: Re: I'm not sure where to start with writing a horror story I haven't written anything horror, but I have had scenes in my past stories that my friends have stated was 'creepy,' so I've decided

@Miguel976

Vote Up Vote Down

The most terrifying novel I ever read and one of the greatest horror novels (Stephen King's Pet Sematary) started with a happy family moving into a suburban house. The horror element starts many pages later. Such a simple beginning -- an everyday event as mentioned in Emily's answer here -- can be disquieting on its own if the reader knows this is going to be a horror novel. As other answers have stated, horror is not about horrifying scenes alone, but equally about terrifying possibilities as in W.W.Jacobs' all-time classic "The Monkey's Paw." Of course if you are writing a short story like that you might need a more impactful opening.

I am no writer myself but a very experienced 'constant reader' and I have found that great power can be achieved by surreal scenes which some writers describe as 'a few degrees off-angle to reality' or 'just a shade insane' -- somebody even called it 'the mind going off the rails for a few seconds' and that somehow tremendously intensifies the reader's unease. A brilliant example is the 'boys' boarding school scene' in Talisman by King and Straub, as also several scenes related to the magician's craft from Peter Straub's great novel Shadowland -- I write this to make the point that in our over-exposed age when youngsters are thoroughly familiar with slasher genres, a subtle terror that disturbs the subconscious mind can still be extremely effective, paradoxically more sinister than obviously florid horror.

(0)

Login to post a comment!