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Last updated on Jun 20, 2022

How to Write a Horror Story: 7 Tips for Writing Horror

In our era of highly commercialized crime and thriller novels, it may seem like zeitgeist-defining horror books are a thing of the past. Indeed, Stephen King was once the perennial bestselling author in the world, and children in the 90s devoured Goosebumps books like The Blob devoured, well, everything.

But let’s not forget there’s a huge base of horror fans today, desperate for their next fix . So if you’re hoping to become the next Crown Prince of Dread, your dream can still come true! Here are seven steps to writing truly chilling horror:

1. Start with a fear factor

2. pick a horror story subgenre, 3. let readers experience the stakes, 4. create suspense through point of view, 5. consider plot twists to surprise your audience, 6. put your characters in compelling danger, 7. use your imagination.

The most important part of any horror story is naturally going to be its fear factor . People don’t read horror for easy entertainment; they read it to be titillated and terrorized. That said, here are a few elements you can use to seriously scare the pants off your reader.

Instinctive fears

Fears that have some sort of logical or biological foundation are often the most potent in horror. Darkness, heights, snakes, and spiders — all these are extremely common phobias rooted in instinct. As a result, they tend to be very effective at frightening readers.

This is especially true when terror befalls innocent characters apropos of nothing: a killer traps them in their house for no apparent reason, or they’re suddenly mugged by a stranger with a revolver. As horror writer Karen Woodward says, “The beating undead heart of horror is the knowledge that bad things happen to good people.”

Monsters and supernatural entities

These stretch beyond the realm of logic and into the realm of the “uncanny,” as Freud called it. We all know that vampires , werewolves, and ghosts aren’t real, but that doesn’t mean they can’t shake us to our core. In fact, it’s the very uncertainty they arouse that makes them so sinister: what if monsters are really out there, we’ve just never seen them? This fear is one of the most prevalent in horror, but if you decide to write in this vein, your story has to be pretty convincing.

Societal tensions

Another great means of scaring people is to tap into societal tensions and concerns — a tactic especially prevalent in horror movies. Just in recent memory, Get Out tackles the idea of underlying racism in modern America, The Babadook examines mental health, and It Follows is about the stigma of casual sex. However, societal tensions can also easily be embodied in the pages of a horror story, as in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery .

The right atmosphere for your story depends on what kind of horror you want to write. To use cinematic examples again, are you going for more Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Silence of the Lambs? The tone and atmosphere of your story will hang upon its subgenre.

• Thriller-horror employs psychological fear, often occurring near the beginning of horror stories before very much has happened
• Gross-out horror involves vivid descriptions of spurting blood, hacked-up flesh, and gouged-out organs in order to shock the reader; think gore movies of the 70s
• Classic horror harks back to the Gothic (or Southern Gothic ) genre, with spooky settings and bone-chilling characters like those of Dracula and Frankenstein
• Terror provokes a feeling of all-pervasive dread, which can either serve as the climax of your story or be sustained throughout

It’s also possible to combine subgenres, especially as your story progress. You might begin with a sense of thrilling psychological horror, then move into gothic undertones, which culminates in utter terror.

But no matter what type of horror you’re working with, it should be deeply potent for your reader — and yourself! “If you manage to creep yourself out with your own writing, it's usually a pretty good sign that you're onto something,” editor Harrison Demchick says.

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In order for readers to truly thrill at your horror story, you need to make them aware of the stakes. Clearly establish the main problem or motivation for your character(s) , and what they have to lose if they don’t figure it out. These stakes and motivations might involve: 

Survival. The most basic objective of characters in any horror story is to survive. However, there are nuances that accompany that goal. Perhaps their objective isn't just to stay alive, but to defeat their murderous nemesis while doing it — whether that’s another person, an evil spirit, or even themselves, if it’s a Jekyll and Hyde-type scenario.

Protecting loved ones. The more people the protagonist has to keep safe, the higher the stakes. Many horrific tales peak with a threat of death not to the main character, but to one or several of their loved ones (as in Phantom of the Opera or Red Dragon ).

Cracking unsolved mysteries. Because some horror stories aren’t about escaping peril in the present, but rather about uncovering the terrors of the past. This especially true in subgenres like cosmic horror , which have to do with the great mysteries of the universe, often involving ancient history.

Again, as with atmosphere, you can always merge different kinds of stakes. For instance, you might have a character trying to solve some mysterious murders that happened years ago, only to find out that they’re the next target!

The main thing to remember when it comes to horror — especially horror stories — is that straightforward stakes tend to have the greatest impact. Says author Chuck Wendig, of his perfect recipe for horror: “Plain stakes, stabbed hard through the breastbone.”

Bonus tip! Need help conjuring stakes and suspense? Try reading some masterfully crafted true crime — which can be even scarier than bone fide horror, since it actually happened.

Your reader should feel a kinship with your main character, such that when the stakes are high, they feel their own heart start to beat faster. This can be achieved through either first person or third person limited point of view. (When writing horror, you’ll want to avoid third person omniscient, which can distance your reader and lessen their investment in the story.)

We'll get into only the major POV's to consider in this post, but if you want a full point of view masterclass, check out our free course below.

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First person POV

Speaking of beating hearts, for a great example of first person narration in horror, look no further than The Tell-Tale Heart . Many of Poe’s stories involve deranged first-person narrators ( The Black Cat , The Cask of Amontillado ) but none are more notorious than this one, in which the main character is driven to murder his elderly housemate. Notice Poe’s chilling use of first person POV from the very first lines of the story:

It’s true! Yes, I have been ill, very ill. But why do you say that I have lost control of my mind, why do you say that I am mad? Can you not see that I have full control of my mind? Indeed, the illness only made my mind, my feelings, my senses stronger… I could hear sounds I had never heard before. I heard sounds from heaven; and I heard sounds from hell!

First person POV is excellent for hooking your reader at the beginning, and keeping them in suspense throughout your story. However, it might be too intense for longer, more intricate pieces, and may be difficult to execute if you’re trying to conceal something from your readers.

It’s also worth thinking about the implications of first person, past tense POV in a horror story — it suggests they’ve lived to tell the tale, which might ruin your dramatic ending. Therefore if you do decide to use first person narration, you should probably keep it in present tense.

Third person POV

If you find yourself struggling to make first person POV work, consider a third person limited perspective instead. This kind of narration is often used in longer-form horror, popularized by the likes of Stephen King and Dean Koontz . Look how it’s used here in King’s 1974 novel Carrie , in the description of its eponymous character:

Carrie stood among [the other girls] stolidly, a frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks, her wet hair completely without color… She looked the part of the sacrificial goat, the constant butt, believer in left-handed monkey wrenches, perpetual foul-up, and she was.

This narration paints an intimate picture of the character, while still allowing the freedom for commentary in a way that first person narration doesn’t as much. Third person limited narration also works well for building to a certain atmosphere, rather than jumping right into it, as Poe’s narrator does — which is part of why third person is better for lengthier pieces. (See more of King's masterful use of POV to wrack up tension in our Guide to King! )

Unreliable narrators

Alternately, if you’re committed to having a first person narrator but you don’t want to reveal everything to your readers, an unreliable narrator could be your perfect solution! Many mystery and thriller novels employ unreliable narration in order to work up to a big twist without giving away too much. So whether or not you’ll want an unreliable narrator probably depends on how you end your story: straight down the line or with a twist.

Plot twists are exciting, memorable, and help bring previous uncertainty into focus, releasing tension by revealing the truth. However, they’re also notoriously difficult to come up with , and extremely tricky to pull off — you have to carefully hint at a twist, while making sure it’s not too predictable or clichéd.

So: to twist or not to twist? That is the question. 

Big plot twists in horror writing tend to follow the beaten path: the victim turns out to be the killer, the person who we thought was dead isn’t really, or — worst of all — it was all in their head the whole time! But keep in mind that small, subtle plot twists can be just as (if not more) effective.

Take William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily . After Emily dies, the villagers discover the corpse of a long-vanished traveler in one of her spare beds — along with a strand of silver hair. While the discovery of the body might be gruesome, it’s the presence of Emily’s hair (suggesting she enjoyed cuddling with a cadaver) that really haunts you.

Not to twist

The ending of your story doesn't have to come out of left field to shock and horrify readers. The classic horror approach leaves the reader in suspense as to precisely what will happen, then concludes with a violent showdown (think slasher films).

In this approach, while the showdown itself might not be a surprise, the scenes leading up to it build tension and anticipation for the climax. That way, when the big moment does arrive, it still packs a dramatic punch.

“A horror novel, like any story, is about a character or characters trying to achieve a goal based upon their individual wants and needs,” says Demchick. “If you let concept overwhelm character, you'll lose much of what makes horror as engaging as it can be.”

To scare your characters, you need to have a solid understanding of their psyche. Filling out a character profile template is a great start to fleshing out believable characters, so give ours a try.

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A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

As you write, you need to stay conscious of basic storytelling techniques and not get carried away with the drama of horror. It might help, before you begin, to answer these questions about your characters and plot:

• What fear or struggle must your protagonist overcome?
• What decision do they make to put them in this situation?
• How will they defeat or escape their adversary, if at all?
• What are the ultimate consequences of their actions?

This will help you create a basic outline for your horror story, which you can embellish to create atmosphere and suspense. In plot-driven genre stories, a thorough outline and emotionally resonant elements are vital for keeping your reader invested.

A great horror story balances drama with realism and suspense with relief, even with the occasional stroke of humor. Gillian Flynn is the master of this technique — as seen in this excerpt from her horror story The Grownup , wherein the narrator is scheming how to capitalize on her “spiritual cleansing” services:

I could go into business for myself, and when people asked me, “What do you do?” I’d say, I’m an entrepreneur in that haughty way entrepreneurs had. Maybe Susan and I would become friends. Maybe she’d invite me to a book club. I’d sit by a fire and nibble on Brie and say, I’m a small business owner, an entrepreneur, if you will.

In order to stand out from the crowd, you need to think about overused trends in horror and make sure your story’s not “been there, done that.” For instance, the “vampire romance” plot is a dead horse with no one left to beat it after all the Twilight, Vampire Diaries, and True Blood hype.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use certain elements of popular trends in your writing. You just have to put a spin on it and make it your own!

For example, zombie horror was already a well-worn genre when Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies came out in 2009. But by setting it in the regency era and featuring Jane Austen’s well-loved characters, he created a brilliant original work and carved out a brand new audience for zombie fiction. You can also pay homage to well-known horror tropes, like the Duffer brothers of Stranger Things   did for Stephen King and Steven Spielberg — and which savvy audiences are sure to appreciate.

It certainly feels sometimes like all the good horror stories have already been written, making your own ideas seem  trite. But don’t forget that new horror comes out all the time, and it only takes one great idea to be a hit! So try not to stress out about it, and remember: just by having read through this guide, you’re already that much closer to becoming a literary graveyard smash .

11 responses

Sawan says:

04/11/2018 – 19:34

Thank you so much for writing this article. I am currently writing a short horror story. Sometimes when I write a horror scene, I get really terrified, but after some days it all feels shitty.

↪️ dilinger john replied:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

it happens with everyone don't stress over it and pass your work to someone who will review it. you are a writer and can not be a critic at the same time.

↪️ Shane C replied:

28/09/2019 – 21:15

Sawan -- been writing for 22 years... NEVER judge your own work. You write it -- finish it off -- then have some friends that enjoy horror and reading read your work and give you honest critique. Record their critique or take accurate notes. Repeat this with several friends (but only those you can trust not to try to steal your work, Creative Commons and/or Registered Mail can be your best friend BEFORE this stage). Pick the best one you like, that makes the most sense -- but if several people say "blah blah blah should have happened," or a really close variation throughout reader opinions... Go with it! I know most people hate that, feels like butchering your art (I know I hate it), but use it anyway. It'll likely be more widely received... Just a few pointers.

Annabelle says:

21/05/2019 – 01:51

This is awesome I love this! I’m writing my own horror novel too.🙂

↪️ Andrew replied:

31/10/2019 – 20:23

what is it?

NAVEEN says:

29/07/2019 – 15:22

i am at the age of sixteen and i decided to write a horror story. thanks a lot!!

Bobette Bryan says:

27/08/2019 – 19:09

Ghosts are real. I've seen many in my lifetime and have had some very terrifying experiences with some.

↪️ smr replied:

03/01/2020 – 13:25

what the hell ??

↪️ John Brown replied:

16/01/2020 – 02:28

Me too! And I think it actually helps with writing horror stories, because you have more experience than most.

John Brown says:

16/01/2020 – 02:27

I’m 14 and I love writing horror novels, but I usually freak my self out too much to keep writing... 😕

Comments are currently closed.

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How to write a horror story: Telling tales of terror

Learn how to write a horror story, with insights from Stephen King, John Carpenter, the script opening for The Exorcist, and more, and discover ideas for telling a more chilling tale.

• Post author By Jordan
• 71 Comments on How to write a horror story: Telling tales of terror

Learning how to write horror is a useful for any writer. The genre contains storytelling elements that are useful beyond it. Read a concise guide to horror. We explore what horror is, key elements of horror, plus tips and quotes from masters of horror film and fiction.

What is horror? Elements of horror

The horror genre is speculative or fantastical fiction that evokes fear, suspense, and dread.

Horror often gives readers or viewers the sense of relief by the end of the story.

Stephen King calls this ‘reintegration’. Writes King in his non-fiction book on horror, Danse Macabre (1981), about the release from terror in reintegration:

For now, the worst has been faced and it wasn’t so bad at all. There was that magic moment of reintegration and safety at the end, that same feeling that comes when the roller coaster stops at the end of its run and you get off with your best girl, both of you whole and unhurt. I believe it’s this feeling of reintegration, arising from a field specializing in death, fear, and monstrosity, that makes the danse macabre so rewarding and magical … that, and the boundless ability of the human imagination to create endless dreamworlds and then put them to work. Stephen King, Dance Macabre (1981), p. 27 (Kindle version)

A brief history of the horror genre

Horror, like most genres, has evolved substantially.

Modern horror stories’ precursors were Gothic tales, stretching back to the 1700s. Even stretching beyond that, into gory myths and legends such as Grimm’s folktales.

In early Gothic fiction, the horrifying aspects (such as ghostly apparitions) tended to stem from characters’ tortured psyches. For example, the ghostly shenanigans in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1898). It was often ambiguous whether or not supernatural events depicted were real or imagined by a typically unreliable, tortured narrator.

More modern horror turned increasingly towards ‘psychological horror’. Here, the source of horror is more interior. Or else an external monster or supernatural figure is no figment but completely real.

See Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror : Or, Paradoxes of the Heart for further interesting information on the genres history, as well as Stephen King’s Danse Macabre.

8 elements of horror

Eight recurring elements in classic and contemporary horror, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) to the contemporary horror films of Ari Aster, are:

• Suspense (the anticipation of terror or bad things). Horror builds suspense by evoking our fear of the known (for example, fear of the dark). Also fear of the unknown (what could be lurking in said dark).
• Fear. The genre plays with primal fears such as fear of injury, accident, evil, our mistakes, whether evil faces accountability (see Thomas Fahy’s The Philosophy of Horror for more on the philosophy of horror and moral questions horror asks).
• Atmosphere. Horror relies extensively on the emotional effects of atmosphere. Just think of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the ship, the aliens’ human-hunting paradise, in the Alien film franchise.
• Vulnerability. The horror genre plays with our vulnerability, makes us remember it. Horror often asks ‘what if the other is overtly or insidiously malevolent? In asking this, it reminds us of the values of both caution and courage.
• Survival . Many horror subgenres explore themes of survival, from zombie horror to slasher films. Like tragedy, survival stories explore the rippling-out consequences of making ‘the wrong choice’.
• The Supernatural. Horror stories also plumb the unseen and unknown, terrors our physics, beliefs and assumptions can’t always explain.
• Psychological terror. Horror typically manipulates the perceptions of readers/viewers (and characters) to create a sense of unease. ‘What’s thumping under that locked cellar door?’
• The monstrous. Whether actual monsters or the monstrous possible in ordinary human behavior, horror explores the dark and what terrifies or disgusts.

Further elements and themes that appear often include death, the demonic, isolation, madness, grief and revenge.

What does horror offer readers/viewers?

In The Philosophy of Horror (2010), Thomas Fahy compares horror to a reluctant skydiving trip taken with friends, referencing King’s concept of reintegration, the ‘return to safety’:

In many ways, the horror genre promises a similar experience [to skydiving]: The anticipation of terror, the mixture of fear and exhilaration as events unfold, the opportunity to confront the unpredictable and dangerous, the promise of relative safety (both in the context of a darkened theater and through a narrative structure that lasts a finite amount of time and/or number of pages), and the feeling of relief and regained control when it’s over. Thomas Fahy (Ed.), ‘Introduction’, The Philosophy of Horror (2010).

Horror also appeals to the pleasures of repetition. The darkly amusing absurdity and existentialism of how characters are bumped off one by one in a slasher film, for example.

Audiences also flock to horror for tension (produced by suspense, fear, shock, terror, gore and other common elements), personal relevance (the way horror explores themes we can relate to), and the pleasure of the surreal or unreality.

What do you love about the horror genre? Tell us in the comments!

How to write horror: 10 tips (plus examples and quotes)

Explore ten ideas on how to write a horror story:

Jump scares and sudden gore might punctuate the story, but if they appear every page they risk becoming predictable.

Who in your ensemble will your reader or viewer want to survive or triumph over horrifying events, and why?

Often horror flips between everyday fears (a young couple’s fears about becoming parents, for example) and a symbolic, scarier level.

Great horror stories often live on in reader/viewer debate about what ‘really’ happened. They reward rewatching.

Horror stories make terrifying events (such as an author being abducted by a homicidal superfan in King’s Misery ) seem plausible. We believe their worlds.

Who can forget the infamous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho ? Horror often scares us where we think we’re safest.

Play with multiple layers and levels of fear – fear of the known, unknown, of real monsters and the make-believe monsters of perception.

