: Re: Best way to write chilling, short thriller/horror without getting gory in a natural setting? What are the tricks to writing short, chilling stories that don't resort to blood or cliched monsters,

@BetL639

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Drawing your reader into the emotions of the moment is the trick to writing horror. No creature or situation is inherently scary unless the reader already relates to and cares about the character who is facing it. Even then, it is not the details of the creature or situation which makes it scary. It is the character's response which draws the reader into a shared experience of fear.

So a hunter, slowly coming to realize that everything around him is shiny orange, under the brilliant orange twilight sky above. Having him realize as he approaches his freshly shot buck, that maybe its skin is a little too bright a shade of orange. That its shape is perhaps not so deer like after all.

Horror doesn't need monsters. It needs the emotions which come from being around monsters or even becoming a monster yourself.

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