts, demons, and angels (such as your story) are supernatural beings that could be considered horror if they terrify the readers, but they could also be considered spiritual if they tell a moral tale (not necessarily religious).

From reading your synopsis here, I don't see your novel as falling into the Spiritual genre either though.

Your story seems more to be one of fantastic proportions. A story telling of another place (a sort of heaven/hell place), in another time (a future afterlife). If I was an editor (which, btw, I am) and was going to publish your novel, I would place it under Fantasy instead, possibly Dark Fantasy.

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I believe that ghosts are the spirits of people who have died, but so some reason did not move on to another plane of existence (heaven, hell, rebirth, etc.).

Why are they still here on Earth after death? Not sure about that one, but I think that there are multiple answers to that question and that there are several reasons why they are still here. I think some of them, simply desire to stay near their loved ones who are still alive. Others may not realize that they have died. Some may not be able to move on because they feel that there was something they did not do while they were alive so they are still trying to do it, but without a physical body they can not. Some may be trying to help someone who is still alive.

You see, lots of reasons. I think that the spiritual body stays where it is comfortable being: for example:

A serial killer, now dead, may be terrified that the people he killed will come after him, so he runs back to his house to hide in the closet, and thus you have the answer to a haunted house.

Likewise, someone who believes in the Rapture or the Second Coming of Christ, may do nothing but sit for centuries on their tombstone waiting for Jesus to blow his trumpet. Thus you have a haunted cemetery.

Another may have commit suicide by jumping off a bridge, but does not realize they died and so for centuries they do nothing but pace back and forth on the bridge, jumping off of it thousands of times. Thus you have a haunted bridge.

I think ghosts are scary because you don't see them every day and even when you say you believe in them, deep down you don't truly believe in them until you actually see one. I think it's like anything else that is unusual or rare or thought to be a myth: (vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc) your first response is always to freeze, than run, than stop and ask yourself why you were scared, than go to investigate.

It's just the whole *unknowness* of it, which startles the senses. The natural response is to start running.

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A common villain choice for horror fiction is a serial killer. Basically it's: give a guy a chain saw and send him after 20 or so college girls having a pajama party or something like that. So let's say you are writing a slasher film style story: What weapon would your serial killer use and why?

Or let's try thinking of it this way: If you were going to be a mass murderer what weapon would you chose and why? What style would it give you, how would it express you personality? Does i send a *message* to the world? If so, what?

Myself? I don't know why, but for some odd reason my serial killers (most everything I write has one) are always using machetes to kill people in a very Jack the Ripper manner.