: 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,

@XinRu607

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Focus on the protagonists' emotional state, their panic and despair as they're hunted down by whatever is chasing them. You need never show or tell the reader what is actually after the runners, it's enough to know that they're scared half to death by the situation.

Also remember the hierarchy of awful things, in increasing order; monsters you can see/hear (you know where they are), monsters you can't see/hear (you don't know where they are), people you can see, people you can't; people are way worse than any monster. Monsters will kill you, eat you, and/or turn you into one of them because that's their nature, people will torture and kill you for fun, they're more violent and more unpredictable. People are the worst, there's a reason they say "hell is other people".

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