How to Write Scary (part 2!)

 

I wrote a post in July of 2019 on how to write scary stuff. And in the name of October and all things scary, here's another one. I thought of some new stuff recently and went 'hmm, why not do a part 2 to something everyone's already forgotten?'

So here it is!

How To Write Scary

Pay attention to the pacing of the scene and the way you're pacing your prose. 

Pacing is always important, but in something like horror, it's crucial. Think of how it feels when a scary part comes along in a movie. Sometimes the characters pause briefly to catch their breath, and then all of a sudden there's something in front of them! The pace goes from a trickle to a roar very fast. I feel like I'm describing what I mean badly here, but hopefully you get the point.

Sensory details are your friend

What's the temperature in the room? What's the texture of the furniture your character is sitting on? Is there a ringing in their ears? Butterflies in their stomach? It's better to go into super deep close POV and have all the details feel unsettling than to stay on the outside and not really throw your audience into it. The audience needs to be in deep to stay engaged and to really be scared.

Writing from afar.

With the above point being made, there is a time and a place for writing from afar. Sometimes pulling out of the POV and giving a feeling of numbness can help. Sometimes it adds to the scary feeling of the story. But remember that if you want a scene super scary, it's better to go into close POV.

Overdescribe tiny details.

You don't have to tell the audience why or if they're even important, either. Have them focus too hard on what socks they're wearing. Have them question why the walls are painted that way. Especially in the midst of a scary scene. Hyperfocus on the tiny things. It adds to the feeling of 'wrongness' that I mentioned in part 1. At the end of the day, it's really the unusual and the out of place that really gets the audience on edge.

Don't tell the audience everyhing.

We're not writing a mystery; you don't have to explain everything to the audience in the end. On the contrary, it helps if the audience doesn't fully understand everything at the end. Of course, if you don't tell them anything, they'll just be confused and put your book down, but if you wanted you could even pull a R.L. Stine and make sure they still feel unsafe at the end by telling them that the monster is still out there. It helps with the creepy feeling to leave some things ambiguous or just altogether unanswered. 

And on a slightly different note, keep what you tell the readers a little ambiguous. The 'show don't tell' rule is super important in horror. Very few things should be on-the-nose, directly told to the readers. Actually, keep it as off-the-nose as you can(I don't know if that's a real phrase but it is now XD). Rather than telling them Mandy is dead, describe a body in the hallway, a body with a red scarf just like hers. It's better if they have to understand it rather than it being told to them.

Elevate the tension as time passes.

Think of how a plot works in a thriller. The plot of a thriller and the plot of a horror story can be very similar at times. The structure goes something like this: the story starts off in a normal setting, with maybe just a hint at what's to come: an unsettling detail, a weird character, something unusual they just can't explain. As the story progresses, the tension escalates and the monsters become more extreme and more present until we reach the climax. The climax is the full height of the scary and the antagonistic force comes to its full power. Don't hold back. Use the climax to go crazy and pull out all the big guns. You wanna blow some minds here.

Well, kind of like part 1, this post is a little short. Put them together, and we'll just pretend it's one long, continuous, full blog post. But for real, I covered a lot of other important things in part 1, so you should read it as well if you read this one. Here's the link: post

And that's it for today! Tell me, are you much of a horror reader, or no? Have you ever tried your hand at writing horror? Let's talk in the comments!