What will create that feeling that something’s just a little off, unexpected?

Some horror subgenres (e.g. splatterpunk or slasher horror) go all-out on gore. Violence isn’t the only way to unsettle your reader, though. Play with the fear of the unseen – imagination can supply the possibilities.

Focusing solely on scaring readers may end up with a story that is more style and provocation than substance. Think about character and story arcs, using setting to create tone and atmosphere, other elements that make up good stories .

Pace the big horror scares for suspense

Let’s explore each of the preceding ideas on how to write horror. First: Pacing.

As in suspense, pacing is everything in horror. Good pacing allows the build-up, ebb and flow of tension.

See how the script for the classic 1973 horror film The Exorcist (adapted from William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel of the same name) begins? Not with immediate, obvious demonic possession, but the suspense of an archaeological dig. There are no jump scares, and no gore – just quiet unease.

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Pacing in horror-writing example: Slow-building tension in The Exorcist

EXTERIOR- IRAQ- EXCATVATION SITE- NINEVEH- DAY Pickaxes and shovels weld into the air as hundreds of excavators tear at the desert. The camera pans around the area where hundreds of Iraqi workmen dig for ancient finds. […] YOUNG BOY (In Iraqi language) They’ve found something… small pieces. MERRIN (In Iraqi language) Where? The Exorcist screenplay. Source: Script Slug

This is a long way – geographically and tonally – from a young girl walking backwards downstairs or her head turning around like an owl’s.

A seemingly innocent archaeological dig turns into something more sinister. A link is implied between the statue of a demon unearthed in the dig and two dogs starting to fight:

EXTERIOR – IRAQ- NINEVEH- DAY […] The old man walks up the rocky mound and sees a huge statue of the demon Pazuzu, which has the head of the small rock he earlier found. He climbs to a higher point to get a closer look. When he reaches the highest point he looks at the statue dead on. He then turns his head as we hear rocks falling and sees a guard standing behind him. He then turns again when he hears two dogs savagely attacking each other. The noise is something of an evil nature. He looks again at the statue and we are then presented with a classic stand off side view of the old man and the statue as the noises rage on. We then fade to the sun slowly setting as the noises lower in volume. The Exorcist screenplay. Source: Script Slug

The suspense in this opening builds up a sense of something horrifying being unleashed on the world unwittingly.

Use characterization to make readers care

Great horror stories may use stock character types, flat arcs. For example, in slasher films where some characters’ main purpose is to die in some creative, absurd way.

Yet subtler horror writing uses characterization to make the reader care.

Part of the truly horrifying aspect of The Exorcist , for example, is knowing that an innocent child is possessed. Tormented by evil through no fault of her own.

The care is palpable in her mother Chris’ (Ellen Burstyn) horror and anxiety in reaction. Empathy is a natural response to having an unwell child (and ‘unwell’ is putting it mildly, in this case).

We empathize with characters grappling with dark forces beyond their control. Life tests everyone with destructive or painful experiences at some point in time. The sense of powerlessness (and tenacity that emerges through that) is a testament to the human spirit, to perseverance.

A horror story itself may have a bleaker reading, of course. Yet we struggle on with the intrepid heroines in their attempts to overcome.

Three horror character archetypes that make us care

In Danse Macabre , Stephen King discusses three common character archetypes in horror and Gothic fiction:

• The Thing – for example, Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , which expresses pain at having been created.
• The Vampire – often represented as suffering eternal life/return (similar in this regard to ghosts and poltergeists).
• The Werewolf – a horror character who transforms, typically against their will and usually with great suffering, into a beast.

King explores examples of these three horror archetypes from books and films such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal psychological horror film, Psycho (1960).

Writes King:

It doesn’t end with the Thing, the Vampire, and the Werewolf; there are other bogeys out there in the shadows as well. But these three account of a large bloc of modern horror fiction. King, Danse Macarbre, p. 96.

Why horror character archetypes make us care

Horror lovers care about ‘the thing’ archetype often because ‘the thing’, the monster, is misunderstood or blameless for its creation. Think of Frankenstein’s monster, who bargains with his creator for release and freedom.

‘The vampire’ is often a relatable figure because of the inevitable loneliness of eternal life. The vampire is imprisoned by limitations such as not being allowed the rest of death (or even natural pleasures such as sunlight – as glamorous as it might be to sparkle like Stephenie Meyer’s diamante vamps).

King writes about the werewolf and how it represents human duality. The respectable public persona or façade, on one hand, and a world of hidden, private horror on the other. A duality many who carry private trauma can relate to.

Each archetype is relatable on some level. This empathic element makes one care for (or at least understand) the monstrous and inhuman in more literary horror stories. Evil (though some don’t like to admit it) has a face and a backstory, a history of becoming, most of the time.

Read more about how to create characters readers can picture and care about in our complete guide to character creation .

Make the known scary (not just the unknown)

Many horror movies tap into the terror of the known, the common human experience, and not only absurd (but campy and fun) nightmares like clowns hiding in stormwater drains.

Common, relatable parts of familiar human experience to mine for horror and terror include:

• Birth and death (e.g. Rosemary’s Baby )
• Loss and grief (e.g. Hereditary )
• Childhood fears (e.g. It )
• Loss of control (e.g. An American Werewolf in London )
• Ritual and community (e.g. Midsommar )
• Exploring the unknown (e.g. Alien )

Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan writes in the script for the 2000 film Unbreakable:

Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you’re here. That’s – that’s just an awful feeling.

Often, it is this mundane, relatable element of horror – such as the horror of not having a place in the world – that supplies the psychological or inner aspect.

For example, a bereaved family’s struggle with an occult family history (the outer horror) provides the figurative, metaphorical means to explore the painful reality of grief and intergenerational trauma (inner horror) in Ari Aster’s psychological horror film, Hereditary .

Don’t feel you have to explain everything

Although King’s concept of ‘reintegration’ applies in many horror stories where a sunnier ending promises relief, many modern horror narratives eschew tidy resolution.

It’s a classic ploy in horror series, for example, for there to be troubling alarm bells at the end, inferring that a persistent terror lives on. For example, the jump scare at the end of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) [warning: implied violence, spoilers].

The shock comes through the juxtaposition of an ‘everyone’s safe at last moment’ and terror striking from inside the house without warning, undoing the sense of resolution attained. The main character having woken from the dreams where the bulk of terrifying events occur adds to this false sense of security.

There is no graphic gore or violence. The scene doesn’t show or tell every detail. Instead, the audience has to interpret the event and what it implies about the the status of the conflict between the main characters and the supernatural villain, Freddy Krueger – whether it is truly over.

Play with the terror of plausibility

What is most terrifying is often what is plausible. For example, the crazed fan who abducts her favorite author in Stephen King’s Misery (1987), for hobbling instead of autographs. Celebrity stalking is a well-documented modern cultural phenomenon. It is hard to eyeroll at after John Lennon.

Why is plausibility worth thinking about when exploring how to write horror?

• Suspension of disbelief. If events in a horror story seem plausible (at least for the horror world created), the audience is less inclined to roll their eyes and groan, ‘That would never happen’.
• Relatability . A novel and film such as The Exorcist plays on the natural fear many have that loved ones will fall unwell or depart, in body, spirit or mind.
• Tension and unpredictability: It is more tense and unpredictable when everything is ‘normal’ to start. Ruptures in the fabric of this normalcy create tension, the sense ‘anything could happen’ (that sense requires the bedrock of plausibility first ).

Scare horror audiences when they least expect

Like that jump scare in the final scene of A Nightmare on Elm Street , horror often scares the shoes off us when we least expect it.

Take, for example, the infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), where Marion Crane is attacked in the shower.

The shower, usually associated with privacy, relaxation, is nothing like an abandoned side street, dark wood at night, or other traditionally ‘creepy’ setting. This coupled with the intensity of Hitchcock’s shots – the raised hand clutching a knife – creates a chilling scene.

Horror mastery lies in a push and pull, lulling your audience into a false sense of security, then pulling the rug out from under them when they least expect it. Tweet This

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Deepen the story with layers of fear

Horror, like other fantastical genres, deals in layers and dualities. In fantasy fiction , we often have a primary world and a secondary one. In horror, the duality is often an internal horror doing a ‘danse macabre’ with an external one.

Says horror filmmaking veteran John Carpenter in conversation with Vulture :

There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don’t understand. Internal is the human heart. Simon Abrams, ‘The Soft-Spoken John Carpenter on How He Chooses Projects and His Box-Office Failures’, July 6 2011.

In a story using the ‘werewolf’ archetype, for example, the rational, untransformed side of a protagonist may fear the revelation of their monstrous side, the consequences this would have for their daily life (whether they are a literal werewolf or this is figurative). Transformed, the werewolf, like the ‘elephant man’, may experience the external horror and fear of others’ revulsion or animosity (which then feeds the internal, in a vicious cycle).

Having both internal and external conflicts in a horror story moves horror beyond simple disgust and shock tactics. The audience can connect deeper with characters, the cycles of violence they endure or triumph over.

Tapping into common fears for horror writing

If the point of horror writing (and horror elements in other genres such as paranormal romance) is to arouse fear, shock or disgust, think of the things people are most commonly afraid of.

Live Science places an interest choice at number one : The dentist. It’s true that you can feel powerless when you’re in the dentist’s chair. Couple this with the pain of certain dental procedures and it’s plain to see why a malevolent dentist is the stuff of horror nightmares.

Making readers scared creates tension and increases the pace of your story. Even so there should be a reason for making readers fearful.

Here are some of the most common fears people have:

• Fear of animals (dogs, snakes, sharks, mythical creatures such as the deep sea-dwelling kraken)
• Fear of flying (film producers combined the previous fear and this other common fear to make the spoof horror movie Snakes on a Plane)
• The dark – one of the most fundamental fears of the unfamiliar
• Perilous heights
• Other people and their often unknown desires or intentions
• Ugly or disorienting environments

Think of how common fears can be evoked in your horror fiction. Some are more often exploited in horror writing than others. A less precise fear (such as the fear of certain spaces) will let you tell the horror story you want with fewer specified must-haves.

Add subtler hints of something wrong

Returning to core elements of horror – fear, suspense, and atmosphere – how do you make horror scary even when Freddy isn’t dragging anyone through a solid wood door?

Tone and atmosphere emerge in the subtle hints and clues something is wrong.

Hints and signs of horrors to come could include:

• Unsettling sounds. Dripping, humming, chanting, singing, banging, knocking, drumming. What are sounds that imply trouble and the ghastly unknown coming to visit?
• Creepy imagery. What are images and signs that suggest comfort (for example, a lamp burning in a window to signal someone’s home)? Blow those candles out, play with the unhomely.
• Unsettling change. Changes in light, a companion’s tone, a pet’s behavior. Small harbingers of trouble add tension.
• Missing objects. What is not continuous in a way that unsettles and defies expectations? For example, in the reboot of Twin Peaks , an attempt to go home again leads to the dread of everything being different, that sense of ‘you can’t go home again’.
• Discomforting communication. Sometimes horror hinges on a repeated word or phrase (‘Candyman’), or someone saying something creepily unexpected.

The above are just a few ways to imply that something is very wrong.

Balance gore with the unseen (subgenre depending)

Gore in horror has the capability to shock, disgust, make your audience squeamish. Yet a relentless gore-fest may quickly desensitize readers or viewers to the element of surprise.

How much gore you include in a horror will of course depend on your subgenre and story scenario. Slasher stories and subgenres such as splatterpunk (a horror subgenre characterized by extreme violence) will have audiences who demand gore and may lament something tame.

Reasons to balance gore with the terror of the unseen, otherwise:

• Maintaining tension. Periods of calm between violent scenes create suspense, nervous tension for when there’ll be blood again.
• Deepening the story. Great stories with broad appeal take more than blood and guts – meaningful character arcs and genuine scares and horrifying scenes can coexist.
• Artful storytelling. Relying on inference, plot twists, atmosphere, tension for fright and shock is arguably more artful than leaping straight for shock-value. Critical succcesses in the horror genre often don’t rely solely on the cheapest, easiest scares. The story often earns them by building plausibility or deeper symbolic and metaphorical resonance.

Tell a good story first, scare readers second

That last idea boils down to this: Focus on telling a good story, first.

If your sole focus is how most you can shock and manipulate your audience, some may critique this as cheap exploitation.

Some authors – deliberate provocateurs – may wear that label as a badge of pride, of course. Careers are sometimes made in attracting controversy, even bans and censorship for extreme shock value.

Yet the stories that endure often make excellent uses of all the parts of storytelling and encapsulate some of the qualities that make storytelling universal – humanity, insight, the empathy and truth-finding that imagining and exploring ‘dreamworlds’ offers.

Are you writing horror? Join the Now Novel critique community for free and get perks such as longer critique submissions, weekly editorial feedback and story planning tools when you upgrade to The Process.

Now Novel has been invaluable in helping me learn about the craft of novel writing. The feedback has been encouraging, insightful and useful. I’m sure I wouldn’t have got as far as I have without the support of Jordan and the writers in the groups. Highly recommend to anyone seeking help, support or encouragement with their first or next novel. – Oliver

Related Posts:

• Showing vs telling: 'Show don't tell' in narration
• How do you write a story using three-act structure?
• How to write the middle of a story: 9 tips
• Tags horror fiction

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

71 replies on “How to write a horror story: Telling tales of terror”

[…] Similarly, the always awesome Now Novel blog has 6 Terrific tips on How to write a horror story that are worth a look. The most important piece of info there, in my opinion is # 5: Write scary […]

Great and helpful post. Its difficult to find helpful, informative posts on horror writing. Thanks.

It’s a pleasure, Alice. I’m glad you found this helpful.

I agree with Alice. This was very useful. Thanks, Bridget.

It’s a pleasure, Melissa, thanks for reading.

As always, an insightful and helpful post, especially regarding the distinction between terror and horror. Love the SK quote! 🙂

Thank you! Thanks for reading. It is a good quote, isn’t it?

Im 11 and working on a horror story with 100 or more pages. this is very helpful. 🙂

I’m impressed, Ethan. Keep going! I’m glad you found it helpful 🙂

Okay, I’m EXACTLY the same age and also working on a horror novel!! I already have 241 pages, though.

Update* im now 13 yayayayyaa owo I lost the pages and have then finished writing a script for something i cant loose. SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS

Omg hey Ethan and Malachi I’m twelve (right in the middle IG) and working on novels that are going to be between 100 and 300 pages! Good luck guys 😀

Great article. You helped me realise that the short I was working on is actually a novel. Not sure how mind you, but thanks all the same. I’ll sign up now.

Thanks, Gareth! Glad to help.

The article is useful, except for the last part, which totally messed up the beauty of the article. It’s POINTLESS trying to differentiate two things that are mostly used interchangeably. Moreover, Terry Heller’s point makes the whole sense, SENSELESS, because her definition of terror and horror are actually the same except for the subjects to where such emotion is concerned about. Terror is one’s fear for oneself, and horror is one’s fear for others? Are you kidding me? Both can be subjected to either oneself or to others. Dictionaries and encyclopedias never indicate that horror is what one fears for others alone, because it can be for oneself, too. If Terry cannot differentiate two things, which are not really meant to be differentiated because they are the ultimate synonym for each other, then she doesn’t have to make such an effort. She’s making everyone a fool.

Thank you for your engaging response. You raise valid points, and sometimes academic treatments of subjects do over-complicate matters. In light of your comment I’m updating the post since I see now that the distinction isn’t perhaps particularly useful here.

Thanks for the tips. Writing a horror novel for my 1st NaNoWriMo project. This was extremely helpful 🙂

I’m really glad to hear that, Ashley. I hope NaNoWriMo is going well.

I am 12 and have been working on horror since I was 7! So exited to actually get some good info! Thanks!

It’s a pleasure, Aurelia. It’s great that you’re already so committed to your love of writing, keep it up.

Thanks! I am exited to do Nanowrimo and I am am hoping to write a long novel this November. This really helped and extra thanks to the helpful comment!

It’s a pleasure! I hope your NaNoWriMo is going very well.

This has given me more quality advice on the genre than a three year creative writing degree. Best start reading the stuff first then! Thank you.

Thank you, Neil, high praise indeed. Good luck with your horror book!

… How does one get rid of writers block? My brain always blanks out when I try and start writing. So annoying! >:c

Sometimes listening to songs with a creepy tone helps

Great advice, Allee. I love listening to music while I work myself.

My advice is to literally just write what comes into your brain, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not, that’s what first drafts are for, as long as you’re writing in some shape of form, be it poor or good quality, it’s practice

Thank you. … My brain is weird. Just now, I’ve been shaken out of my sleep by an intense dream. Seriously. I don’t know what goes on up there, but it’s mad.

Good advice! Maya Angelou said similar about her writing process. Here are some additional tips on moving past a block: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/banish-writers-block/

I’m so happy I ran across this article. I’ve read from more than one story editor that the horror genre is the most difficult genre to master.

I’m glad to hear that, JP. All genres have their challenges but I’d say the best, best, best approach is to read widely in said genre (and others). Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, if Stephen King can’t terrify or horrify, he’ll gross us out. And he says he’s not proud. In other words, he’ll stoop to the disgust level if he can’t get the others. But this is precisely the problem with the “gross” or “disgusting.” Disgust is not fear. When we are disgusted, we know TOO much. When we are horrified, there is always something we DON’T know. I’m amazed he doesn’t know that. An autopsy gives us disgust because nothing is held back from the viewer. It is not frightening. No one believes, for example, that the body is going to get up from the autopsy table and start attacking the doctor. But if I walk into the autopsy room all by myself and see a dead body on a table, turn away from the body to shut the door, turn back to it, notice it gone, and then have the lights start dimming? Yes. Now I am scared. Why? Simply because I don’t know certain things. I don’t know why the body has suddenly disappeared. I don’t know how a dead person could have moved. I don’t know where the body is right now. I don’t know if that body (if it is actually alive) has good or bad intentions toward me. I don’t know who is dimming the lights and why. It is so much easier to disgust the reader than to horrify him. It takes more cleverness to hold back information from the character and the reader than to let everything gush forth in blood and guts. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, for example, there is more fear to be found in the inscrutable nightly crying of the butler’s wife than in many of our modern horror films put together. Why is she crying? Why only at night? Why is she doing looking out of the window into the dark each night? The source of fear is in the unknown.

