How to Write a Horror Story

Mar 7

There is no one way to write a horror story. Some writers are attracted to the suspense and mystery of the genre, while others focus on scaring the bejesus out of the reader. Regardless of your approach, there are some basic elements you should keep in mind. In this post, we'll discuss how to create a truly terrifying tale. Keep in mind that horror is a very personal genre, so find what works best for you and go from there. Happy writing!

Create three-dimensional characters
This is absolutely imperative if you want to write a truly terrifying horror story. Your reader must believe that your main character or characters are real people. We need to believe in them completely if we are to empathise with them at all. There are three ways to create characters that feel real: write about yourself, write about someone you know, or create a character from the ground up. If you choose to make up a new character from scratch, it’s really important you get to know them properly before you begin writing.
Create a character profile that includes all the information you think you should know about them and then just keep fleshing it out. Include things you know won’t even be relevant to your story. Which season do they like best? Do they prefer showers or baths? How much do they tip in restaurants?
You might think these are arbitrary facts, but note how obvious the answers become the more you get to know your own character. The better you know your character, the more instinctively you’ll write about them.
To make your readers believe in your characters, too, you can drop in some of the details from the profile into your story. Just be careful not to throw it all in there! Add in a few details that are relevant to the plot and that best exemplify the kind of person they are. Then let the reader fill in the gaps themselves.
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Don’t include too many characters
This is true for all short stories, but particularly with short horror stories. Perhaps more than with any other genre, horror is about really putting your reader behind the eyes of your characters. You want your reader to be with them every step of the way. Since they can only empathise with one person at a time, the more characters your story has, the more your reader will have to switch between them.
Don’t be afraid to have just one character going it alone. By doing so, you’ll create a more powerful bond between reader and protagonist. And don’t forget: abject solitude is one of our most potent horrors, so one character facing their fears alone is instantly scarier than a group of characters who have each other to rely on.
Make sure the reader roots for the main character
It’s not enough to just have a protagonist that feels fleshed out and real, you also need to make sure the reader is rooting for them. There are a lot of different methods you can use to instantly create that bond between reader and protagonist. Here are just a few:
Reveal something deeply personal about your protagonist early on. This is effective because we feel particularly bonded to people we think we know intimately.

Set up a character goal that your readers can relate too. Perhaps your protagonist wants to rebuild their relationship with their father, or they want to prove to their superiors at work that they have what it takes, or they want to move on from a particularly bad break-up. A relatable goal for your character will definitely inspire your readers to root for them.

Position your protagonist as an underdog in some way. Nothing makes us root for someone more than when the odds are stacked against them.
Put your character(s) through the ringer
Now that you have a fully flesh out, believable protagonist (that your readers will be rooting for), it’s now time to put them through the ringer. No one reads horror because they want something warm and fuzzy. To scare your reader out of their wits you’ll need to really put your main character through it. This is where you let your inner secret sadist take over!
Think about primal fears
As human beings, our primal fears are defined as those innate fears that have been programmed into our brains through evolution. This is the well that you should draw from when deciding which horrors will feature in your story. Using primal fears in your story means you’ll be piggybacking on fears that have been inculcated in us over thousands of years. These include:

The dark, blood, being unable to breath, enclosed spaces, creatures that can devour us, ghosts, monsters, fire, snakes, spiders, pain, loneliness, madness, psychopaths, rotting flesh, abandonment, feeling trapped, feeling lost, loss of autonomy, humiliation, drowning, insects, mutilation, rejection, being alone, dying alone.

