Fiction Scribe

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Now, I am not master of horror. By all means, there are some great authors out there who have this down to an art. Stephen King, Anne Rice, Brian Lumley, Edgar Allen Poe. But I am willing to take a stab at it.

Which brings me to the first point, don’t go for the cliché. My books have more twists and turns in them, many people have told me they didn’t see certain events about to happen. That is the first thing you want to do. Let your mind craft where you are going and let your imagination kick in. It’s horror, who cares if it isn’t possible in the real world. Your target is to scare someone with the unbelievable, then make it believable.

Determine the premise for your book. Are you looking to make a political statement or entertain? You can do both in the horror genre. You also need to decide what will bring the terror out in your book. Will it be a vampire, or perhaps a little girl whose skin that drips and falls from her body while turning into a ghoul. This is your most important character, and the main focus on the book. It does not necessarily make them the main character though.

From here you have a pivotal decision to make. What age group are you looking to market your book towards? Each age group has its pros and cons. A book directed towards children can be silly and scary at the same time. One directed towards a teen market can be thrilling and fast paced. If you choose to go for adults there are endless possibilities since there are more and more sub genre’s being formed all the time.

Just make sure your book remains age appropriate. You cannot have severe violence is a book marketed towards a five year old, nor do you want to use silly rhymes in an adult book. Be sure to be clear on your intent as well. Don’t give a false sense of one market and switch half way through.

Give your readers credit, do some research. A big gripe I have about certain books I have read is the factual information in them is not factual. Yes, I did state you can make your books unbelievably believable, on the same token, you will not encounter a palm tree in the White Mountains. To an extent you need to keep some details factual. Of course if your killer is A Satanic Palm Tree killing campers, that is a different story.

Build tension use your scenery. Having someone stabbed is scary, and as far as I know no one really wants that to happen to them. But the scenery is very important. When you write a death scene, torture scene or even a chase scene you need to close your eyes and listen and look. Open your nose and smell. The more you create in your scenery the more your reader is touched. If there is a smell of orange blossoms, mention them. If you see something as silly as a cracked twig mention it. The more detail the reader has to build the image in their mind the more fearful they will be.

Use blood and gore as an accessory. The main focus of these is to enhance the actual effect of terror, not to be the main source. With movies such as Saw, the focus has left building tension and terror and giving way to the use of blood and gore to gross out and scare people. A good point is Halloween. The 1978 classic used very little gore, and more tension and atmosphere to create horror that still creeps people out to this day. The 2007 remake was gore porn. A bunch of brutal murders mixed with heavy language.

If it scares you, chances are it will scare someone else. Use your fears to your advantage and let it build and scare you in your mind. Build the tension, think of what would scare you if it happened next. You are being chased, what would scare you most if it happened next. Go through those series of events then combine them.

Most of all just write as you feel the story should go. Your inner voice will lead you down the trail to a good scary story.

One a final note, encourage our young to read and write. Help them find a passion and a voice for themselves. If your child loves pirates, find a good swash buckling adventure for them to read, it uses a part of their mind visual entertainment never can.