Ultimately, King does know and it is a show vs tell metaphor. You have to read his biographical On Writing because no one explains it correctly. Terror is the psychological aspect of the story. Horror is the stories physical manifestation of the terror. Disgust is the actions of horror. Showing the actions of horror kills all suspense immediately. I like to explain it to my students and listeners as if Terror and Horror are the brake and Disgust is the gas. It’s like the old story of the escaped lunatic with a hook were a young couple go out on a date. While driving to Make Out Lane there is a report on the radio about an escaped killer with a hook running around killing people that the only the girl hears. As the girl and boy are making out she sees a shadow and the boyfriend sees nothing. Then there is the screeching sound on the outside of the car. That’s terror. The boyfriend gets out and inspects his car in the dense fog. The girl loses sight of the boy as he walks toward the rear, building on the terror. There is another screech along her door, terrorizing her. She calls out the boys name and he doesn’t respond, building on the terror, possibly toward horror if the boy doesn’t return. Then he does. He leaps into the car and jerks it into reverse and pulls away from the scene at mach-5. When they arrive back at her house, they find a hook dangling from the passenger door handle, the horror. King describes this little story as the perfect short horror story. However, in some later versions of the story the girl jumps in the driver’s seat and pulls off without the boy. When she gets to her home she finds a bloody hook dangling from the door with a bit of gut on it, leaving the girl and the audience disgusted. as the tension and suspense are deflated.

This is very helpful. My 8th grade English teacher is holding a contest for writing a short (750 to 3,000 word) horror story, so I am researching the elements of horror and how to incorporate them into my work. This article is by far one of the more helpful ones I have found in finding ways to create fear, shock or disgust in the mind of the reader. Thank you!

Hi Margaret,

Thank you for this feedback. I’m glad to hear you found this article useful. I hope you won the contest 🙂

“…his skin distinctly yellowish in colour.” Far from being exemplary in any way, this is actually terrible, hack writing. If something is “yellowish,” it cannot be “distinctly” so. It’s either distinctly yellow, or “yellowish.” Likewise, “in color” is flabby and redundant. Could the skin be “yellowish” in shape or size? Could it be “yellowish” in cost or weight? This page is distinctly whiteish in color. See how weak and flabby that is?

To be fair, there is a lot of good information on this page. But Clive Barker is a dreadful writer, and should never be cited as an exemplar of good prose.

Hi Sharkio, you raise a very good point. I second your edit of just saying ‘yellowish’ and cutting in colour and am tempted to add a note on not taking the letter of his prose as exemplary, but rather the spirit 🙂 I agree that although the atmosphere and tone are there, the prose is weak in places. There’s also the question, though, of whether we can/should apply ‘literary’ standards to genre fic where these and other ‘sins’ are more widely accepted 🙂 Thanks for the thoughtful engagement with this detail.

Are you crazy? There is no writer at the top of their game as Barker was in the 70-90s. His influence is on everything today.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, H Duane 🙂 Just goes to show that everyone has different preferences. He is regarded as one of the modern masters of horror. I suppose genre fiction readers might also be more forgiving of certain stylistic choices than literary readers.

Some good tips after writing 2 love stories and a mystery now I am trying for some horrer story and this will help me such a good information

Thanks, Sidhu. That’s an interesting genre leap, but many horrors do have both elements. It’s a weird trope to me how often the romantic leads are the first to go in slasher flicks. You’d think writers would keep them to add romantic tension to the mix. I hope your story’s coming along well.

I just finished writing my first horror script/ screenplay… I checked this list just to see if I maybe left elements out that I should include or if I was on the right track and I’m proud to report that my script has it all… Once my film finally sees the light of day, I hope all horror fans are satisfied…

Hi Timothy, I hope so too! Best of luck with the next steps, please update us about what comes of it.

I am attempting to write a horror story where the main character is possessed and is writing in a diary like format as it occurs, and begins committing murders, how do I accurately capture the descent into madness?

Hi Evan, thank you for sharing that. It’s an interesting challenge. I would suggest a shift in style and tone in his writing. For example, perhaps they use stranger metaphors, repeat themselves more, their sentences become more fragmented, there’s the occasional odd word by itself on a line, lines or sentences that don’t make complete semantic sense but have an eerie undertone (I think of the classic phrase ‘The owls are not what they seem’ in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks).

I hope this helps! Good luck.

Thank you, this was very useful. I appreciate your enthusiasm and encouragement.

It’s my pleasure, Evan, glad to help. Have a great week.

Wow this was really helpful thanks

I’m glad to hear that, Rene. Thank you for the feedback!

I wanted to write a psychological thriller story for a youtube channel. I am glad I found help from here. Thank You.

It’s a pleasure, Suyasha! Thank you for reading and good luck creating your story for YouTube.

I appreciate the reference to ’cause and effect’ for any level of villainy. The more complex the villain, the more interesting the story. Anything that steps out of the dark and says, “Hi, I’m evil. I’m here to destroy everything for no apparent reason,” flattens the scene. I think your point about motivation is key to getting people engaged in the fantasy. I think that this will heighten the tension in my current story. Thank you.

Hi Deborah, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Agreed, a complex villain also tends to be less predictable which inherently builds more suspense, as (compared to a Bond villain, for example), they’re more textured and unknowable, less of a trope or archetype. I’m glad you found these ideas helpful to your current story, good luck as you proceed further!

Totally agree with you Joseph Pedulla. You summed it up perfectly! Gross is not scary. I like scary. Stephen King is talked about all the time like the all-time best horror writer. I have tried reading some of his work and I find it mind-numbingly boring. I like the story to move along; don’t give me a whole bunch of description!! Read Darren Shan’s ‘The Cirque Du Freak Series.’ Absolutely amazing!

Thank you. I appreciate the elaboration on each hint. I also think your arguments make sense AND can be helpful to many indie-authors & startup writers alike.

Thank you for your feedback, Andre. I’m glad you found our article helpful!

Was looking for some takes regarding this topic and I found your article quite informative. It has given me a fresh perspective on the topic tackled. Thanks!

Please see also my blog, Getting to Know the 4 Incredible Authors of Horror Fiction

Hope this will help,

Thank you, Joab. Thanks for sharing your horror writing blog.

[…] How to Write a Horror Story: 6 Terrific Tips […]

This is quite interesting and I can see how it relates to film more readily than to a novel – perhaps due to the many film examples and the visual quality of the ‘jump scare’, etc. I can see that film examples are very useful, however, I’m having trouble relating this to crafting words on a page as opposed to images on a screen.

Hi Rachel, thank you so much for this useful feedback. It’s interesting how much film and narrative fiction have influenced each other in this specific genre, but this is useful to me – I will work in more examples from horror lit in an additional section when I have a moment. Thanks for helping me make this article better and for reading.

Interesting! I may add some horror prompts to Craft Challenge. You did forget to mention the terror of never finishing a book, missing tons of errors, writing something right after someone else does it, and getting your book idea stolen 😉 Although I suppose they’re preferable to a gruesome death, or drowning, or grasshoppers (don’t judge me) 🕷️🪓🩸

I’m now trying to remember which of those fears horror authors’ writer characters (e.g. in Misery ) have 🙂 I’m going to have to have a look at that. OK, I’m with you on the grasshoppers. My aunt lives near the mountain and they get these very angry-looking green ones my aunt calls ‘Green [redacted]s’ 😉

Also please do, I’ll also think up some horror prompts to share as well (another section for this article in version 2.1).

Oh, I forgot one! The fear of every critique starting with “I don’t like this genre.” 😳

Haha I love that, Margriet. A relatable fear, I would say.

How much room for humor do you think there is in the horror genre? Do you think you could write a horror novel that has a high percentage of humor Vs. horror/gore and still call it a horror novel?

This is a great question, Scott. I really am not a horror expert myself (sometimes I write far out of my comfort zone here which requires a little more research). But if I think of Tim Curry’s performance as It , for example, how he fills the character with this wild humor and characterization that made many prefer the original to the remake, I would say horror has as much capacity for humor as you want it to have. Comedy horror is a thing, with zombie spoofs and the like produced, so you could always market a comedy horror title in both categories. I think part of the natural crossover is that jump scares, campy villainous dialogue, or see-it-coming-from-a-mile tropes often make audiences laugh, too.

I’m working on one to it’s very wierd and it’s called Toony and The Ink Machine Yes I know kind of ripoff of Bendy and The ink machine.

Fabulous title, Silas! Wishing you the best with the writing process.

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When You Write

How to Write Horror Stories: 8 Tips for Writing a Spine-Chilling Horror Story

It’s hard to imagine that people can actually fall in love with a story in which horrific things keep happening to people.

But they do.

Authors like Stephen King have dominated book stores and have seen their stories thrive as movie adaptations in Hollywood.

But to write a horror story that terrorizes and wins the hearts of your readers, you need to get a couple of things right. You must understand that the terror alone won’t save your story; read on to learn about the common subjects in horror stories and how to write scary stories.

Why People Love Reading Horror Fiction

No one enjoys being surrounded by danger, death, terror, and pain. Normally, we are afraid of these things.

So, why do people enjoy stories filled with these things?

Although nobody likes to experience things in a horror story, reading them is different. Horror fiction introduces some sort of a controlled environment for experiencing fear. When we read a horror story in our comfort zone, we experience the element of fear, and at the same time, we feel safe knowing that the horrors happening in the story are not actually happening to us.

This mix leads to an intense but enjoyable experience.

The Horror Subgenres

The subgenre of a horror story determines its tone and atmosphere. When you are aware of the subgenre of your horror story, there are a lot of things that could perfectly go wrong (for your characters) and go right for your readers.

Gross-out horror : This is anything from excess blood oozing from a slit neck, intestines hanging outside, a gouged-out heart, and a lot of other graphic descriptions of gruesome scenes that are solely intended to shock the readers.

Thriller-horror : This subgenre takes advantage of psychological fear and usually occurs before much has happened, around the beginning of horror stories.

Classic horror : In my teenage years, I was in love with characters like Dracula and werewolves. Such characters are found in classic horror which is dominant in Gothic horror, a genre with spooky themes and supernatural happenings.

Terror : According to Stephen King, terror is the worst level of fear. The fear is caused by imagination and the writer has to have mastered the use of persuasive and suggestive writing. The author can suggest the unknown, and the reader’s mind starts to fill in the blanks, and the imagery becomes a terrifying story.

4 Key Elements of a Good Horror Story

A horror story involves the following key elements:

The four major ingredients must be present in any horror story and have to be used efficiently.

Fear is what everyone expects to find in a horror story—and it’s the basic element of a horror story.

However, as I have already iterated, fear on its own is not sufficient.

Your story needs that element of fear to be complemented by the other three : suspense, mystery, or surprise .

A horror story is no good if the scary characters just go about hurting, killing, or scaring the other characters with no mystery behind their existence or their murderous quirks.

And… the readers shouldn’t always anticipate the scary events as that sucks some of the fear out of the readers. When they’re caught off guard, the fear is intense and it makes the horror story more realistic.

If you don’t want to end up with a boring horror story, you need to write a story that invokes the reader’s emotions and engages their mind. A good balance of these four elements will help do just that.

Tips for Writing a Terrifying Horror

1. use your own fears.

You don’t have to be an emotionless badass to write a good horror story. Your own fears can help guide you to write the scariest of things.

Use your fears to write things that people would find spine-chilling and use vivid descriptions—as vivid as the fear in your mind—to increase the scariness of your story.

For example, I’m afraid of blades and heights and if I were to write a horror story based on these feelings, I’d be looking for the scariest things a blade would do, like one character beheading another using a blunt panga and having to repeatedly hack the neck of the victim.

2. Remember the Basics

Horror stories are special, but to you (the writer) they are still like any other story.

The basic elements of a story have to apply to a horror novel or short story—characters have to have goals, there has to be conflict, and all the other elements.

If you let the horror element overtake your storytelling abilities, there’s a 99% chance you have no story at all. So, you need to balance between the drama of horror and the flow of the story.

A great horror storyline, just like that of any story, has the protagonist(s) fears or goals, provide the characters’ motive(s) for their roles, expose the decisions that read to the protagonists’ present situation, consequences of the characters’ actions, and how they are going to overcome the situation or succumb to horrors presented by the antagonist(s).

To write a great horror story, you must supplement the mystery and suspense with some elements like humor or bravery.

3. Avoid Clichés

Clichés surprise the element of surprise from a horror story, and with that gone, the story becomes boring, predictable, and—consequently—not scary.

Basing your horror story on the familiar horror tropes isn’t bad, but… you have to develop a story that takes its own shape.  I always say that only a horror story writer is allowed to kick his readers in the face—when they think they know what is going to happen, give them something they wouldn’t expect.

4. Write longer sentences

I picked this one from our very own R.L. Stine, aka Jovial Bob. He says that by writing longer sentences, you rob the readers of “natural pauses” that periods provide. The longer sentences mean that the readers don’t have time to take a breath, hence they build anticipation for the reader.

This helps the readers feel as tense as the characters and unknowingly get immersed in your horror story. If this is successful, the reader will want to get to the end of the story as they now have some sort of emotional investment in your story.

5. Carefully Choose the POV

The point of view you use might determine the type of emotional connection your readers have with your main character. If you decide to go with the first-person point of view, the stakes are high.

You can use the first-person POV to get the reader hooked right at the beginning of the story and get their hearts pumping faster as if they were inside the story.

However, if you use past tense , then the first person POV kind of reveals that the narrator lived to tell the tale.

If you’re not clever enough, that will ruin all your chances of ending with a dramatic twist because the reader already knows the narrator will survive the ordeals.

You can also utilize the third-person point of view, which works better for lengthier pieces.

6. Manipulate the Settings

You have to set the environment in such a way that your readers can start developing some phobia just from having a vivid image of the environment.

You can vividly describe enclosed spaces to evoke claustrophobic feelings from the reader. In horror movies, a simple creak of an upstairs floorboard in a lonely house is enough to spark fear into the audience. This can also work in a written story, just paint a picture of a dark and ghostly quiet house and suggest to the reader that there are some slow creaking sounds or that the chair on the porch is swaying but there is no one outside.

7. Read and Practice

It’s obvious that some people write better horror stories than others, and it helps to study those authors when learning how to write terror into your own stories.

Stephen King tops the list for most people, you can get one of his books and study how he writes his horror novels.

The goal is not to be a copycat but to get insights into horror story writing techniques.

After studying these best-selling authors, you can start practicing with story prompts. Writing prompts can expand your range of thinking and open up new avenues of imagination that you hadn’t thought of before.

8. Scare Them, Care About Them

You shouldn’t write only to scare your readers, you must write to make fans out of them. To do this, you need to give your character a life that your readers can relate to before you get to the “boo!” part.

And… use simple language and don’t try to be too clever with your jargon.

Spine-Chilling Horror Story Prompts

1. A boy goes missing in the middle of the night and his body is found floating in a river. Five years later, reports of sightings start flowing in, to the disgust of his parents because they want their son to rest in peace. Then all the people that reported seeing the boy begin mysteriously dying one by one.

2. A man makes a deal with the devil to bring back his parents who died in a car accident when he was five years old. The devil appears to have fulfilled his promise, but the parents end up murdering all the people close to the man.

3. A serial killer gets hold of a hacker’s laptop. The hacker had just hacked the security system of a house and the owners had just left for a convention abroad. Their son organizes a house party and invites a dozen of his friends to the party.

4. A man wakes up to find a creature with razor-sharp teeth and bloody claws seated on a chair in a dark corner of the room, waiting for him.

5. A member of a religious group on an excursion discovers that the priest is a murderous werewolf. He tries to secretly warn some members but they also turn out to be werewolves.

6. A boy in a small town accidentally enters a funeral home. While there, he finds two lifeless bodies of his neighbors. When he gets back home, he finds his neighbors sitting on the front porch, their gaze razor-focused on him. 

Ways to End a Horror Story

Evil gets vanquished… but….

Most horror stories that I have read or the movies I have seen don’t just want the villain to go out like sissy: they put up a very scary fight and they finally are conquered (dead and buried) and then there’s something that suggests that they aren’t really dead—their eyes open or hand shoots out of the grave just before the story ends.

Everyone’s dead, there’s total annihilation.

A horror story can also end with everyone dead and everything is destroyed. There isn’t a single surviving soul, but the good side has won. If you look at it from another perspective, this kind of ending also means that evil has won since evil almost always seeks the world’s destruction.

The Protagonist wins but has to sacrifice something

The hero vanquishes the monsters and restores peace and order. But…the hero has sacrificed something or someone. It may be his sanity or someone that he loves.

The hero uses some lesser evil to conquer the ultimate evil

In a desperate attempt to vanquish the evil haunting them, the main character(s) decide(s) to use some evil ways or make a deal with a less malevolent entity to conquer the bigger evil.

All hope is not lost

This is some sort of happy ending, where even though things seem pretty bad (i.e., the hero is hurt pretty bad or is dead), the reader is given some hope of the hero regaining his health or becoming a more powerful spirit after death. The evil is about to be vanquished or brought to justice.

Most Terrifying Horror Books

1. It – Stephen King

2. Pet Sematary – Stephen King

3. The House of Leaves – Mark Danielewski

Advice from Great Horror Writers

When you listen to great authors, you always get a few pointers on how to write spine-chilling and nightmarish horror stories. Here’s some quoted writing advice from accomplished horror authors.

“There’s no formula. I think you have to create a very close point of view. You have to be in the eyes of the narrator. Everything that happens, all the smells, all the sounds; then your reader starts to identify with that character and that’s what makes something really scary.”

“Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I’m writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.”

Stephen King

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. —Stephen King”

“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own has been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there.”

