by Colm Field

I love horror. It can’t hide. In so many literary genres, the author can mask their intent (or lack of it) under snobbery and pretension – they just didn’t GET it! – but not horror stories. Nope, the horror writer has honest, objective goals – to unnerve, to scare, to entertain.

If writing is craft, then Horror can be Lego, provided you learn your blocks right. Jump scares, atmospheric scares, paranormal activity (the activity, not the film) … there are so many tools at your disposal.

Of course, those things aren’t objective really. What scares one person won’t scare another, and my fears might well bore you. You might have many goals in your writing, might even bristle at my philistine summation.

Yet while you’re probably right, and a writer should never over-codify their process lest their work lose its soul, I promise that the following 3 tips can help your next devilish inspiration find a page to torment.

Like all writing ‘rules’, they should be read then shoved back to the same part of your mind that remembers to brush teeth and brake at red lights. I hope they’re of use.

1) Horrors need 3 things: Monsters, Scares, and Cares.

Yep, I’m still being simplistic. But if you’ve had a great idea for a horror, only to find that it’s not getting any further in your head, you could do a lot worse than studying these three aspects of your story; the Monster, the Scares, and the Cares. The Monster is the thing we are frightened of, the Scares are the moments we, um, get scared, and the Cares are the characters we really don’t want to see hurt. I promise you – your story has them all, somewhere.

And not necessarily in equal measure. Come up with an exciting, memorable Monster, for example, and you might decide to inflict it on characters so tropey that their terror is immediately recognised, without all that effort spent getting into their psyche. Good for you – don’t worry about judgement here, we’re horror fans, we’re past all that.

But if you’re story still falls flat, then perhaps we do need more on the Cares … or maybe just more Scares. As Howard Hawks almost said, ‘A good horror is seven terrifying moments… and no boring ones.’

Or, you might have put all your effort into writing a complex and compelling love story, with characters rich in pathos and a drip drip drip of intangible dread. Wondering why your reader drifted off halfway through? Perhaps the threat to those characters is too wispy.

Develop your Monster a little more, give them some teeth to go with all that talk. Because if you exclude one part of this unholy trinity entirely, it will be missed.

2) Monsters don’t have to be monsters.

You know this already, of course. The thing that goes bump in the night can be a very human bully, a voracious plant, your protagonist’s own id. They may turn out to be not a monster at all, but horribly misunderstood. It’s common knowledge, so why am I telling you about it here?

Well, for me, it’s the question itself that is of interest. Who is scaring us here? Why are they scary? What does our fear of them say about us?

Sometimes the answers are straightforward. I just don’t want to be eaten! If your Monster is a straight up heinous villain, then don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Indeed, adding layers of sympathy can run the risk of excusing their crimes. I’m sorry about your parents’ divorce, Billy, but you just cut off my arms with a plasterboard saw.

But if the answers run deep? Then asking these questions can make your story truly profound. In T. Kingfisher’s book What Moves The Dead, an organism that causes a sinister change to its victims is reflected in other transformations taking place; through war, crumbling inheritance, and cold science.

Indeed, the one constant in the book is that of the protagonist’s gender fluidity; a fact, nothing more nor less, a source of comfort and familiarity while all our other assumptions are wrecked.

I won’t give anything away, but my first thought upon finishing the book was, Was that about a monster? I couldn’t decide. I still can’t.

In my own Uncle Zeedie (plug alert!) the teenaged protagonists are scared that their family friend may be a serial killer. The story poses similar questions: If somebody is weird, does that make them dangerous, or you narrow-minded?

If you choose to ignore a red flag, are you foolish or simply trusting? The answers aren’t simple, but I loved writing the debate.

3) Think of your Scares as tools.

It’s a dark, dark night, in a dark, dark wood. You know your monster, you know your characters, you know their end. What Scare will you choose?

If writing is craft, then Horror can be Lego, provided you learn your blocks right. Jump scares, atmospheric scares, paranormal activity (the activity, not the film), repulsion… there are so many different tools at your disposal, provided you use them correctly.

Is this midnight nature walk early in the story? Then why not a terrifying mirror reveal, or even just a simple jump scare? Something leapt from the bush and… end of chapter. Yeah, it’s a cheap cliffhanger… but it’s only cheap if you do it again, and remember: we’re horror fans! We like a bit of tacky now and then!

Ooh, but later? After we learned the myth of the beast, the foul curse, the soul-sucking spectre? After the best friend has died horribly?! Right then, a jump scare might be as welcome as a fart joke at a funeral.

Now it’s time to bring in the power tools instead, bring in some repulsive body horror, or a bad trip-inducing surrealism, or maybe throw in the Monster’s POV…

I could go on, and you could probably think of more that I would miss. Scares are tools, don’t be afraid to treat them as such.

With these tips, please don’t think I’m reducing the joy of writing into an AI prompt. Horror is not an objective science – it is an ethereal art form that revels in the uncertain, and loses its potency when stripped to bare and cynical mechanics.

But the scary books that have gripped me of late – say, Boys In The Valley by Philip Fracassi, or Deadstream by Mar-Romasco Moore – they featured these recognisable elements, delivered with a new and terrifying gusto.

Should you be struggling with this wicked masterpiece, and these bare and cynical mechanics can offer you a way through that struggle, then please, know this. You are writing for horror fans. If anybody won’t judge, it’s us.

Uncle Zeedie

Uncle Zeedie is weird, but at least he’s rich and his house is amazing.

That’s what George and Lacey tell themselves when they arrive at his isolated mansion in the Welsh woods. Only, something here is worse than weird.

Uncle Zeedie seems unhinged, serving them rotten food, and skulking around at night. The house is decaying, blood stained, and stinks of sour milk. And George is seeing kids that aren’t there. They’re dead, these kids.

And if the rumours are right, Uncle Zeedie is the one who’s killing them.

The players are in place. The stage is set. Curtain up.