Writing scary stories

[Ellieven]

Howdie Gaia writers!

So, I have this love of scary stories. A good, brutal murdering of one's wife always catches my eye. I always end up reading these books at the library or at the bookstore.
But my problem is I love them so much that I want to write one... But I'm awful at it. Like, brutally awful. I'll sit there with creepypasta and Tumblr scary stories up whilst trying, and I create the most anti-scary story I could ever write in my life. Just... Ugh. I just wanna write something that makes someone crap their pants. Just a little... Is that too much to ask??? haha!

So perhaps I can get help. Is there some way I can make my stuff scarier? I don't gotta go all exorcism scary (not into that kind of scary story anyways), but just something that sends a few chills up your spine, ya know?

[Diabolical Indulgence]

Aha, I'm in the opposite place, I'd be sitting there listening to Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and the stuff I write could still be dark. Although I tend to dwell more in the body horror genre.

Sadly, I'm horrible at advice so I can't say more than you just gotta keep on at it, you can't expect to be great at something right away. And maybe you're trying too hard to make it scary? Most of my stuff is unintentional.

Also, maybe you should try better places for inspiration? Read some proper horror novels, watch the classic movies. Things like that.

[sanorah]

I don't have allot of horror expirience in writing but I don't think creepy pasta is a good source of insperation. Sense allot of what I have read of it is really choppy and at times unrealistic. Great for a start but not something to base off of. You should look into horror novles. Lots of graphic detal and description sounds like it would be a good start. You also need to figure out whats involved in the kind of story you want. Are we talking lots of gore or are we leaning more tward fear here? Things that scare me the most are R or M rated horror movies. that seems like a good place to start but i'll warn you some of the M rated stuff is really messed up.

[Jance Maverick]

A decent story basis/theme

Hello, I would be very appreciative if you were to .work beside me. I am studying a lot of stuff on my free time. mostly figurative english and decribing the senses.

By working beside you I mean give you help, encouragemet and suggestions.

[avearia]

Start with something scary.

The most important thing for a scary story is a scary subject. And I don't mean 'Eek! Spiders!' generic-type of scary. Monsters with blood red eyes too many teeth might be superficially scary, but there isn't much thought put into them. Plus, they're really only scary on the outside - and giant spiders will only scare people who are, of course, afraid of spiders.

Instead, close your eyes and think about what scares you. Terrifies you. Something that, if it happened to you - you're not sure you could recover.

"I'm scared of being alone."
"What if I got into an accident and became paralyzed?"
"No one's ever going to fall in love with me."
"I think I'm being replaced."
"What if I disappear someday, and nothing changes? No one cares that I'm gone?"
"My parents are probably going to die before me."

Thinking about these might make you uncomfortable. You'll want to push them away, think of something else - and that's how you know you're on the right track. I guarantee, if you find something you're truly, deeply scared of, others will fear it, too.

Then, think about why it scares you.

Go into the gritty details. Say you're scared that your loved ones will hurt you. Why? What makes being killed by your loved ones worse than being killed by a stranger in a dark alley? Pin down the really scary bits.

"You're scared of the dark? Why?"

"...What's in the dark?"

-
Lastly, use these fears to spin stories. Say, again, you fear your loved ones will hurt you. This could be as realistic as spousal abuse, to unrealistic as your husband coming after you with an axe. You can play up the paranoia factor by, say, having a story featuring an online stalker, and slowly discovering that the person doing it is someone close to you.

Or, you can make it supernatural. A Monkey's Paw scenario where your friend gets wishes granted, but each time it brings chaos down on you - and for some reason, they keep doing it. Or, a shapeshifter is in your house, and your dad has been acting kinda suspicious lately...

The best way to do horror is to build up, too. Slowly. Don't jump right into BLOODY WRITING LIGHTS FLICKERING HOWLING ON THE HORIZON sort of thing. Build up to it. Let the protagonist suspect something is awry, brush it off, then suspect again - then make the terrible things happen. Sometimes it's effective to let the protagonist 'win', escape the monster, only to have it catch up to them in the end.

Tips for writing:
Use sensory detail. Not just sight, but touch, sound, smell.
Don't explain everything. Sometimes, it's ok if the protagonist never finds out what, exactly, is scratching behind the wall, there. Even if it's been leaving them messages.
Have a good ending line. It's such a downer when a horror story just peters out; a good, solid line is like turning a key in the lock, when everything clicks into place.
And, Read it to others. You're a terrible judge of your own work. The best way to test if something is scary is, naturally, to test it on a friend.