The thing I have learned about writing good horror stories is that you have to trap your readers. Whatever you do, make them feel like they’re part of the story—make them feel the urgency, the blood rush, the terror, and the relief at the end or the scariness of the last “hand popping out of the grave” scene.

And… you can only become a better horror story writer with a lot of practice.

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How to Write Horror — Horror Writing Tips for Fiction & Film

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S o, you want to learn how to write a good horror story? Whether you want to know how to write a horror movie or how to write a horror book, the four steps outlined in this guide will get you started on the appropriate course of action and help you to align your creative goals. Writing horror isn’t all that different from writing for other genres, but it does require the right mindset and a creepy destination to work towards. Before we jump into the first of our four steps, let’s begin with a primer.

How to write horror

Before you get started.

The steps outlined in this ‘how to write horror’ guide assume that you already have a grasp over the fundamentals of writing. If you do not yet understand the basic mechanics of prose, screenwriting , or storytelling, then you might not get everything you need out of this guide. Luckily, we have a litany of informative resources that can bring you up to speed on everything you need to know.

If you intend to tell the  horror story  you have in mind as a screenplay, then the best way to fast track your screenwriting education might be to read through some of the  best screenwriting books  or to enroll in one of the  best online screenwriting courses .

Our guide to writing great scenes  is another good place to start, and our  glossary of screenwriting vocabulary  is a great resource if you encounter any unfamiliar terminology. When you’re ready to start writing, you can get going for free in  StudioBinder’s screenwriting software .

Now, we’re ready to jump into step one of our how to write horror guide. But, be warned, if you don’t already have a basic story concept in mind, you should consider that Step Zero.

There’s no concrete way to generate story ideas, but you can always look to creative writing prompts  and  indie films to kickstart inspiration .

HOW TO WRITE A HORROR MOVIE

Step 1: research and study.

Writing horror often begins by consuming great horror . We look to the stories of the past when crafting the stories of the present. Someone who has never read a horror novel or seen a horror film is going to have a much harder time writing horror than someone who is a voracious consumer of horror stories. By watching and reading, you can pick up plenty of tips for writing scary stories.

Before writing your opening line, be sure to do your research. It can be worthwhile to explore all manner of horror media. But for the purposes of this step, it’s best to focus in on the type of material you wish to create.

If you want to learn how to write a horror novel, then read as many horror novels as you can get your hands on. Our list of the  greatest horror films  ever made is a good place to conduct your research if you plan to write a horror screenplay. You can also check out our rundown of  underrated horror films for even more research.

Here are tips on how to write horror from the master himself, Stephen King. And, while you're at it, might as well catch up on the best Stephen King movies and TV based on his work!

How to write good horror  •  Stephen King offers horror writing tips

It’s important to go beyond simply reading and watching horror and to begin to analyze the material. Drill down into why certain decisions were made by the writer and try to figure out why certain elements work or don’t work. It can often be worthwhile to explore material you consider bad as well as what you consider good, so you can learn what not to do.

Check out our analysis of Midsommar   below for an example of how you can break down and explore the horror films that inspire you. You can also download the Midsommar script as a PDF to analyze the writing directly. You should check out our Best Horror Scripts post for more iconic script PDFs.

How to Write Horror  •   Read Full Midsommar Script

When consuming material to learn how to write a horror story, pay particular attention to the pacing and structure of the stories you’re inspired by. For example, if the style you find yourself most drawn to is slow-burn horror, then you might want to aim for a much slower pace than average with your story as well, but the build-up will become even more important.

Horror story writing

Step 2: decide your type of horror.

So, you’ve decided you’re writing horror, congratulations, you’ve settled on a genre. Now, it’s time to pick your sub-genre (s) and to decide on the specific avenue of horror to explore. There are many horror sub-genres to choose from. Just take a look at our ultimate guide to movie genres for quick rundown. And, check out the video below to see horror sub-genres ranked.

Ranking subgenres for inspiration  •  Horror story writing

Keep in mind that genres and subgenres can be mixed and matched in a multitude of combinations. For example, The Witch blends together the horror and historical fiction genres. From Dusk Till Dawn fuses action, crime-thriller, and vampire elements. And Shaun of the Dead fuses the horror and comedy genres by way of the zombie subgenre.

Our video essay below offers insights into Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright’s creative process. Check out our ranking of Edgar Wright’s entire filmography if you want even more.

How Edgar Wright writes and directs his movies  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Step Two is also the time to decide on the specific avenue you will exploit when writing horror. By “avenue of horror,” we mean the primary source(s) of tension and scares. Witches? Zombies? Cosmic horror? Body Horror ? Social Horror? These are all different avenues that your horror story can take on, and just like with genres and sub-genres, mixing and matching is encouraged.

A horror story that exploits kills and gore as its avenue of horror will be written in a much different manner than one that focuses on a sense of creeping dread and leaves more to the viewer or reader’s imagination.

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Step 3: Mine your fears and phobias 

You have decided on your genre and your avenue of horror, now it’s time to get more specific and drill deeper. For Step Three, go beyond asking what makes a story scary and instead figure out what makes your story frightening.

Depending on what you chose in Step Two, this might already be baked into your sub-genre and avenue of horror. For example, the home invasion sub-genre by nature mines a very real phobia that many people share.

The best home invasion films

However, if you chose to go with the zombie subgenre for example, you may need to work a little harder to discover what it is about your story that will scare audiences. Zombies on their own certainly hold the potential to be frightening, but audience overexposure to them throughout the years has gone a long way to lessen the scary impact they once had.

For examples of how to do it right, check out our rundown of the best zombie films ever made . And, for a different yet equally effective take on the sub-genre, check out our list of the  best zombie comedies .

How to write a horror story  •  Exploit common phobias

The above video breaks down the statistics surrounding a number of phobias. One common piece of writerly wisdom is “write what you know.” When writing in the horror genre, we can tweak that advice to, “write what scares you.” Mine your own fears and phobias when crafting your horror story; there are sure to be others out there who get creeped out by the same things.

This is also the step where you should try to discover your X-factor. What is it that sets your story apart from similar horror stories? If the answer is “nothing really,” then it might be time to take your concept back to the drawing board.

How to write a horror story

Step 4: keep your audience in mind.

From this point on, you are ready to start writing your horror story. Much of the writing process will be carried out in the same way as you would write a story in any other genre. But there are a few extra considerations. Put all that research you did in step one to work and ensure that your prose or screenwriting is well balanced and doles out the scares at a good pace.

You will want to find a good middle ground between sacrificing story and character development and going too long without something to keep your audience creeped out.

Narrative pacing is important in every genre, but horror writers also need to worry about pacing their scares, similar to how someone writing an action film needs to deliberately pace out their big action sequences.

How to write a horror story  •  Keep pacing in mind

Decide on who your target audience is from the jump and keep them in mind while you write. There can be a significant difference between horror aimed at teens vs. horror aimed at a mature audience. In film, this can mean the difference between shooting for a PG-13 rating instead of an R rating.

In fiction, this decision might manifest as a plan to market directly toward the young-adult crowd. Horror aimed at children, like Frankenweenie or The Nightmare Before Christmas , is drastically different from other types of horror aimed at older audiences.

Use your target audience as a guiding star that informs all of your narrative decisions as you write. Now, it’s time to put everything you just learned about how to write good horror stories to use.

The Greatest Horror Movies Ever Made 

If you are stuck on step one and looking to find some inspiration, our list of the greatest horror films ever made is a great place to look. You are sure to find something to get your creative juices flowing within this lengthy list. Writing great horror starts with consuming great horror, coming up next.

Up Next: Best Horror Movies of All Time →

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Home / Book Writing / How to Write Horror: A Step-by-Step Guide for Authors

How to Write Horror: A Step-by-Step Guide for Authors

I was never much of a horror fan at first, but as I grew older, I realized that horror allows us to confront our deepest, darkest fears in a safe fictional setting, and it became far more interesting to me after that. 

My love for the genre eventually led me to try my own hand at writing horror stories (still unpublished). Over the years, I've learned a lot about the horror fiction craft through trial and error, advice from more experienced horror writers, and studying successful works in the genre. 

In this article, I want to share everything I've learned about writing horror in the hopes that it will help aspiring authors.

• What the horror genre is
• All the different subgenres
• What makes a good horror story
• Step-by-step tips for writing horror effectively
• The typical plot structure of most horror stories

Table of contents

• Types of Horror Stories
• What Makes a Good Horror Story?
• What Are Some Common Horror Tropes?
• 1. Read Plenty of Horror
• 2. The Setting Creates the Atmosphere
• 3. Mix Mortal Peril with Real-world Horror
• 4. Ask Yourself What Frightens You?
• 5. Flesh Out Your Characters
• 6. Ground it in Real Life
• 7. Personalize the Stakes
• 8. Happy Moments Increase the Tension
• 9. Preserve the Secrecy of the Antagonist
• 10. Jumpscares Do Not Make a Horror Story
• Act 1: Setting Up the Situation
• Act 2: Rising Tension
• Act 3: The Climax

What is the Horror Genre?

Horror is a genre intended to make the audience feel fear, dread, disgust and unease. 

Unlike thrillers which focus on suspense and mystery, horror aims to provoke visceral reactions by showing the disturbing and the macabre.

The horror genre has its roots in ancient folklore and myths about evil spirits, monsters, the afterlife, and the occult. Some of the earliest known stories with horror elements are Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Homer's Odyssey, and the English poem Beowulf. 

Gothic horror as a genre emerged in the late 18th century with the classic horror novels like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

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In the 20th century, horror fiction expanded into numerous subgenres:

• Supernatural horror – Stories featuring ghosts, demons, cursed objects, unexplained entities, and paranormal phenomena. Eg. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson.
• Monster horror – Tales focused on vicious monsters and creatures like vampires, werewolves, zombies, and aliens. Eg. Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
• Body horror/Splatterpunk – Graphic depictions of gore and mutilation of the body. Eg. The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker.
• Psychological horror – Terror arising from the mind, perception, and sanity of characters. Eg. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris.
• Survival horror – People trapped in an isolated setting trying to escape a terrifying threat. Eg. The Mist by Stephen King.
• Cosmic horror – Threats from malevolent cosmic entities beyond human comprehension. Eg. The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft.
• Slasher horror – Serial killers stalking and murdering victims in gruesome ways. Eg. Psycho by Robert Bloch.
• Paranormal horror – Uncanny events that contradict the laws of nature. Eg. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
• Zombie horror – Stories focused on zombies or zombie apocalypse scenarios. Eg. World War Z by Max Brooks.

Horror books certainly aren’t limited to these types of genre, but they are some of the most common.

Not all horror fiction works. Great horror stories have some common qualities that elevate them above mediocre attempts at the genre:

• Strong atmosphere and tone – The setting, choice of words, and imagery establishes a tense, creepy, and unsettling mood right from the start.
• Suspense and tension – Keeping the audience guessing about what might happen next. Using mystery and thrill to build suspense.
• Vulnerable characters – Having empathetic characters that the audience can relate to and worry for when danger approaches.
• Creative monsters/villains – Original and frightening antagonists that pose a credible threat without seeming silly or contrived.
• Blurring reality – Obscuring the line between the real and unreal to make the audience question what is actually happening.
• Slow reveal – Withholding just enough information to tease the audience and make them keep reading to get answers.
• Disturbing imagery – Visual descriptions intended to shock, repulse, and frighten, like gruesome death scenes.
• Themes of dread – Touching on universal human fears and phobias – darkness, pain, disease, isolation, madness, death, etc.
• Shocking twists – Surprising revelations that turn the story in an unexpected direction.

There is a reason why Stephen King is such a master of horror. When you read his book, you’ll notice that he hits almost all of these spot on.

Over the years, certain plot devices, archetypes and conventions have emerged as popular tropes within the broad scope of horror fiction:

• The haunted house – A house inhabited by ghosts, poltergeists, or other malevolent entities. Eg. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.
• Serial killers – Charismatic but deranged serial murderers with peculiar motives and modus operandi. Eg. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
• Cursed objects – Innocuous items that bring misfortune and harm to their owners. Eg. The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs.
• Man-eating monsters – Predatory creatures hunting humans as prey. Vampires, werewolves, demons, etc. Eg. The Howling by Gary Brandner.
• Evil children – Uncanny, sinister, or possessed kids. Eg. The Omen by David Seltzer.
• Zombies – Reanimated corpses hungering for living flesh. Eg. Zone One by Colson Whitehead.
• Torture devices – Elaborate contraptions used to torture victims. Eg. Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.
• Creepy small towns – Remote towns hiding dark secrets and sinister cults. Eg. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.
• Demonic possession – Loss of bodily control due to a demonic spirit. Eg. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty.
• Creepy basements – Dark, subterranean spaces hiding disturbing secrets or serving as gateways to the underworld.
• Mad scientists – Eccentric, amoral researchers carrying out unethical experiments. Eg. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
• Ancient curses – Malevolent supernatural forces punishing violations of taboo. Eg. The Mummy.
• Sinister cults – Secretive religious sects with sinister agendas and occult practices. Eg. The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft.
• Haunted asylums – Derelict psychiatric hospitals harboring tortured spirits of the dead.
• Ghost ships/vehicles – Phantom or possessed modes of transport carrying a deadly curse. Eg. The Fog by John Carpenter.
• Evil dolls/toys – Playthings possessed by wicked entities or springing to murderous life. Eg. Child's Play franchise.
• Eldritch abominations – Grotesque monstrosities that induce madness and doom. Eg. The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft.
• Ancient burial grounds – Tombs and burial sites harboring vengeful spirits and curses. Eg. Pet Sematary by Stephen King.

While tropes can be useful shorthand for conveying certain ideas, overusing them can make stories seem unoriginal and predictable. The best horror writers use tropes selectively and put their own spin on them.

11 Tips to Write Horror

Here are some tips to guide you in crafting captivating horror fiction:

As with any genre you want to write in, read lots of existing works in that style. Study how the masters of horror fiction like Stephen King, Clive Barker and Shirley Jackson create atmosphere, build tension, and deliver scares. 

Make notes on effective techniques you could incorporate into your own horror stories. Understanding what works will help you avoid bland clichés.

Establish an ominous mood from the very first page through your descriptions of the setting and location. Use sights, sounds, smells and other sensory details to make the place seem creepy and foreboding. 

Isolation – trapping characters someplace inaccessible – can heighten a feeling of vulnerability against supernatural or deranged threats. Make the setting itself feel like a character, interacting and affecting the characters in sinister ways.

While monsters can be scary, everyday real-world horrors resonate more profoundly. Stephen King often combines supernatural elements with psychological realism – dysfunctional families, abuse, addiction, grief – to ground the horror. 

The scariest stories feature threats that could plausibly exist in the real world, even if taken to fictional extremes. Readers find visceral, real-life horrors more affecting than fantastical monsters because they seem more likely to encounter them.

Think about your own deepest fears and phobias. What scares you in real life? Bringing personal dread into your horror writing will make it more intense. For example, if you have a fear of losing your mind, you can channel that into stories about characters going insane or losing their grip on reality. 

Draw upon your nightmares, both sleeping and waking, as inspiration to explore the dark corners of your psyche.

Weak character development can ruin an otherwise scary tale. The audience has to care what happens to the characters for the story to have impact. Take the time to flesh out distinct, relatable personalities. Give each character clear motivations , quirks, strengths and flaws. Make them seem like real people so that when you subject them to horrific ordeals, the audience worries if they will survive.

While horror often features supernatural threats, grounding stories in a believable real-world setting makes them resonate more deeply. Have your characters react in natural ways, with all the confusion, disbelief and denial actual people would exhibit. 

The mundane details of real life juxtaposed with the bizarre enhances the fright factor. Keeping supernatural elements to a minimum also gives your story a veneer of plausibility that augments the horror.

Generic horror tales are easy to shrug off, but when characters we care for are imperiled, we get invested in their predicament. Build up emotional connections between characters early on so that later we truly fear for them. 

Have threats target their vulnerabilities or personalities in some way. Personalized stakes make a horror story more intimate, raising the tension level.

While horror is often bleak, moments of hope, humor or tender character connections provide contrast that amplifies the darker elements of your story. After a traumatic event, show characters clinging to cherished memories or optimism to survive emotionally. 

Brief interludes where everything seems like it might be okay lull the reader into lowering their guard before you unleash the next shock or threat.

The greatest fear comes from the unknown. Give only hints about the nature and origin of supernatural entities or villains in your story. Keep their appearances brief and clouded in shadow. 

The less readers understand the threat, the more their imaginations will conjure something uniquely chilling. Allow the audience's mind to fill in the blanks with their own deepest dreads.

Cheap jump scares that briefly startle through loud sounds or sudden activity are not enough to carry a horror narrative. These should be used sparingly for occasional shock value. 

True horror comes from sustained atmosphere, engaging characters in peril, and tapping into primal fears. Unnerving psychological dread will stay with a reader long after a jump scare's momentary surprise fades. Don't rely on them as a crutch.

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Plot Structure of Most Horror

While not universally followed, many successful horror stories adhere to a three-act dramatic structure that does some of the following:

• The Hidden Monster – Hint at the existence of a sinister threat through ominous events and unexplained phenomenon. Keep the audience guessing.
• Introducing the Characters – Establish the characters, their relationships, and individual fears or weaknesses that can be exploited later. Make the audience care about them.
• The Inciting Incident – A events which initiates the problem and draws the characters into dangerous circumstances or the path of the threat. The point of no return.
• Meeting the Monster – The characters first come face-to-face with the threat, confirming its frightening nature or powers. Still keeps secrets for later.
• The Turning Point – An event that escalates the peril and leaves the characters vulnerable to the monster/threat at the halfway point. Raises the stakes.
• The Pursuit – The antagonist now relentlessly pursues the protagonists. Creates a constant sense of danger as the threat closes in.
• The First Failed Confrontation – The hero or heroes attempt to defeat the threat but are unable to for some reason. Increases desperation.
• All Is Lost – A low point where the characters seem totally helpless and all hope is lost. The threat will prevail.
• The Breakthrough – The heroes rally, resolve their inner turmoil, and discover a way they might vanquish the threat at the last possible moment.
• The Final Confrontation – The protagonists confront and do battle with the threat, either defeating it or failing nobly with consequences.
• The “Death” – The demise, usually of the threat itself. However, one or more characters may also perish for a melancholy resolution, or there is a psychological death of some kind.
• The Fallout – Wrap up the aftermath, showing how characters and the world at large were impacted and changed. Evil might still lurk, awaiting a sequel.