You might not want to include all of them in one story, but you can certainly incorporate more than you might think. Usually, death will be the main horror of any horror story. You want really high-stakes and nothing is more high-stakes than total annihilation. Most of the fears listed above relate to death in some way. Even humiliation — while not a corporeal death — can be seen as a death of the ego.
Choose your monster
Now that you have your protagonist and you’ve come up with a delectable cocktail of primal fears to explore, you need to choose your monster. This will be your antagonist; the thing that forces those fears upon your main character. Your antagonist can be human, animal or even paranormal in nature — it’s completely up to you!
Again, we recommend not having too many monsters in one short story. If you do decide to have more than one, don’t have your protagonist take the first one out too quickly. That’s ok with an adventure story, where we know the main character is never really in any danger, however, in a horror story we really need to question whether the protagonist is going to make it out of the story alive. If they face and conquer too many fears early on, we’ll start to see each new monster as less of a threat.
When choosing a monster for your story, you might want to think about what scares you or what scared you as a child. Many writers don’t touch horror because they don’t enjoy the frightening feeling that comes from writing a scary story. Unfortunately, if you aren’t feeling slightly freaked out by what you’re writing, there’s a good chance your readers won’t be freaked out either. Write about something that you personally find terrifying and your readers will definitely notice that layer of authenticity.
Choose your POV
Now you must choose which POV you will use in your story. As a general rule, it’s best not to use more than one POV in a short story. Some POVs will be better suited to a horror story than others. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each in relation to this genre:
First-Person: The narrator is a character in the story, dictating events from their perspective using "I" or "we." This is a popular choice for horror stories because it allows the reader to become the protagonist. It puts the reader at the very centre of the narrative, it automatically increases the empathy for the main character, and it will allow you to truly explore their terror from inside of their own experiences.
However, this point of view does prevent you from telling or showing the reader things that haven’t been experienced by the main character. It can really ratchet up the fear factor if we know things the protagonist doesn’t know yet (or is about to find out) and this is tricky in a story written in the first-person POV.
Second-Person: Uses the pronoun “you” to address the reader. This narrative voice implies that the reader is either the protagonist or a character in the story and the events are happening to them. This is the least common of all POVs, particularly for longer works. However, it can work well for a short story and might be particularly suited to horror since you really are putting your reader right into the story.
It’s still pretty hard to maintain and pull off effectively, so think carefully before you commit to an entire short story in second-person POV. If you think you might like to give it a go, check out this list of short stories written in 2nd POV.
Third-Person Objective: Has a neutral narrator that is not privy to characters' thoughts or feelings. Of all the different POVs, this one might be the least suited to horror. It’s going to be really difficult to instil fear in your reader if you aren’t going to relate the fears and feelings of the characters.
Third-Person Limited: A method of storytelling in which the narrator knows only the thoughts and feelings of a single character, while other characters are presented only externally. This can be a great option for horror. It allows the intimacy of first-person, but also the scope of third-person.
Third-Person Omniscient: The narrator is the voice of the author themselves. You can give an all-knowing perspective on the story. You can describe private thoughts and feelings, narrate secret or hidden events, and jump between spaces and times.
This POV has the most scope and freedom. It also allows you explore events outside of the protagonist’s own experiences. The reader is able to predict the horrors that might befall your main character before they are aware of them themselves. This can really instil a sense of dread in the reader. The only downside to third-person omniscient is that it can make the reader feel more detached from the action than first-person POV.
Don’t forget to give your character another conflict
We all know that a good story involves conflict. In fiction, conflict is defined as a clash between two opposing forces that creates the narrative thread for the story. Conflict occurs when the main character struggles with either an external conflict or an internal conflict. In a horror story it can be tempting to have the conflict of the story centre around the main character’s will to survive the horrific events of the story. However, it’s important to introduce a secondary conflict too.
This secondary conflict should be a personal conflict relating to your protagonist’s normal life and it should be set up at the beginning of the story. By adding this secondary conflict, you let your readers know that your character is a real person and you give us a reason to be invested and to believe in the story.
Without that secondary conflict, the reader will get the impression that your main character exists only so you have an excuse to torture them for several pages. That can make the horror part of the story feel contrived.
The personal conflict doesn’t necessarily need to be resolved by the end of the story. Sometimes, the experience of surviving the horror conflict (if you let them survive) can either help them to resolve their personal conflict or simply show them that they can resolve it. Just don’t forget to come back to the personal conflict in some way towards the end. Don’t just introduce it at the start and then forget about it.
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Create mood early on
Mood is a powerful tool for fiction writers. It can set the tone for the entire story and create an emotional response in your readers. There are a few key things to keep in mind when creating mood in your writing. Firstly, creating a particular atmosphere for your story isn’t just about describing weather and setting. Instead, think more deeply about the themes of your story. If your story is really about loneliness, there are ways to create this mood early on in the story that don’t involve a dark and lonely wood on a rainy night. Make sure the start of your story is working hard on behalf of the rest of your story and that it doesn’t just exist for the sake of it.
Next, try to hold a particular image in your mind as you write. This image can be related to your plot or it can just be an image that seems to best convey the particular mood you want for your story. You can even print out some pictures and stick them around your laptop!
Even if the beginning of your story takes place on a crowded college campus on a sunny day, having the image of Dracula’s castle shrouded in mist in your mind as you write can help some of the mood of the image creep its way into the start of your story.
Also, try not to use too many visual metaphors in quick succession. This can lead to a confused and over-written atmosphere. Pick one that’s really strong and then support that metaphor with word choice, pace and tone in the rest of the passage. You don’t want to many competing ideas, much better to have one strong idea properly actualised and supported.
Introduce elements of security early on, then remove them
A good horror story is all about creating tension. Tension needs to build. In order to build a particular emotion in your readers, you need to have change. One of the best and most effective ways to ratchet up the tension and fear in your story is to take away your main character’s comfort and support; leaving them completely vulnerable and alone. Give them elements of security and then throughout the story take them away. Maybe at the start of the story your main character has a boyfriend, a cell phone, a car, a knife . . . Take these things away from her one by one and see how the tension just naturally increases each time!

So, to create an horror unforgettable story, you need to make your characters come alive on the page. You need to immerse readers in the world of your story and build tension all the way. And most importantly, you need to tap into readers’ primal fears. By following these tips, you can write a spine-tingling tale that will keep your readers up at night!

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