(Just make sure they like horror first.)

[SebastiansLittleDoll]

Choose the right details to focus on. I saw an article on Writer's Digest once that said you can heighten suspense by focusing on specific details. Obviously this wouldn't apply to things like action scenes. But, let's just say we have a character sneaking into a haunted house. To make it more suspenseful you would drag out the scene, and describe the scenery/sounds, etc. Dragging out the scene helps because the character is about to do something risky, and instead of getting right to the point, you're focusing on the anxious moment before it, you know? And in times of crisis, we humans have heightened senses that make us notice more, that can also make the situation more terrifying, right?

...Gah. If I just found the article (I forgot the title T.T) I could've explained better T.T Anyways, it's worth a try :3

[Desi the fuzzy fluffhead]

The key to writing any genre that focuses mostly on making a certain emotion happen is confidence.

Don't write hoping people are going to find it scary, write knowing that they will. I write humor and it's kind of the same thing. If you're constantly worrying about making something something you run the risk of over doing it and of seeming like you're "trying too hard".

Horror tends to work a lot on the fear of the unknown.
Why would this person do this? What's lurking in the dark? What's that knocking sound?
So suspense is great. Think of it as a mystery.

It also tends to focus on tragedies. For example in The Shining it's not just a haunted hotel that's scary, it's the fact that someone could be trying to do something right and go so completely wrong, that someone can be driven to such violence. That a person could fall so low.

Play on your own fears. You know what details of your fear to work on. You've got to make them come true.

[GettoKimono]

For me I want it more realistic.. That the story is not predictable.. Confusing the readers who is the murderer.. In that case, the reader loves to read and excited to know who really is after the last letter of the book.

[hikuninza]

Really go for the mentally disturbing stuff like asylums. It's a contradiction of the average human thought process, which is always creepy because it is different. Refer to "American Horror Story: Asylum", and you'll see what I am getting at.

[Blood Valkyrie]

Focus on creepiness for the bits when you are building up to the shocking stuff.

I think Stephen King mentioned something once about entering your house and discovering that everything in it had been replaced by an exact copy. That's ******** weird and terrifying at the same time. Try focusing on a feeling like that, confusion and creepiness and general wtf-ness?

Another thing to focus on is danger involving relationships. For instance, imagine the terror a mother would experience at witnessing her child slowly slip into madness over the years?

[Blood Valkyrie]

Some good sources of inspiration:

Any horror work by Stephen King or Edgar Allen Poe
Dead Silence (I don't care that the film got bad reviews, that movie scared the crap out of me)
Another (a Japanese novel that was adapted into an anime and a manga)
Ibitsu (a freaky horror manga)
Amnesia the Dark Descent (a video game)
Hellsing Ultimate (an anime. it's more action than horror, but it is pretty ******** up in a good way)

[Rayen Raiah]

The best advice I can give you is that in stories, there are no jump scares and gore kind of gets repetitive. Use elements of terror, subtle kinds of horror that are eerie and make the reader constantly look over their shoulder as they read. Gore and direct scares are good, but it shouldn't be everything.

Honestly, Stephen King says it best.

“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...”
― Stephen King

[Quotesy]

I find that the most scary stories are ones that seem very realistic, despite any supernatural twists that the writer might include. The setting feels real, the writing descriptions make it feel like you're transported into that exact moment; you feel your skin get a bit colder, you feel yourself hold your breath, and maybe doing a quick look around yourself from the book to make sure that you are - yes - alone in your room right now. Maybe you should turn on a light, too; it wasn't a good idea to start reading this in the dark.

By yourself.

In your empty house. . .

A lot of people are going to have a lot of advice and different opinions on what makes a good scary story, just like how people have different opinions on anything. I think that you should probably take some time to write out what you believe is scary or a bit frightening, and then flesh it out from there. Start small, take baby steps. Then fill in anything else that you want to make it feel more tuned in with the atmosphere you're gunning for.

[Kittie_Cappuccino]

You could try something that I always do, which is, as I'm writing out a scene I picture myself in that situation. How would I react? What would I smell, hear, feel, and taste. The more sense you add into a scene the more real it starts to feel to your reader.

[Klaark]

It's impossible hard to tell you why your writing is or isn't something without seeing it.