While there is more to a horror story than just these elements, this should hopefully allow you to get started writing your next horror story, and getting those words on the page.

Jason Hamilton

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

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• How-To Guides

How to Write a Horror Story in 12 Steps

Spooky times are on their way! In this post, you’ll learn how to write a horror story in 12 easy steps. From the very beginning to the very end, you’ll be a horror writer in no time. Writing a horror story is easy, provided you know how to do it in the right way.

A horror story is usually about a particular issue or theme. It might be about the horrible nature of life, the evil of humans, or the beast inside us. It might even be about fear, or about the various ways in which we face fear. The one thing that all horror stories have in common is that they are “stories of fear.”

The best horror stories are about fear, whether it’s fear of death, fear of disease, fear of the unknown, fear of loneliness, or fear of pain. The main problem with horror stories is that most people don’t like to be scared. Our minds prefer the familiar, the comfortable, and the easy. So how do we get around that?

The answer is that we have to tap into our inner horror. We have to get inside our minds and into our souls to write about horror. It’s not easy, but it’s not hard either. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you’ll be amazed at the results you can achieve.

10 Tips for Writing Horror Stories

Step 1: brainstorm some ideas, step 2: develop your idea, step 3: make a list of main characters, step 4: develop a horrific setting, step 5: outline the opening paragraph, step 6: plan the major climax, step 7: write a twisted ending , step 8: choose a scary writing style, step 9: write the first draft, step 10: edit and review your draft, step 11: choose a chilling book title , step 12: publish the book, how do you start a horror story, what are the 5 elements of a horror story, what makes a good horror story, how do you write in creepy writing, how do i make my character terrifying.

Before you begin writing a horror story, here are 8 tips to help you create the perfect, chilling tale:

• Make it realistic: Don’t be afraid to make the story feel real and genuine so that the reader doesn‘t get lost in the atmosphere of the book. Try to use real-life situations as the base of the story, and then you can add the gore afterwards.
• Include plot twists: The more twists you can add to the tale, and the more surprises that will occur, the stronger the plot. 
• Avoid stereotypical characters: Just because it’s horror doesn’t mean you have to have a serial or a cannibal in your story. Go beyond the norm with your characters – remember anyone can be a serial killer, especially the least suspected person!
• Pace yourself: Don’t just jump to the scariest moment in the beginning, slowly build up the suspense. Start by giving the reader hints of danger, and then bang when they least suspect bring in the gore.
• Play on common fears: Common fears that people face every day. Such as being alone in the dark, being chased by a monster, having a bad dream, etc. Fears are icky, but they can be made into something interesting if you play with them.
• Choose a writing style: There are many ways to write horror and some people find that they have an easier time in a journalistic style or in 1st person narrative. Think about what you’re most comfortable with and try it out.
• Increase the stakes: The best horror stories involve a sense of fear and dread, so make sure to increase the stakes as you go. If your main character is at a party, maybe there’s something bad lurking in the back room or someone is trying to kill them. Make sure there’s something at stake for your characters and don’t forget to give them something to do besides running away.
• Read popular horror stories: Horror can be a very dark genre, so you might want to check out other scary tales to get inspiration. For instance, Stephen King has written some of the most terrifying stories ever created and you might even learn a few things from them. 
• Pick a horror sub-genre: Horror is very broad and can be done in many different styles and genres. I recommend going for a sub-genre like Gothic Horror, Zombie Horror, or Psychological Horror. You may find that you are more comfortable in one of these areas than in others.
• Be imaginative: Your story should be as unique as possible so use your imagination and go crazy! Do not hold back when it comes to creativity, as this is how true horror is born.

How To Write a Horror Story in 12 Steps

Follow these 12 easy steps to create a spine-chilling story that will leave your readers in awe and fear.

Here’s a simple little trick that we can’t recommend enough: start with writing down all of the words and phrases that come to mind when you think about horror. Horror is much more than just scary stories; it’s about fear. So start thinking about the horror you see around you, and what keeps you up at night. The trick is to get into your mind, even if it doesn’t feel comfortable. Try listing your biggest fears, and all the things that make you feel scared. You can also check out this list of over 110 horror story prompts to get you started.

We also recommend keeping a nightmare journal  – Which is like a dream journal but filled with notes about your nightmares instead. After you had a really scary dream write down everything you remember from that dream. This can include what you saw, heard and felt during the dream. You can then use these notes as a source of inspiration for your horror story. 

Check out these Halloween writing prompts and Halloween picture prompts for more ideas.

What keeps you up at night? The evil monsters in the monsters movies? The epidemic of a deadly virus? A tragic unsolved crime? Whatever your issue is, it can be used to create a horror story that will have your readers sweating bullets. Take your ideas from the previous step and develop them into a truly horrific story idea. Once you have written down the basic idea, try to think about how that idea can be made scarier. 

For example, if you’re writing about a deadly disease, you could use the theme of death to make it scarier. Have the characters die in the story in a mutated sort of way or from some weird side effect that leads to death. There are plenty of ways to make the story more horrible:

• Try thinking about an ordinary situation that everyone goes through and add something horrific to it. The trick to making your story scary is to make it believable. In other words, you want to make your story as true to life as possible.
• Focus on some terrifying emotions, fear being the obvious one. But you can also think about crudeness, disgust, as well as anger, regret, paranoia and shock factor. 
• Add in some unnatural details, such as spaghetti turning into worms or blood coming out of solid, unliving objects.

Write down all of the main characters in the story. If you have more than one, give each character a distinct personality. Make sure that each character has a certain reason for their actions and be sure that they reflect their personality.

Whatever your horror is, you should probably have a main character that will be a part of the story. When you write the story, it’s going to be easier to create a tense atmosphere if you have a character to relate to. Also, you may want to make sure that you have a few supporting characters that you can add to the story. The supporting characters might also become the main characters in any sequels you plan on writing.

The other characters in the story should be the antagonists. These are the evil people or creatures that are keeping you up at night. They might be the killer, the ghost , the werewolf , the zombie, the villain, the monster , the demon, or the bad guy. Whatever the issue is, that’s what the antagonist will be in the story. They might start out as just an ordinary person, but they’ll end up being more evil than the main character.

Check out this guide on character development to help you develop a powerful character.

When writing a horror story, it’s very important that you get the setting right. Think about some scary places that you know of in real life or places that you’ve seen in your nightmares. You could also link your main setting choice to a common fear explored in your story. For example, if the core concept of your horror story is related to the fear of heights, then the main setting may be a high-rise building that’s filled with monsters. 

Other common horror story settings may include a haunted house , a creepy old mansion, graveyards and even quiet suburban towns. Whatever your choice of setting, try to write a detailed description of the main setting in this step. Think about the appearance of the location, the weather, the feeling someone has when standing in this location, as well as what kind of people live here, along with the beliefs they hold.

Interested in creating a whole new world for your horror story? Check this master list of over 100 world-building questions .

The opening paragraph will be the first thing your readers see. It should be a teaser that sets the tone for the story. In other words, the first paragraph should be intriguing enough to make your readers want to keep reading. You should ideally include the main character’s name, the setting, the antagonist, the fear of the story, and the main character’s problem. 

If the story is about a haunted house, then the outline of the opening paragraph could say something like this:

The house is empty. It has been for a long time. It’s been vacant for years and years. It sits in the middle of a quiet, suburban neighbourhood. The grass is green and the trees are tall. The neighbourhood is quiet, but the town is not as quiet as everyone thinks. There are whispers, rumours, and stories. But the truth is, no one has ever seen or heard anything unusual here. Not until Wendy Williams and her daughter moved in. 

During this step, it is important to try to write an opening that gives the reader a taste of the entire story. But of course, don’t give too much away – Just a hint of fear will do! Your goal here is to have the reader wanting more. 

See this list of over 150 story starters to help you get started with your spooky tale.

This step is basically the big bang. It’s where your main character goes head-to-head with the antagonist in the story or has to face their greatest fear. It’s also when your main character learns the truth about the antagonist. The goal of this step is to keep your readers on the edge of their seats. 

When writing the climax, think about what will happen, who will be in danger, and what the outcome will be. If you’re struggling with the climax, then you should start with a smaller problem and work your way up to the big one. For example, you could start with a little bit of trouble with a character, such as a bad dream or the main character getting hurt. This will get your readers involved in the story. You may find that once you start writing, you’ll come up with a more complicated problem that your main character will have to solve.

Here’s an example of what a potential climax scene sounds like in a horror story:

The sound of footsteps is heard coming down the stairs. The footsteps are too heavy, and they seem to be coming from the basement. The door to the basement creaks open. Then a face is seen in the door frame. It’s a face with large, red eyes, and it’s full of hate.

In horror stories, the twist ending is almost always a shock reveal of some kind. Whether the true murderer is revealed, or the identity of the antagonist is revealed, it should always be a surprise. 

There are several ways to write a twist ending, but you’ll probably want to start with a twist that’s a little more obvious. You could reveal who the antagonist really is, or even what the main character has been hiding. Or you could have the main character learn some shocking information that sends them in a completely different direction. 

The unique thing about the horror genre is that even after the mystery or problem is solved, it’s not always 100% solved. There’s always some darkness lurking somewhere. Was he really the murderer? Maybe there’s more than one monster? Give this final hint of darkness to keep your readers second-guessing even after the book is over. Now that’s where the true horror lies!

Of course, horror stories are written in a more darker and dramatic style compared to other genres. But there’s more to horror writing than just using dark words and descriptions of gory scenes. In this step, you want to think about the actual writing of your horror style. Will it be written in the first person, second person or third? Do you want to take a more journalistic approach where you report horrific events? Or will you take a more narrative approach, where the reader is on the outside looking in?

In our opinion, a horror story written in the first person has a much more powerful effect. There’s something about having the perspective of the main character that makes them more vulnerable. There’s also something about being told a story by another character that makes the story more real.

While the third person is great for taking the reader through a story, it doesn’t allow for the depth of emotion that can be found in the first person. If you choose to write in the third person, then you’ll want to stick with the voice of an objective narrator who is reporting on the events of the story. 

Either way, you’ll want to try to avoid too many descriptions of gruesome scenes. You want to keep the focus on your main character’s emotions and how they feel, and their problem. 

Finally, it’s time to start writing your story! Hopefully, after all these steps, you now have a rough outline for your story. But even if you don’t, just start writing! The first draft is usually the most important one. So even if you don’t have a complete outline, get started on your story. Just start writing and don’t worry about anything else! You might also want to read this post on how to outline a book for more guidance.

While writing your draft, you’ll want to keep these things in mind:

• Make sure your story is believable to a certain extent. Of course, you might think that vampires aren’t real – But make them real for your readers! This is the most important thing. If your story is impossible or unbelievable, then no one will want to read it.
• Avoid using clichés. These are words or phrases that are overused in stories and don’t really add anything to your story.
• Use active voice instead of passive voice. Passive voice is when a sentence starts with “someone” or “something”. Active voice is when the sentence starts with “I” or “we”.
• Use short sentences and paragraphs. Long sentences make it difficult to read, and paragraphs look heavy. 
• If you’re struggling to get anything written down, then start with the easiest or shortest scenes first. You can always come back to the more complicated areas of your story later when you’re ready. 

And finally, have fun with it! Writing is supposed to be a fun hobby, so don’t take yourself too seriously! 

The hard part is done, now you’re ready to start editing your story! Start by reading the story to yourself a couple of times. Each time you read your story highlight areas that you are unsure of, or would like to improve. At the same time look out for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and sentences that sound a bit off. Once you’re done with this review, you can go back and make the relevant edits to your story.

Next, you’ll want to gather some feedback. This is where you’ll want to have a second or third person read your story. It’s not a good idea to let one person read your draft, as they’ll be biased towards what they like. So get a few different people to read your story, and make sure they have a different perspective. They can be family members, teachers, or even a friend that’s not familiar with your writing style. 

When asking for feedback, you can ask the following questions:

• What are the most important parts of the story?
• Are there any parts of the story that don’t make sense or are confusing?
• What did you like most about the story?
• Can you think of anything that could be improved?
• Did you like the main character?

Once you have the feedback, you can go back and make the changes. It’s important to make the edits, but don’t obsess over it. In the end, you want to make the story the best that it can be. And by doing this, you’ll be on your way to writing a great horror story! 

It’s time to choose a book title. This is a very important part of a horror story. Not only does a good title help to give your story an identity, but it also helps to tell the reader what kind of story they’re about to read. The title should have a great hook. It should be intriguing and a little bit scary. If you’re struggling to think of a great book title, then you can try to think about what you’d like to read. Would you like to read a book that scares you? Or would you rather read a book that’s about someone’s struggles? 

If we look at some popular horror book titles, we can see that most of them are quite descriptive:

• The Woman in Black
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula
• The Haunting of Aveline Jones
• The Haunting of Hill House
• The Graveyard Book

Essentially, they either describe the antagonist of the story or the main setting in the story. Based on this try to summarise your horror story in as little as 3 to 5 words. Think about the main setting or the main villain/monster of your tale and come up with some book title ideas. If you’re still struggling, check out this horror book title generator for some more interesting ideas. 

An important thing to note here is that you should make sure that your book title is not already in use or taken by another author. Try doing a quick Google search or a search on Amazon to see if your title is available for the taking! 

Your book is now finished! You’ve written the first draft, edited it, gathered feedback, and now it’s time to publish it! There are many ways to publish your book. The most popular method is to publish it on Amazon as a self-published author. You can also work with a professional publisher to get your book to market.

Remember that if you’re a new writer, then it’s not a good idea to start by publishing your book on Amazon. It’s better to start slow and work your way up. You don’t want to rush your writing and end up with a book full of mistakes! Start by publishing your book using a free tool like the Imagine Forest story creator , then later work your way up to publishing on Amazon. 

That’s it! Now you should be ready to write your own horror story! Give it a go and see what you can come up with!

Frequently Asked Questions

There are a number of ways to start writing a horror story:

• Focus on your own fears. Start by listing your fears and develop your story idea from there. 
• Introduce the character. You can describe your main character in the first few scenes. Make them as normal, and relatable as possible
• Describe a setting. If the setting is key to your story, then describe every inch of it. Make your readers feel like they are right there with you. 
• Start with some action. This could be a bloody murder, someone screaming and running or anything else that makes the reader feel uncomfortable.
• Picture a harmonious place. You can describe a calm and happy place. Somewhere taken from a romantic rom-com type story or a happy family movie, which all suddenly changes.
• Start at the end. Rewrite your potential ending as the beginning, and then work your way backwards. 

The 5 elements of horror include Character, Setting, Action, Horror, and Resolution. All these elements are crucial in developing a gruesome horror story.

See our guide on the 5 elements of story-telling for more information.

A good horror story has fear at its core. The reader must be scared as they read the story. If not then you missed something important in your novel. A good horror story must be scary, but it should also have an element of realism to it. The story should include relatable main characters, a scary antagonist, a creepy setting and of course a shocking reveal at the end. 

Your first step is to try to think about the creepiness of the setting. Is it a dark and scary place? Is it full of secrets? If it is, then you have a good place to start. Try to be very detailed, and specific when describing the setting. Describe the blood on the wall as it drips down, or the lock on the door that won’t turn. Make the reader feel as if they are right there. Use descriptive words and metaphors to bring your gory details to life.

To make your character as terrifying as possible, you could try the following techniques:

• Make your character an outcast. They don’t fit in with the main group of characters and can’t be trusted.
• Give them a story to tell. A dark and bloody past.
• Make them a loner. They can’t trust anyone else and have no friends.
• Make them a survivor. The main character of your story has been through a lot and can’t be stopped.
• Give the character an important title. Someone who is important in a society that has deadly plans. You can’t trust them, but have no choice but to follow their rules.

Did you find this guide on how to write a horror story useful? Let us know in the comments below.

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Home » Blog » 132 Best Horror Writing Prompts and Scary Story Ideas

132 Best Horror Writing Prompts and Scary Story Ideas

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Horror stories send shivers down our spines. They are gruesome, shocking, and chilling. Scary stories are meant to horrify us, and there are many ways to make a powerful impact on the reader. The element of surprise is crucial to make the readers’ blood freeze.

There are different types of horror stories. They often deal with terrible murders, supernatural powers, psychopaths, the frightening human psychology and much more.

Although many horror writing prompts and scary ideas have been written, the following 132 horror writing prompts can spark great creativity in aspiring writers of the horror genre.

