: Re: When writing science fiction or horror, how to prevent the villain from becoming less scary as they are fleshed out? I'm trying to write a horror short story about a shape-shifter, but I have

@Kristi637

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I'm actually going to challenge the premise a little here...

I either have to have the main character run indefinitely, or explain why the shape-shifter is chasing them. Once I explain it, it doesn't seem scary no matter what I do.

Then don't explain it, not only is it unnecessary (particularly in short story form) it's actually often counter-productive to do so. While not universal fear of the unknown is a common one - think about how a unexpected noise in the night is often scary until you know what it is.
As for why certain implementations of the shape-shifter trope are scarier than others, some of that comes down to how the shape-shifting is used in the story, if we look at the examples you gave:
IT
"It" transforms with the express purpose of scaring the victim - on top of the scare-potential from the actual shapes we see It assume the basic premise of changing into the victims own personal worst fear leads the reader/viewer to start to wonder what It would appear as to them. The raison d'être of shape-shifting element of the story is to be scary, and as much of a motivation as we get for It's actions (which for a cosmic eldritch abomination is a surprising amount) is that it's eating people, and fear makes them tastier. Plus, I mean, c'mon.. clown (shudder).
The Thing
I was surprised to see you classify this as "Science Fiction" rather than "Horror" as the sci-fi elements are nominal. The themes here are paranoia and mistrust - and the shape-shifting is central to building that, the men turn on each other at points because they don't know who is still themselves. And of course neither does the audience, and that ambiguity is why the film works (and something that Carpenter fought hard to keep present even in the film's ending).
The actual motivations of the titular Thing are never actually explained, there's some conjecture from the characters but no definitive explanation - and this helps feed that paranoia, if they don't know what the creature's goal is they can't even judge another's actions against that goal.
T2
Unlike its predecessor (which arguably is a sci-fi take on a slasher movie with added explosions) T2 doesn't really make any attempt to be a horror film, it's a straight up sci-fi action flick (and a damned good one I might add) - and the shape-shifting element stays true to that. The T-1000 uses its ability to shift purely as camouflage - it’s just a more sophisticated version of the flesh covering T-800 models, the point is to let it get close enough to the intended target. It never sets out to scare the protagonists or by extension the audience with this - in fact from the point we the audience know about its existence there's only two instances where it isn't immediately apparent that a shifted T-1000 is said homicidal robot, and in both instances it's very quickly revealed.

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