Horror is one of the most popular genres in movies, gaming, and books out there. We have a whole month pretty much dedicated to all things spooky and scary and horror movies are always releasing around Halloween. In general, horror media is a big deal in society, and horror has a strong foothold. Horror novels are also amazing as well, and horror stories are really defining in literature. For today’s post, I’ll be teaching you how you can write your own amazing horror novel!
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What is Horror?
The horror genre is pretty much what it sounds like: it’s a genre that explores the scariest parts about life. Horror aims to bring about feelings of fear, dread, unease, disgust, and more. Horror really likes to explore things like the supernatural, and it also explores things like death and what lies beyond, as well as the fear of the unknown. That’s partly why dark fantasy is a cross between fantasy and horror.
Horror comes in many forms, and each form has its own rules and conventions. There’s supernatural horror, slasher, gothic horror, psychological horror, and more. A lot of popular horror movies out there encompass many of these genres. Horror is also a pretty experimental genre, and many filmmakers and writers like to push the boundaries of what is/isn’t acceptable through horror and they want to elicit shock in the reader. That’s also kind of why splatterpunk exists, but I’m not really going to cover that subgenre in this post.
How to Write an Amazing Horror Novel
Start with a Concept
Before you even get started on the actual writing process of your horror novel, you want to think about the base concept of your story. You can start by drawing on your own fears, or you can think about things that exist around you that could be twisted into horror in some way.
You can also draw on mythology, folklore, legends, and more to create your own horror story. That’s why you often see a lot of things like ghosts in horror, as well as mythological figures like La Llorona or even the Headless Horseman. Doing your research in the horror genre is a great idea, as you can find a lot of inspiration from ancient stories and more.
You also want to think about a starting message that you want to convey in your story, as any story will need some type of message at its core. You can explore themes like sacrifice, fear of the unknown, the struggle for survival and more.
My series, The Fallen Age Saga, isn’t totally horror, but it draws on a lot of horror elements in its base story. There’s a lot of things involved in the series like demons and cults that surround these demons.
Develop Your Characters
In most horror, even if the characters aren’t going to last most of the story, you want to ensure that your readers actually feel invested in the characters. A bad horror story is one where you couldn’t care less about what’s going to happen to any of the characters.
Crafting memorable characters requires a few elements, and I’ve talked about this topic before. But for the most part, you want to work on their backstories, their strengths and weaknesses, their fears and their flaws, as well as how they will grow/change in your story in response to their experiences.
I know that Scream is a parody of horror, but the slasher series does a great job of creating characters that are really engaging, interesting, well-written, and you actually feel fear when they’re put in danger. I really enjoyed the Scream movies because, even though they mock a lot of horror elements, they still managed to pull together an excellent story that had funny and scary pieces alike.
Pick a Proper Setting
A setting is pretty important for your horror story and can really help add onto the suspense and immersion of your story. Your setting should be something that makes sense for your story. A big trope in slashers is the small town setting, but Scream branched out into a big city with their latest installments, which I think was the best choice possible because it worked really well! Stephen King’s It explored a small town, but it worked well because the main characters were children in a school and the story revolved around things in and around their town.
The setting needs to reflect the tone and atmosphere that you’re going for in your story. If you’re going for more of a horror-comedy, then your setting doesn’t necessarily need to be insanely dark. You could also literally pick a piece of an area, like a forest, for your story to take place in.
The setting also needs to have some level of isolation and unease. The setting needs to feel as strange as the conflict of the story. Giving your setting a darker feel could really help you if you’re writing a more serious and grounded horror story. I remember watching a horror movie that took place all within one single high school at night, and the characters would be separated from each other and placed in areas of darkness, which was really immersive for the story.
I also recommend you check out some horror games, especially the Resident Evil or Dead Space games, as they do really well with setting for a horror story.
Outline Your Plot
After figuring out the elements of your story that you want to work with, it’s time to actually get started on structuring your plot. I’ve talked about this topic in another post, so you can go check that out, but I’ll touch briefly on it here.
Much of the plot structure method that I use is the three-act structure, which relies on breaking down the story into three chunks. Within each act is a set of events that happen that eventually lead to the end of the story.
You want to start your story by establishing the setting (if you aren’t sure what your setting should be, check out this post) and you want to show how things are relatively normal in this area. You can also start out by showing why this place is uneasy, potentially setting up why this story is horror in the first place.
Your inciting incident should be the first encounter with the thing in your story that disrupts the normalcy of the area. Furthermore, you should focus on building suspense in your rising action so that your climax can feel really impactful.
The climax represents the turning point and the major area of the story where your protagonist will likely face the horror element themself. Afterwards, you have your falling action and the resolution, which is where the story clears up and ends.
The neat thing about horror is that because it’s not the same as other genres, you can end the story how you want. A lot of horror revolves around tragic endings, and the suspense you build in your story can help to keep readers unsure of how it will end, so you have more room to end it in a surprising way if you wish.
Focus on Building Suspense
I mentioned this a bit before, but I want to talk a little more about this point. Suspense is something that I’ve talked about before on my blog, but there’s a lot of importance on suspense in horror. Most horror is built around keeping the audience strung along for the ride and on the edge of their seats.
You tend to notice that in horror movies, the director will have scenes where the music suddenly goes quiet and everything is dark and then something suddenly jumps out at the character, jolting the audience. That moment just before the jump is the suspense I’m talking about, and that’s something you actually need to try and achieve in a book too. You may not get an actual visceral flinch from your reader or anything, but that idea of the “jump” is what you want to achieve.
Suspense, foreshadowing, and plot twists, as well as slow pacing with lots of tension and subtle hints about what is to come are all really vital for horror. You want to keep readers in a state of the unknown while throwing anything at them that you can in a moment’s notice.
Create Scary Scenes
Beyond suspense, there is also a bit of an art behind writing actual scary scenes in horror. Firstly, you want to think about the concept of show, don’t tell. Show, don’t tell is basically when writers try to convey the feeling of the scene instead of outright telling you information. You want to show the characters’ feelings via their actions, their interactions with others, and the things they say.
You want to also work on creating the sensory details of the scene. Try to describe what the area smells like, what it sounds like, how it looks, etc… Hone in on the scene and building the vision for the reader so that they can see what’s going on in their own head.
Even if you’re not writing specifically about psychological horror, taking elements of psychological horror is a great idea as it can help to build the sense of dread and true horror in the story.
You also want to use timing when writing your scenes. Try to pace the descriptions and the action in a way that will actually startle someone if it was turned into a movie. I always think of my books as a movie before a book: If what I’m writing is a movie, what is it going to actually look like on my TV screen? Try to use that when writing your next novel!
Horror is, in my opinion, a great genre in writing. If done right, you can really hit a homerun with a horror novel and get a lot of readers. However, you need to understand that horror is complex and isn’t just about “scaring” the reader. It’s more about the feelings you’re building, the world that you’ve designed, and the moments of suspense and action and how they blend together.
Before you head on out, check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on my latest WIPs, book releases, posts, and more!