• A family is on a camping trip. The parents are walking with their two children, a daughter and a son. The little boy trips and falls into a dark river. His father jumps to rescue him. Somehow the boy manages to swim to the surface. The father is nowhere to be found. When the mother gets a hold of the boy, she can’t recognize him. She tries holding him, but the moment she touches his wet body, her hands start burning.
• A young girl goes missing in a nearby forest. The whole town is searching for her. Her parents find her sitting and smiling in a cave. Her eyes are completely white.
• A woman starts watching a movie late at night. The movie seems all too familiar. Finally, she realizes that it is a movie about her own life and that she might be already dead.
• A house finds a way to kill every visitor on its premises.
• A child makes her own Halloween mask. She glues a lock of her own hair on her mask. The mask comes to life and threatens to take over the girl’s body.
• While digging in her backyard, an old lady discovers an iron chest. She opens it and finds a pile of old photographs of her ancestors. All of them are missing their left eye.
• A priest is trying to punish God for the death of his sister. He is getting ready to burn down the church, when supernatural forces start to torture him.
• Every year a woman goes to the cemetery where her husband is buried, and when she looks at his tombstone, she notices her own name carved in it.
• A woman puts a lipstick on in the bathroom when she hears a demonic voice saying to her: “Can’t you see?”
•  A mysterious child psychiatrist promises parents to cure their children if they give him a vile of their blood.
•  A group of 10 friends decide to rent an old English castle for the weekend. The ghosts are disturbed and seek their pound of flesh.
•  A photographer travels to an Indian reservation for his next project. He starts taking photos, but there are only shadows in the places where people should have been.
•  A young married couple decide to renovate an abandoned psychiatric hospital and turn it into a hotel. Everything is going well until their first guest arrives.
•  Three sisters are reunited for the reading of their grandmother’s will. She has left them a diamond necklace, but they have to fight psychologically and physically for it.
•  An old woman pretends to be lost and asks young women to help her get home. She offers them a cup of tea and drugs them. When the women wake up, they are chained in the basement. The old woman gives them tools and boards, so that they can build their own coffin. If they refuse, she inflicts pain on them.
•  A mysterious stranger with a glass eye and a cane commissions a portrait. When the portrait is finished, the painter turns into stone.
•  A little girl’s sister lives with a monster in the closet. She exits the closet on her sister’s birthday.
•  The demons under the nuclear plant get released after an explosion and start terrorizing the families of people who work at the plant.
•  A woman gets trapped in a parallel universe where every day she dies horribly in different ways.
•  A cannibal hunts for pure children’s hearts hoping they will bring him eternal youth.
•  A politician hides his weird sister in the attic. She’s had her supernatural powers after their family home burned to the ground.
•  A 16-year-old girl wakes up on a stone-cold table surrounded with people in black and white masks. They are chant and start leaning forward. All of them carry carved knives.
•  A boy hears screaming from his parents’ bedroom. He jumps and hides under his bed. Suddenly, everything becomes quiet. A man wearing army boots enters his room. He drags the boy from under the bed and says: “We’ve been searching for you for 200 years.”
• A husband and his wife regain consciousness only to see each other tied to chairs, facing each other. A voice on the radio tells them to kill the other, otherwise, they would kill their children.
•  A mysterious altruist gives a kidney to a young man, who has potential to become a leading neuroscientist. After a year, the altruist kills the young man because he proves to be an unworthy organ recipient. The following year, the mysterious altruist is a bone marrow donor.
•  A group of friends play truth or dare. Suddenly, all the lights go out and in those ten seconds of darkness, one of the group is killed.
•  A young man becomes obsessed with an old man living opposite his building. The young man is convinced that the old man is the embodiment of the devil, and starts planning the murder.
•  Concerned and grieving parents bring their 8-year-old son to a psychiatrist after their daughter’s accident, believing that the boy had something to do with her death.
•  A woman is admitted to a hospital after a car crash. She wakes up after three months in a coma, but when she tries to speak, she can’t utter a sound. When the nurse sees that she is awake, she calls a doctor. The last thing the woman remembers is hearing the doctor say: “Today is your lucky day,” right before four men in black robes take her out.
•  A small-town cop becomes obsessed with a cold case from 1978. Three girls went missing after school, and nobody has seen them since. Then one day, in 2008, three girls with the same names as those in 1978 go missing. The case is reopened.
•  After his parents’ death a cardiologist returns to his small town where everyone seems to lead a perfect life. This causes a disturbance in the idyllic life of the people since none of them has a heart. 
•  A man is kidnapped from his apartment on midnight and brought on a large private estate. He is told that he will be a human pray and that ten hunters with guns will go after him. He is given a 5-minute head start.
•  A strange woman in labor is admitted in the local hospital. Nobody seems to recognize her. She screams in agony. A black smoke fills in the entire hospital. After that, nobody is the same. A dark lord is born.
•  A young girl finds her grandmother’s gold in a chest in the attic, although she isn’t allowed to go there by herself. She touches the gold and she starts seeing horrible visions involving her grandmother when she was younger.
•  An anthropologist studies rituals involving human sacrifice. She slowly begins to accept them as necessary.
•  A family of four moves in an old Victorian home. As they restore it, more and more people die suddenly and violently.
•  An old nurse has lived next door to a family that doesn’t get older. Their son has remained to be a seven-year-old boy.
•  A girl wakes up in her dorm and sees that everybody sleepwalks in the same direction. She acts as if she has the same condition and follows them to an underground black pool where everybody jumps.
•  A bride returns to the same bridge for 50 years waiting for her husband-to-be to get out of the water.
•  An old woman locks girls’ personalities in a forever growing collection of porcelain dolls. Parents of the missing girls are in agony and they finally suspect something. When they tell the police, their claims are instantly dismissed.
•  A chemistry teacher disfigures teenagers who remind him of his childhood bullies. One day, he learns that the new student in his school is the son of his childhood’s archenemy.
•  A girl starts digging tiny holes in her backyard. When her mother asks her what she is doing, the girl answers: “Mr. Phantom told me to bury my dolls tonight. Tomorrow night I am going to bury our dog. And then, you, mother.”
•  Twin brothers were kidnapped and returned the next day. They claim that they can’t remember anything. The following night, twin sisters disappear.
•  A boy has a very realistic dream about an impending doom, but nobody believes him until during a storm all the birds fall dead on the ground.
•  Room 206 is believed to be haunted, so hotel guests never stay in it. One day, an old woman arrives at the hotel and asks for the key to room 206. She says that she was born there.
•  A genius scientist tries to extract his wife’s consciousness from her lifeless body and insert it into an imprisoned woman who looks just like his wife.
•  Two distinguished scientists develop a new type of virus that attacks their brains and turns them into killing machines.
•  A woman steps out of her house only to find four of her neighbors dead at her doorstep. Little does she know that she isn’t supposed to call the police.
•  A bachelor’s party ends with two dead people in the pool. Both of them are missing their eyes.
•  A young woman wearing a black dress is holding a knife in her hand and threatening to kill a frightened man. She is terrified because she does not want to kill anybody, but her body refuses to obey her mind.
•  A strange religious group starts performing a ritual on a playground. The children’s hearts stop beating.
•  A woman discovers that her niece has done some horrible crimes, so she decides to poison her. Both of them take the poison, but only the aunt dies.
•  A man encounters death on his way to work. He can ask three questions before he dies. He makes a quick decision.
•  An older brother kills his baby sister because he wants to be an only child. When he learns that his mother is pregnant again, he decides to punish her.
•  A husband and his wife move to a new apartment. After a week, both of them kill themselves. They leave a note saying: “Never again.”
•  A man is trying to open a time portal so that he could kill his parents before he is ever conceived.
•  A famous conductor imprisons a pianist from the orchestra and makes him play the piano while he tortures other victims, also musicians. Every time the pianist makes a mistake, the conductor cuts of a finger from his victims.
•  A popular French chef is invited by a mysterious Japanese sushi master for dinner. A powerful potion makes the French chef fall asleep. He wakes up horrified to learn that he is kept on a human farm, in a cage.
•  A nuclear blast turns animals into blood-thirsty monsters.
•  A mysterious bug creeps under people’s skins and turns them into the worst version of themselves.
•  A kidnapper makes his victims torture each other for his sheer pleasure.
•  Four friends are invited to spend the afternoon in an escape room. A man’s voice tells them that they have won a prize. They happily accept and enter the escape room. They soon realize that the room was designed to reflect their worst nightmares.
•  Two sisters have been given names from the Book of the Dead. Their fates have been sealed, so when they turn 21, dark forces are sent to bring them to the underground.
•  A mother-to-be starts feeling severe pain in her stomach every time she touches a Bible. Despite the fear for her own life, she starts reading the New Testament out loud.
•  A literature professor discovers an old manuscript in the college library. He opens it in his study and suddenly a black raven flies through the window.
•  You are the Ruler of a dystopian society. You kill every time your control is threatened.
•  You are an intelligent robot who shows no mercy to humanity.
•  You are a promising researcher who discovers that all the notorious dictators have been cloned.
•  A nomad meets a fakir who tells him that he would bring agony to dozens of people unless he kills himself before he transforms into a monster.
•  A most prominent member of a sect goes to animal shelters to find food for the dark forces.
•  A man hires unethical doctors to help him experience clinical death and then bring him back to life after a minute. Little does he know that one minute of death feels like an eternity full of horrors.
•  You travel home to visit your parents for the holidays. Everything seems normal until you realize that demons have taken over their consciousness.
•  A mysterious woman moves into your apartment building. One by one, all of the tenants start hallucinating that monsters chase them and jump into their own deaths.
•  Divorced parents are kidnapped together with their son. Both of the parents have been given poison, but there is only one antidote. The boy needs to decide which parent gets to be saved. He has 30 seconds to make that decision.
•  A patient with a multiple-personality disorder tells you that you are one of six characters.
•  You wake up in bed that is a blood-bath.
•  The Government abducts children with genius IQ and trains them to fight the horrors in Area 51.
•   A woman who has just given birth at her home is told that the baby is predestined to become the leader of the greatest demonic order in the country.
•  A man signs a document with his blood to relinquish his body to a sect.
•  A woman enters a sacred cave in India and disappears for good.
•  A man opens his eyes in the middle of his autopsy while the coroner is holding his heart.
•  You look outside the windows in your house only to see that the view has changed and there is black fog surrounding you.
•  The gargoyles from the Notre Dame have come to life and they start terrorizing Paris.
•  Somebody rings your doorbell. You open the door and a frightened girl with bloody hands is standing at your doorstep. “You’re late,” you reprimand her.
•  You wake up in the middle of the night after a frightful nightmare, so you go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. You turn on the light and a person looking like your identical twin is grinning and pointing a knife at you.
•  A renowned book editor receives a manuscript elegantly written by hand. The title grabs her attention and she continues reading page after page. When she finishes, the manuscript spontaneously starts burning, and the editor is cursed forever.
•  The last thing you remember before losing consciousness is fighting a shady Uber driver.
•  You find yourself in a cage in the middle of a forest and black mythological harpies hovering above the cage.
•  A woman wants to quit smoking, so she visits a therapist who is supposed to help her with the use of hypnosis. She goes under and when she wakes up, she feels like a born killer.
•  Five hikers get stranded during a horrible storm. One of them kills the weakest and starts burning his body.
•  A mother goes in the nursery to check up on the baby and discovers that the baby is missing and, in her place, there is a baby doll.
•  A killer is willing to pay a large sum of money to the family of a volunteering victim. A cancer patient contacts the killer. The killer ends up dead.
•  The sacred river in a remote Asian village fills up with blood. The last time that happened, all the children in the village died.
•  A tall, dark, and handsome stranger invites a blind woman for a romantic date in his botanical garden. The garden is full of black roses in which women’s souls have been trapped. He tells her that she will stay forever with him in his garden.
•  A frightened man is trying to lead a werewolf into a trap and kill him with the last silver bullet.
•  An architect designs houses for the rich and famous. What he doesn’t show them is that he always leaves room for a secret passageway to their bedrooms, where they are the most vulnerable.
•  A man’s DNA was found on a horrible crime scene and he has been charged with murder in the first degree. He adamantly negates any involvement in the crime that has been committed. What he doesn’t know is that he had a twin brother who died at birth.
•  Every passenger on the Orient Express dies in a different, and equally mysterious way.  
•  A magician needs a volunteer from the audience in order to demonstrate a trick involving sawing a person in half. A beautiful woman steps on the stage. The magician makes her fall asleep, and then he performs the trick. In the end, he disappears. People in the audience start panicking when they notice the blood dripping from the table. The magician is nowhere to be found. The woman is dead.
• A mother discovers that her bright son is not human.
• Specters keep terrorizing patients in a psychiatric hospital, but nobody believes them.
• A man’s mind is locked into an immovable body. This person is being tortured by a psychopath who kills his family members in front of him, knowing that he is in agony and can’t do anything to save them.
• A bride-to-be receives a DVD via mail from an unknown sender. She plays the video and disgusted watches a pagan ritual. The people are wearing masks, but she recognizes the voice of her husband-to-be.
• A man turns himself to the police although he hasn’t broken the law. He begs them to put him in prison because he had a premonition that he would become a serial killer.
• Jack the Ripper is actually a woman who brutally kills prostitutes because her own mother was a prostitute.
• A ticking noise wakes her up. It’s a bomb, and she has only four minutes to do something about it.
• After a horrible car crash, a walking skeleton emerges from the explosion.
• A world-famous violinist virtuoso uses music to summon dark forces.
• A philosopher is trying to outwit Death in order to be granted immortality. He doesn’t know that Death already knows the outcome of this conversation.
• A beautiful, but superficial woman promises a demon to give him her virginity in exchange for immortality. Once the demon granted her wish, she refused to fulfill her end of the deal. The demon retaliated by making her immortal, but not eternally youthful.
• A voice starts chanting spells every time somebody wears the gold necklace from Damask.
• Three teenagers beat up a homeless man. The next day all of them go missing.
• Thirteen tourists from Poland visit Trakai Island Castle in Vilnius. Their bodies are found washed up the next morning. They are wearing medieval clothes.
• A group of extremists ambush the vehicle in which a head of a terrorist cell is transported and rescue him. They go after anybody who was involved in his incarceration.
• A hitman is hired to kill a potential heart donor.
• A man is attacked by the neighbor’s dog while trying to bury his wife alive.
• A woman disappears from her home without a trace. He husband reports her missing. The police start to suspect the husband when they retrieve some deleted messages.
• After moving to a new house all the family members have the same nightmares. Slowly they realize that they might be more than nightmares.
• A psychopath is drugging his wife, pushing her to commit a suicide so that he could collect the life insurance.
• A woman loses her eyesight overnight. Instead, she starts having premonitions.
• A vampire prefers albino children.
• A man commits murders at night and relives the agony of his victims during the day.
• A black horse carriage stops in front of your house. A hand wearing a black glove make an inviting gesture. Mesmerized, you decide to enter the carriage.
• Demons rejuvenate by eating kind people’s hearts.
• People are horrified to find all of the graves dug out the morning after Halloween.
• Men start jumping off building and bridges after hearing a mysterious song.
• A voice in your head tells you to stop listening to the other voices. They were not real.
• A severed head is hanging from a bridge with a message written in the victim’s blood.
• A delusional man brings his screaming children to a chasm.
• A 30-year-old woman learns that a baby with the same name as her died at the local hospital 30 years ago.
• A vampire donates his blood so that a child with special brain powers can receive it.
• A teenager is determined to escape his kidnapper by manipulating him into drinking poison. He doesn’t stop there.

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How to Start a Horror Story

Last Updated: March 18, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Lucy V. Hay . Lucy V. Hay is a Professional Writer based in London, England. With over 20 years of industry experience, Lucy is an author, script editor, and award-winning blogger who helps other writers through writing workshops, courses, and her blog Bang2Write. Lucy is the producer of two British thrillers, and Bang2Write has appeared in the Top 100 round-ups for Writer’s Digest & The Write Life and is a UK Blog Awards Finalist and Feedspot’s #1 Screenwriting blog in the UK. She received a B.A. in Scriptwriting for Film & Television from Bournemouth University. There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 182,658 times.

Writing your own horror story can be a fun personal project or an interesting assignment for a class. Perhaps one of the more challenging elements of the horror story is the beginning of the story, or the opening lines. You can start your own horror story by first creating a story idea and crafting a strong beginning. You should then revise your beginning pages so they fit with the rest of the story and are as engaging as possible.

Creating a Story Idea

• Use your fear as material for a story about something scary or revolting. Consider how you would react as a character if you were forced to confront these fears.
• Another option is to ask family, friends, and partners what scares or revolts them the most. You can then use their fears as an idea for your story.

• For example, maybe you come across a severed ear during your morning stroll in the park or perhaps a vegetable you are cutting up for dinner turns into a finger or a tentacle. Get creative and consider how you can skew or twist around a situation that seems commonplace.

• Consider a confined space that scares you or frightens you. Ask yourself where you would dread or fear being trapped in the most.
• Maybe you trap your character in a confined space like a coffin, a cold dank cellar, an abandoned police station, an island or an abandoned city. Trapping your characters in a scary setting will introduce fear into the story right away and create immediate tension and suspense.

• The character's age and occupation
• The character's marital status or relationship status
• The character's view the world (cynical, skeptical, anxious, happy-go-lucky, satisfied, settled)
• Any specific or unique physical details, such as a physical trait like a certain hairstyle, a scar, or a certain style of dress
• The character's speech, dialect, or language spoken around others

• Making your character experience an intense shock, like the death of a loved one or the loss of a job, can also create a conflict for your character. This can then lead the character to make decisions they would not make if they were not in shock or dealing with the aftershock of a major event.
• You can also give your main character a dose of paranoia, or a sense that something is not quite right. This will make the character suspicious and view things from a skewed perspective. This is also an easy way to help set up your protagonist's relationship with other characters. Paranoia is also great at unnerving your reader and making them also doubt their understanding of the events happening in the story.
• Another option is to give your main character a sense of dread or a feeling that something bad is going to happen. Dread can help to build tension in the story and keep the reader on edge.

• You may use a plot diagram to create the outline. The plot diagram will have six distinct sections, forming the shape of a triangle, with the climax at the top of the triangle. The six sections are: the set up, the inciting incident, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution.
• You can also use the snowflake method to create the outline. You will do this by creating a one sentence summary of the plot, followed by a one paragraph summary of the plot, and then a spreadsheet of scenes.

Crafting a Strong Beginning

• For example, you may decide to write a story about your fear of velcro, set in a dystopian world. You may have the following opening line: “Sara tried to sit still while the men tightened the velcro straps around her wrists, squeezing her eyes shut to block out the terrifying sound.”
• This opening line introduces the main character, Sara, and places her in a scene where she is experiencing fear and discomfort. It also raises questions in the reader’s mind, such as who are “the men” and why is Sara being strapped down? These questions will keep your reader engaged and willing to keep turning the page.

• Try to place your main character in a scene where they are in distress or unsettled in some way. This will introduce the horror element of the story right away.
• For example, you may open your story with a scene where your main character is being strapped into a device. You may then describe how it feels for your character to be in the device and her thought process of trying to escape the device while her captors try to keep her strapped down.

• For example, you may try to include gory details like blood, guts, mucus, brain matter, or saliva in the first paragraph of your story. Try to use the gory details sparingly and a little at a time so the story does not feel cliche or familiar. That way, when you do include some gore, it's more impactful for your reader.

• For example, you may have a main character who is trying to get rid of a ghost in her home. This could be the main conflict that you introduce in the story right away. The rest of the story could then be about her attempt to get rid of the ghost in her house without getting hurt or harming anyone in her family.
• Another common overarching conflict is the theme of survival, wherein your character must face a terrifying situation that threatens their life if they cannot escape it.
• If you decide to withhold the conflict from the reader until later in the story, you should have a good reason for doing this. Withholding information should only be done intentionally and for the benefit of the story, as your reader may get confused or lost without this information.

• For example, rather than start your story with the line: “The straps are cold on Sara’s skin as the men strap her into the chair," which is passive and confusing, you may start with: “Sara feels the straps, cold and metal, on her skin as the men hold her down in the chair.” The second sentence uses the active voice and places the subject of the sentence,“Sara," next to the verb in the sentence, “feels.”
• Using the active voice does not mean you are limited to only using first person, present for your point of view. You can still use the active voice in the past tense, using third person or second person.

• The beginning of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe: “True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” [11] X Research source The opening lines tell the reader right away that the narrator is unsettled, very nervous, and possibly mad. It is a great opening that puts the reader on edge right away and prepares them for an unsettling story.
• The beginning of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates: “Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right.” [12] X Research source The beginning lines are deceptively simple but they introduce the main character, provide her young age and gender, and characterize the main character as possibly vain and naive. These lines prepare the reader for a story about the main character that is flawed and possibly susceptible to outside influence.
• The beginning of 1984 by George Orwell: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” [13] X Research source This beginning line is well known and admired for its ability to cram all the craft elements of the story in one sentence. The reader is grounded in setting and set up with an unsettling image, a day that is bright and cold. The clocks striking thirteen also feel like a bad omen and sign of misfortune to come.

Revising the Beginning

• You may also read the opening lines out loud to a trusted friend or peer to get a second opinion. Ask your listener if they find the story creepy, disturbing, or horrifying. Be willing to take constructive criticism and feedback about the opening, as getting a second viewpoint on the beginning can make it stronger.

• You should consider if the beginning section flows well with the rest of the story. You should also adjust the beginning to reflect any changes to your character or your setting that you made later on in the story. You want your beginning to feel like a natural start to the rest of the story.

• Make sure the character voice in the beginning section matches the character voice in the rest of the story. You want a consistent character voice throughout your story so it feels cohesive.

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ Lucy V. Hay. Professional Writer. Expert Interview. 16 July 2019.
• ↑ https://referenceforwriters.tumblr.com/post/60572428904/7-helpful-tips-to-writing-good-horror-stories
• ↑ https://horrortree.com/how-do-you-start-a-chapter-in-a-horror-novel-10-examples/
• ↑ https://www.freelancewriting.com/creative-writing/how-to-write-memorable-distinct-characters/
• ↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/10-ways-to-start-your-story-better
• ↑ https://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/grammar-and-syntax/active-and-passive-verbs/
• ↑ https://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/POE/telltale.html
• ↑ https://celestialtimepiece.com/2015/01/21/where-are-you-going-where-have-you-been/
• ↑ https://www.dailywritingtips.com/20-great-opening-lines-to-inspire-the-start-of-your-story/

About This Article

Before you start writing your horror story, read the beginnings of other well-known horror stories, like “The Tell-Tale Heart” or “1984,” to get a sense for how to start with a jolt. Then, come up with your own first line that grabs the reader’s attention and raises questions about what’s to come. Try to start your story in the middle of a scene where characters are doing something, since action is engaging. Additionally, set up the main conflict and introduce scary or unsettling details, like details about an accident or a murder, to build tension from the start. For tips on how to write in the active voice to draw readers into your horror story, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Scaring Your Readers 101: 8 Tips For Writing A Great Horror Story

Our guest blogger shares eight tips for writing a great horror story.

There are few human emotions as primal and powerful as fear. Master horror writer H.P. Lovecraft put it best when he wrote, ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear , and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.’

If you’re a writer wanting to master the craft of writing a horror story, here are a few tips to access your reader’s most primal fears. It’s the best way to keep them turning pages. This video about writing horror advice also covers these same points, along with practical tips to help you in the writing process.

8 Tips For Writing A Great Horror Story

1. take the time to let your reader get to know your characters.

The best way to emotionally involve your readers in your characters’ fate is to give them time to get to know the characters on a personal level. This kind of fear—that which stirs the emotions and makes us afraid that we’ll lose someone we care about deeply—is the most powerful kind. Without this empathy , the fearful events that characters experience further along in the story won’t be as harrowing to read.

2. Establish the familiar

Horror is about contrasts between the comfort of the familiar and the discomfort of the unknown. The best way to create this is to begin your story with your character in a comfortable, familiar place. This could be a place that the reader identifies with as a place of comfort, as well.

When your character is suddenly faced with the unknown, it triggers the sympathies of the reader. This happens because we’ve all been there and understand the feelings associated with moving out of a comfortable situation and into a highly uncomfortable one. Stephen King’s fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine is a great example of this. Where best to start a horror story than a Norman Rockwell-inspired small town filled with white picket fences and Mom-and Pop stores?

3. Use subtle foreshadowing

Adding foreshadowing into your narrative is another great way to create tension and fear for your readers. This technique is used by established writers in the genre and can be as simple as a shiver running down your character’s spine when passing by a locked door, or a feeling of dread when walking down a dark corridor.

The reader will know there is something important behind that locked door or within that corridor. And they’ll know it’s something that is likely to be horrific, encouraging them to turn the pages to find out what it is.

4. Consider pacing

Movie directors use pacing to ramp up the fear factor in film and this same technique can work for books, as well. In the same sense that a long, panned shot can slowly build tension, stretched, descriptive sentences are a good way to create a sense of slowly developing dread.

When you follow that with short sentences, the effect is visceral. You can even change the way your reader breathes while reading. If there is a particular scene that you want to use as a potent dose of fear, try rewriting it with pacing that evolves from slow to staccato. You’ll then see how this technique changes the level of tension you are able to build.

5. Tap into your reader’s imagination

Sometimes our greatest fears can be entirely in our imagination . It’s that shadow on the wall that seems like a human form, or the sound of the tree tapping against your window in the storm that could almost be fingernails.

Our minds have an amazing ability to play tricks on us and cause us to imagine multiple possibilities of danger that might not even be present. In this sense, remaining vague in your descriptions of monsters (of the human or non-human variety) leaves a lot to the reader’s imagination and can create an increased sense of dread.

6. Suffocate with tight spaces

The primal fear of enclosed spaces is common to the human condition. It triggers a basic evolutionary impulse to escape and makes breathing shallower. It makes the heart rate increase. In the same sense that you can use pacing in your writing to affect your reader’s heart rate, you can also use tight spaces to make your character (and your reader) afraid.

Haunted house stories use this technique often, as does the slasher genre. Think of the feeling that results as victims frantically hide in closets to escape death.

7. Think like a child

It’s no accident that some of the best horror novels involve children. Stephen King understood this and included children in several of his stories. Many of our most basic fears stem from experiences we had when we were children. Think of Batman’s fall into a well full of bats and how it haunted him enough to inspire his iconic costume.

Experiencing horror from a child’s point of view reminds us of all the fears we had as children, making them even more powerful. It also induces a sense of empathy for the character, especially for parents. This is because they immediately imagine the potential of their child living through a similar horrific experience.

8. Disorient reality

Insanity is a core fear that many people share, which is why so many horror stories are set in psychiatric hospitals or contain characters who lose their grip on reality. The simple thought of losing one’s ability to understand what’s happening around them in a disorienting, distorted reality is enough to send many thinking readers over the edge in absolute fear.

Shirley Jackson , the writer of a timeless haunted house tale, The Haunting of Hill House , puts it this way. “Fear is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway”.

Source for image: Pexels

Tony is a content manager and writer from the Mississippi Delta. When not writing, you can usually find her hiking or travelling—always looking for new tales to tell.

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• Horror Masters: 3 Spooky Tips To Write Like Lovecraft, Poe, & King
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Top Tip : Find out more about our  workbooks  and  online courses  in our  shop .

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© Writers Write 2022

Tim Kane Books

Strange is the new normal, how to write creepy scenes to make your readers squirm.

Most writers who delve into horror hit the prose with a bag of clichés and heavy handed stage props—swirling fog, glowing eyes, wicked laughs. Don’t get me wrong, camp can be great (if it’s intentional). However, a more subtle approach can work wonders.

Add Details One by One

Use disturbing details or reversals when describing your scenes. Each one, taken by itself, does little, but in combination, they imbue the reader with unease. Consider Cold Skin by Albert Sánchez Piñol. Here an unnamed narrator just inhabited a weather station on a deserted island.

Just then, I heard a pleasing sound far off. It was more or less like a heard of goats trotting in the distance. At first, I confused it with the pattering of rain; the sound of heavy and distinct drops. I got up and looked out of the closest window. It wasn’t raining. The full moon stained the ocean’s surface in a violet hue. The light bathed the driftwood lying on the beach. It was easy to imagine them as body parts, dismembered and immobile. The whole thing brought to mind a petrified forest. But it wasn’t raining.

Reversal : The narrator thinks it’s raining, but then there’s no rain. We wonder what’s creating that pattering sound, and the not knowing makes us uneasy.

Disturbing details : The water is stained violet, a bloodlike color. This idea is cemented in the reader’s skull with the driftwood, described as dismembered limbs.

Let the Character Freak Out

Nothing creeps out a reader faster than letting the protagonist freak out. Ever wonder why there are so many screams in horror movies? It’s the same thing. As an author, you must find the written equivalent to the scream.

In Bag of Bones by Stephen King, the protagonist, Mike Noonan, begins to believe that his house is haunted. He’s in the basement and hears the sound of someone striking the insulation, but no one else is home.

…every gut and muscle of my body seemed to come unwound. My hair stood up. My eyesockets seemed to be expanding and my eyeballs contracting, as if  my head were trying to turn into a skull. Every inch of my skin broke out in gooseflesh. Something was in here with me. Very likely something dead.

King lays it on thick here. Instead of one physical reaction, he dumps the whole bucket on us. He doesn’t dazzle us with a etherial decaying corpse. We won’t even see the ghost till the final chapters. No. He tells us how Noonan feels just in the presence of the thing and that’s what creeps us out.

Another example of the character freaking out can be seen in Shirley Jackson’s  The Haunting of Hill House .

Now we are going to have a new noise, Eleanor thought, listening to the inside of her head; it is changing.  The pounding had stopped, as though it had proved ineffectual, and there was now a swift movement up and down the hall, as of an animal pacing back and forth with unbelievable impatience, watching first one door and then another, alert for a movement inside, and there was again the little babbling murmur which Eleanor remembered; Am I doing it? she wondered quickly, is that me? And heard the tiny laughter beyond the door, mocking her.

Here the character doubts herself and what she sees. This is essential to any horror story. When weird things happen, the character mysteries react accordingly. The stranger the situation, the stronger the reaction. And most of us would doubt our sanity in creepy situations.

Let The Reader Do the Imagining

Why should you, the author, do all the heavy lifting. Your reader’s imagination will often fill in the blanks for you. Take this example from Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon .

As she reached the driver’s door of the cab, which hung open with vines twisting in and out of its socket of a window, lightning flashed again, painting the whole world purple. In its glare Trisha saw something with slumped shoulders standing on the far side of the road, something with black eyes and great cocked ears like horns. Perhaps they were horns. It wasn’t human; nor did she think it was animal. It was a god. It was her god, the wasp-god, standing there in the rain.

Notice that the monster is only vaguely described. It’s called “something” twice. This lets the reader fill in the blanks. There is enough description that we at least know it’s a big hulking creature. This is the literary equivalent of when Ridley Scott only showed glimpses of the alien in Alien .

Use Strong Verbs

Finally, strong verbs will help any writer to shine, but they can also allow one character to shine over another. Take this excerpt from William Blatty’s The Exorcist .

Regan’s eyes gleamed fiercely, unblinking, as a yellowish saliva dribbled down from a corner of her mouth to her chin, to her lips stretch taut into a feral grin of bow-mouthed mockery.

“Well, well, well,” she gloated sardonically and hairs prickled up on the back of Karras’s neck at a voice that was deep and thick with menace and power. “So, it’s you … they sent  you !” she continued as if pleased. “Well, we’ve nothing to fear from you at all.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Karras answered; “I’m your friend and I’d like to help you.”

“You might loosen these straps, then,” Regan croaked. She had tugged up her wrists so that now Karras noticed they were bound with a double set of leather restraining straps.

“Are the straps uncomfortable for you?”

“Extremely. They’re a nuisance. An  infernal  nuisance.”

The eyes glinted slyly with secret amusement.

Karras saw the scratch marks on Regan’s face; the cuts on her lips where apparently she’d bitten them. “I’m afraid you might hurt yourself, Regan,” he told her.

“I’m not Regan,” she rumbled, still with that taut and hideous grin that Karras now guessed was her permanent expression. How incongruous the braces on her teeth looked, he thought. “Oh, I see,” he said, nodding. “Well, then, maybe we should introduce ourselves. I’m Damien Karras. Who are you?”

“I’m the devil!”

Notice the verbs that Blatty uses with Reagan — gleamed, dribbled, gloated, croaked, rumbled. In contrast, the more calm individual in the scene, Karras, responds with simple verbs like “answered” and “saw”. The contrast allows the reader to see Reagan as disturbing.

If you want to make your readers squirm, reading only in daylight hours, shy away from the obvious gore and claptrap. Rather, take the quieter road of tiny disturbing details built up over pages and chapters. Show how your character reacts to what’s happening, and the reader will feel it too.

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Can you write a scary story in 150 words? (7 Scary Good Shortcuts)

If love stories make you swoon and comedies make you belly laugh like a deranged raccoon, then horror stories make you clench your gut, slam shut your eyes, and pray for the nightmare to end. Scary stories deliver fear. That’s their job. But can you write a scary story in 150 words?

That’s a question terrifying enough to send shudders down the spine of the most experienced writer. 

Yes, you can write a scary story in 150 words (or less). The keys are: 1) To trigger fear fast by leveraging age-old human psychology, and 2) To narrow the story to its most basic elements. In this post, you’ll learn 7 ways to terrify readers while keeping your story super short. Plus 75 fear-themed prompts to give you all the goosebumps.

That brings up a few other questions: how to write a good horror story? what even makes good horror?

Let’s start with how to write micro-stories, then layer on the scary. 

Read some r eal life writing convention horror stories .

How to Write Short Horror stories

There are a number of effective ways to write super short stories, or micro-stories (also called micro-fiction or, in our case, micro horror). It’s all about drilling down to the heart of the story. Then cut away the fat. After that, you keep scraping away at the story until you get all the way to the bones. 

Three scary effective ways to write short: 

• Story Stripping (I promise this is SFW – safe for work 😉 )

Find the Bones

Write the bones, story stripping.

To write a short story, you write a story short.

Trust me, that sounds more profound than it actually is (don’t end sentences with is, it’s just poor grammar-ship). But the point stands. Writing short stories doesn’t mean that you shortchange the story. It means that you take the complete story and strip it down to its essence.

So, that means you have to really understand the story. That’s the only way to know what to save and what to shave.

Consider these tips when stripping your story:

• Complete this story template (Character + Conflict + Crucible). Just fill in the details of your story so that you have the main elements – the character (who the story is about), the conflict (what is the main character up against), and the crucible (the setting or situation that traps the character in the story so they can’t just run away).
• If you don’t have a story, use a prompt (like the 75 scary-themed prompts later in this post)
• Strip your story down to one or (at most) two characters. You only have 150 words after all.
• Strip your story down to a single setting. More settings mean more words, which you don’t have at your disposal.
• Strip your story down to one conflict.

Table of Contents

After you finish story stripping, it’s time to find the bones. In practice, it’s really just another, deeper level of cuts. You might have a scene or series of scenes in your mind.

Time to kill those darlings. Prepare yourself because this is going to hurt.

It’s time to find the bones of your micro-horror story:

• Cut your story down to one character (really, give it an honest try). You probably don’t need the other character (at least not much). Pretend you HAVE to cut your story down to one character. How would you do it? (Then do it).
• Cut your story down to one scene. (There’s probably no time for multiple scenes. Go deep with one scene instead of drifting on the surface of several scenes).
• Now cut your story down to a slice of that scene (a micro-scene). Which slice? The most dramatic slice. The scariest slice (Scary Spice?).
• Cut your story down to one slice of the setting, the micro-setting. (If your setting was a graveyard, now it’s one tombstone. If your setting is an abandoned school, now it’s a haunted bus or empty classroom)

Once you complete those steps, you will have a super bony story ready for the page. You have finished the brutal work of chopping away at your story. Now it’s time to focus on techniques for translating your slimmed up story into actual words.

But before you grab your pencil or keyboard, I have two more cool techniques to share with you. These methods will help you maintain your narrow focus to reach your goal of penning your story in a maximum of 150 words.

The first approach is called the Napkin Test. Here’s how it goes. You attempt to write your entire story on one regular-sized napkin. I know! It’s a terrible test. The worst, really. But it forces you into conciseness. The physical edges of the napkin taunt you with their limits.

Try it out. Grab a napkin (or go buy a cheap pack the next time you are at the store). Try to force yourself to write the entire story in the square space of that napkin.

The second method is even worse. I call it Twitterizing your story. Instead of the napkin, write your entire story in one 150-character tweet (or whatever the current Twitter limit is – if Twitter still exists lol). Even if Twitter is a distant relic of the past when you are reading this post, you can still attempt to write your entire story in 150 characters. Let’s be nice and not include the spaces in the character count.

Why punish yourself with the nearly impossible? Because, once you struggle to write your story in 150 characters, 150 words will seem like a football field of space.

Then there is the actual writing of words. Writing a scary story in 150 words is a challenge best met with intention.

Apply these best practices for writing super short copy:

• Use short words (as a bonus, often shorter words pack more punch)
• Use short sentences
• Avoid adjectives and adverbs (you can always add them in later if you are under word court)
• Use vivid verbs with more emotional connotation
• Use nouns with more meaning
• Use symbols, subtext, and multiple meanings as often as you can (you can double the emotional impact of your writing while keeping the word count low)

Check out my post on The Best Thesaurus for Writers .

In summary, to write short requires short, simple sentences filled with short, simple words packed with subtext.

7 Ways to Terrify Readers (Based on Neuroscience)

You have the bones of your story. It’s time to talk terror. There are certain tools and techniques writers use to create the unsettling atmosphere of psychological suspense.

When you are writing micro-fiction, you must employ the best horror tactics to terrify readers in the small space of your story. Apply these next tips to scare your readers’ shorts off.

By the way, all of these tips work wonders because they are based on real brain science (sources at the bottom of the article).

1. Scare them Early

Things are scarier if you are already afraid. So scare them early and often. Once we are primed for fear, we interpret everything else through this fear-smeared lens. Especially in a micro or short story, we need to get to the fear fast.

In your story, don’t go for the slow burn by building to suspense or fear. Dive into the middle of the scary. Think that’s hard to do in 150 words? Try 5 words.

2. Threaten the Ordinary

Un-scary things can be the scariest (humans imagine the worst). One of Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite techniques was to invoke fear in normal settings, like showers, and into normal things, like birds.

Sure, graveyards and old, empty houses are scary. But so are rain gutters with smiling clowns.

When choosing your story and scene settings, think outside of the graveyard. Invoke fear into the ordinary. Pick a normal place and make it terrifying.

3. Slow Time Down

When scared, people experience time distortion where time appears to move slower. Novice skydivers, for instance, often think the preparations before jumping take longer than they do. Horror scenes in movies and fiction often exploit this slo-mo feature to terror by increasing the pace of terror while simultaneously slowing time down to focus on the fear.

You can achieve a similar effect by raising the pace of action in your story while slowing down the experience of the horror. You do that by focusing in on specific character actions, description of simple setting details (like the bloodstained baby shoes), and entering into the mind and emotions of the character.

4. No Way Out

According to neuroscientists (people way smarter than me), the purpose of fear is to prompt us into appropriate adaptive action. Mainly, that is to escape the source of the threat or perceived threat.

That’s why it’s so terrifying to feel trapped. So, ramp up the fear in your stories by hemming in your characters so that they can’t do what everything in their biology is screaming at them to do: get the hell out .

Now all of those buried alive stories make more sense. So do the stories of being conscious but immobile on the surgeon’s table, the scalpel sharp and gleaming inches away from the whites of your eyeball.

When you think about trapping your character or characters, think not only about the physical location. Also, think about access to help through cell phones and other resources like food, water, and air.

5. Helpless

Another primitive fear is powerlessness. When we feel helpless, we feel desperately alone. That’s another reason those buried alive stories are so dang terrifying.

Spook up your story by getting your character alone and without any outside help. In your 150-word story, you might only have one character anyway. But this technique also works for longer stories.

When plotting out your story (or pantsing your way through it), ask yourself, “How can I make my character more helpless?” and, “What do they need? How can I take that away?”

6. Vulnerable

Like helplessness, vulnerability is another fear trigger. That’s one of the reasons the shower scene in Psycho is so visceral. The female character is completely vulnerable.

The same can be said of the movie Jaws. When we are floating in the ocean, we are easy prey. Vulnerability can be terrifying.

What parts of your story can exploit vulnerability? How can you make your character more vulnerable?

Consider these possibilities:

• Darkness (When we can’t see, we are more vulnerable)
• Handicapped (Such as when we are injured and can’t run or defend ourselves)
• Weaker/Smaller (Children are vulnerable, when facing bigger and stronger opponents, we are all vulnerable)
• The unknown (When we don’t know what is out there or what we are up against, fear magnifies)

7. Empathetic Fear

The terror that I can relate to is more terrifying. Vampire horror stories and zombie stories can be very scary, but I can’t really relate to them. But hearing a knock on the door in the middle of the night? I’ve been there .

That’s why scary stories involving pets (Pet Cemetery) and dolls (Chucky) scare the goodness right out of us. Most all of us have experienced pets. Most of us have glanced side-eyed at a creepy doll perched on a dusty dresser and wondered at the dark intelligence that might be starting back at us.

When crafting your story, dig into relatable experiences and places. They terrify us in their normalcy. We connect to them more easily and fully.

75 Scary Story Writing Prompts

In case you need spooky story starters to write your short horror story, here are 75 writing prompts. Use them for writing sprints, creative fodder to generate new and terrifying micro or long-form horror story ideas, to write creepy fanfiction, or just as a mental exercise to train your mind to see story possibilities everywhere. You could even consider them 75 Halloween themed prompts (since some of the prompts reference this spooky holiday) . It’s completely up to you!

Download a copy of all 75 Horror writing prompts as a PDF below: (Just click the Download button)

• You come home and no one recognizes you.
• The old civil war painting in the hall just blinked.
• Describe Halloween from a Jack-O-Lantern’s point of view.
• What is the most terrified you have ever been?
• What are some unusual tools that you could use to carve a pumpkin?
• Write a scene where someone carves a pumpkin while the pumpkin screams.
• Something is following you while trick-or-treating.
• You realize that you are slowly losing your mind.
• Your character must stay overnight in the room where a dozen people were murdered.
• The old man in front of you has fully black eyes (no whites)
• Your dog is acting strangely like it doesn’t recognize you.
•  Your character wakes up trapped somewhere.
• What is the most terrifying day of the year? Why?
•  A kid suspects his or her parents may be trying to murder them.
•  Your mirror image stops mimicking you.
•  Your character finds a long-lost letter that chills his spine.
•  The doll on the dresser just moved by itself.
• Who do you want to scare this Halloween? How will you scare them?
•  Your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
• What would you do during a zombie pandemic?
•  You suspect the old lady next door is cooking more than bread.
•  Write a story about a haunted playground.
•  Share your first pumpkin carving experience with a person deathly afraid of knives.
• Can you write a poem from the point of view of a serial killer?
•  Prepare a questionnaire to interview the monster under your bed.
•  How would you define yourself, a scaredy-cat or strong-hearted person who is difficult to scare?
•  Do you believe in ghosts?
•  Write a descriptive recipe from the point of view of an evil witch.
•  Complete the sentence- When I looked behind the basement water heater …
•  Your little brother tells you that he saw a monster underneath the bed. Then he shows you the claw marks on his shin.
•  Write a persuasive letter to your pen pal pleading with them to never to play “Bloody Mary.”
•  Flip to three random words in the dictionary and create a scary story that connects all three.
•  Make a list of decorative items that can be used by a Vampire to lure victims into his lair.
•  A new mother finds a jack-o-lantern with a secret spooky message inside it.
•  What would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night to find someone staring at you?
•  Your shadow stops following you. What do you do?
•  You wake up in the middle of the night and can’t breathe.
•  Write about the history of a ghost town.
•  Write a story about a kid who goes trick-or-treating but gets lost in the woods.
•  While taking a shower, your character realizes she is covered in giant tarantulas.
•  All the power and lights suddenly go off in the middle of a storm.
•  Your character starts spitting up blood.
•  You are a vampire trying to get invited into a house. Write a first-person account of what you would say to gain entrance.
•  What scares you the most?
•  What are the similarities of your top three scary movies?
•  Write about a normal object that becomes unsettling.
•  A traveling minister brings your dead brother back to life but something is different about him.
•  List as many words as you can that sound “scary” to you.
•  You start hearing the thoughts of a serial killer.
•  A new girl in town puts a curse on you.
• You wake up in bed next to a dead body.
•  A man attends a funeral and realizes the body in the coffin isn’t dead.
•  A woman gets in touch with her dead younger sister.
•  A woman attends a funeral and realizes the body in the coffin is her.
•  If you could bring any Halloween monsters back to life who would it be and why?
•  A man is accused of kidnapping a child he has never met.
•  A woman wakes up with no eyesight in a place she has never been.
•  Write a story where nothing is as it seems.
•  A scary clown is walking towards you in the dark.
•  The local psyche ward just lost all power and all staff has mysteriously disappeared.
•  The empty subway train slows to a stop in the middle of a tunnel.
•  A serial killer is recreating every one of Stephen King’s novels .
•  A man takes a beautiful woman home, but she starts acting oddly inhuman.
• A woman’s spouse is convinced she’s been replaced with a clone.
• A man’s dog starts becoming more aggressive.
•  Create a social media profile for one of the following: mummy, clown, zombies, vampires, or werewolf.
•  All the children in town disappear.
•  A woman gets out of the shower to a strange message written in the steam on the bathroom mirror.
•  A mythical being comes back to life.
• The faces of a man’s neighbors start to sag grossly.
•  Write about a household item possessed by an evil spirit.
•  Complete the story – The moment she stepped off the curb onto the deserted street…
•  You think you might be starting to crave blood.
•  The magnets on the fridge spell out, “I’m in the room with you.”
•  You start to hear whispering in the walls of your house.

How to use These Horror Writing Prompts for Writing Sprints

• Choose one or more prompts from the list
• Prepare your writing tools
• Decide on a word count goal, for example, 1,000 words (hey, that’s almost 7 of those 150-word stories. The actual calculation is 6.66. Coincidence??).
• Set a timer for between 15 and 60 minutes.
• Start the timer.
• Write as many words as you can until the timer stops or goes off.
• Record Your word sprint data on a spreadsheet or using online software.  For example, your word count achieved compared to your word count software.

For a complete breakdown of writing sprints, read Writing Sprints: The Ultimate Guide to Successful Writing Sprints .

So, that’s how to write a scary story in 150-words (or less). For even more awesome content, consider these articles:

• 21 Ways To Write a Complex Villain [Ultimate Badass Guide]
• How To Write Morally Gray Characters [Bestseller Secrets Revealed]
• How to Become a Writer for SNL (The Insanely Complete Guide)

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Short horror story essay 8 Models

Last updated Friday , 15-03-2024 on 11:35 am

Short horror story essay is one of the popular intimidation methods that help parents in correcting children and improving their behavior in many educational aspects.

Through this article, we will provide you with many models that talk about stories of horror and intimidation that may help or influence the behavior of children, show the goals of horror stories, and the extent of the impact of these stories on improving children’s instincts, and strengthening their personality.

Short horror story essay

The school plays an important and significant role in educating children and improving their behaviour. In a similar article that talks about horror stories, the student can learn about the dimensions of these stories, the extent of their impact and why they are used.

The student can talk about his fears and terrifying situations he went through. The teacher can take advantage of these events and try to address these fears by guiding him and talking to him, or by making him research more about the dimensions of the problem and the benefits that he benefited from despite going through a terrifying situation.

At the beginning of the article we will put several points that show the goals that must be present within the topic, and several models will be created using these points inside them, so that the articles are useful for the student in case he wants to present them to the school, or if he wants to know the aspects that he should talk about inside a similar article he talks about the horror stories and the bad situations he was exposed to.

Objectives of the article

1- To obey orders.

2- Giving up bad behavior.

3- Repressing the evil instincts that are inside every human being.

4- Controlling the child in the safety zone next to the parents.

5- Planting correct means and methods through intimidation.

Several years ago, my father told me a story about a boy  who went out without telling his family where he was going. And this was late at night. After he left, he met some children and played a little with them and enjoyed this, but because of the late time these children left him, some of them returned to their home alone, and some of them their families came to to pick them up, and he found himself alone in the end.

He decided to walk around for a while, so that he might encounter other children and continue playing with them. But after walking for a long time, he found that all the streets were empty, and it was dark everywhere, and he could no longer discern where he was, and that he was far from home and lost his way.

And whenever he tried to return from where he came, he found himself in dangerous areas with street dogs, and in order to avoid them, he kept entering other streets, until he lost the way completely. So he sat crying and did not find anyone to bring him home because all the people of the town were asleep.

The time at night was getting hard for this naughty little boy. Every minute that passes feels like it’s a long time and he’s so afraid of darkness and loneliness. And whenever he heard the sound of dogs howling, intensified in crying. And whenever he called his father, he did not come to take him, because he was far from the house and did not tell them that he was going out, and did not tell them where he was going.

Then he learned that he had made a big mistake and that his father would not come to look for him because he thought he was asleep. And he decided to try to call for help and search for any place where there are people and tell them what happened.

And he kept walking in the dark crying for a long time until he found some people, and told them his name, where he lived, and the name of the neighborhood in which he lived. Fortunately for him, they weren’t bad guys, and they brought this guy home.

The father was very angry with him for this behavior and punished him for a week for this behavior. But the boy was happy that he came home and learned the lesson well and knew that this wrong behavior was dangerous and could have lost his family for life.

While hearing this story, I was very afraid and put myself in the place of this boy, and I found myself learning from him what to do. And that I must tell my family where I am going, and watch the time, and take care of myself and not stay away from home. When I finish playing, I go home.

In the early morning, I was very careful to memorize my full name, the name of the neighborhood in which I live, the name of my mother, and the house number.

Although the story was scary for me, I learned a lot from it and had a reaction to every event that takes place in it.

Dear student, a basic form was submitted for the topic on short horror story essay, In addition to many other models such as, horror short story essay, creepy short horror story essay, a short horror story essay, short ghost story essay, short ghost story essay, scary short story essay, scary experience essay.

If you prefer to add any other topic, you can contact us through the comments of this article and we will study your request and add it as soon as possible.

horror short story essay

At the weekend I went on a trip with my friends to the forest. We took camping equipment, some food and water. The weather was nice, the trees were leafy, the birds were flying from tree to tree, the landscape was beautiful.

We wandered in the woods and ate the fruits on the trees, and as we wandered, a huge bear appeared in front of us, looked at us and prepared to attack us.

We were all very terrified, but the instructions reminded us not to run, not to scream, and to act calmly. I took out of my bag a self-defense spray bottle, which should be used in this case. But the bear left quietly and none of us were hurt.

creepy short horror story essay

I get up early and sit in the garden of the house, enjoying the fresh air, listening to the sound of birds, watching beautiful flowers and other beautiful landscapes, but yesterday something terrifying happened to me.

When I sat on the bench in the garden and was enjoying nature I felt something moving under the chair.

I quickly looked under the chair and found a large black snake.

It moves slowly, I felt very terrified and could not move, I remained frozen in my place, the snake crawled slowly and I looked at it with horror, until it moved away several meters, I called the competent authority immediately and a trained man came and caught the snake.

a short horror story essay

Last week I went with my family to the zoo, the weather was nice, and we were enjoying the nature, where there are a lot of green leafy trees and decorated with beautiful flowers and large areas that allow us to run and play, everything was beautiful.

Then we went to the animal cages and watched the animals from a distance.

But there is a person who got very close to the lion’s cage, even though there is a sign on it that says Do not go near the animal cages.

He was not satisfied with that, but he extended his hand into the cage, and the lion grabbed his hand with force, and this person was unable to rid his hand of the lion’s fangs.

The man screamed loudly from the severity of the pain, and the guard came quickly and tried to give the lion a piece of meat to leave the man’s hand, but to no avail.

The veterinarian quickly intervened and gave the lion an anesthetic injection, and the man was able to get his hand out of the cage, but it had many wounds and was taken to the hospital. It was really terrifying moments.

Short ghost story essay

There are many people who feel terrified in the dark, and my brother is very afraid of the dark and feels terrified and imagines frightening things.

So when the electricity went out and the house became dark. I went to his room quietly without feeling, and stood in front of him, making some strange sounds.

My brother jumped quickly and came out of the room saying a ghost of a ghost, but he hit the wall and cut his head and bled a lot, it was a big wound.

At that time I was telling him don’t be afraid, I am your brother, but he was very frightened. I was very sorry for him and regretted that I had caused him to feel terrified and made him crash into the wall.

And I told him I was just trying to joke with you and I wouldn’t do it again but you should train yourself not to be afraid of the dark.

A Short Scary Story Essay

Last weekend I went with my friends on a fishing trip. We chartered a fishing boat with all our fishing gear and went into the sea for a long distance, so that we could see neither the beach nor the city.

We started fishing and we were very happy because there are many fish and they are also big, and the weather was nice.

Suddenly strong winds blew and the waves rose, and the fishing boat was swinging with us over the water, up and down, and we couldn’t control it.

At this time we felt so afraid that we would drown.The fishing boat cannot withstand these bad weather conditions.

But after a while the wind calmed down a bit and we miraculously survived.

Scary short story essay

Last weekend I went with my colleagues on a school trip to one of the archaeological sites, and we had some teachers with us organizing the trip and supervising our transfers.

We entered a museum that houses great antiquities and stood listening to the tour guide talking about the history of these antiquities.

I was fascinated and listened to the tour guide with great interest, so that I did not feel the departure of my colleagues and teachers, as they left the museum and got on the bus and left this place and did not feel my absence.

When I found myself alone in the museum, I felt very afraid and searched for them all over the museum, but I could not find them, so my fear increased and my crying became louder.

Suddenly I found one of the teachers entering the museum and looking for me, so I ran towards him and grabbed his hand and felt safe.

Scary Experience Essay

At the end of the year I had a frightening experience. I went to the beach and decided to snorkel, so I bought wetsuits, put them on, and dived into the sea. But it was not what I expected and almost drowned.

I was so scared when I found myself unable to dive, and could not swim to the top.

It was a difficult situation but one of the lifeguards on the beach saw me, knew I was going to drown and ran to save me.

Therefore, I advise others to learn before we do anything that might endanger our lives.

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