To celebrate Halloween this year, we're talking about the horror genre! A genre built around terrifying, chilling, disturbing, or unsettling plots and situations is sure to leave a lasting impact on a reader if done well, and because this genre is about its emotional effect, it's a versatile and diverse genre that you can do so much with. Let's talk about writing a chilling and effective horror novel!
0:00 - Intro
1:48 - Tap into common fears
3:15 - Create a strong atmosphere
5:56 - Raise the stakes
7:08 - Pick your POV
8:13 - To plot twist or not to plot twist
9:36 - Don't forget the basics
10:32 - Create emotional contrast
11:25 - Find something new
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The Witch, The Babadook, Mama, The Wicker Man 1973, Cat People 1940s, and a real oddity from the 1960s called The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre.
Stephen King’s “Misery” is may favorite horror novel. Only book that’s made me tense and anxious from the horror involved.
I just finished that about a week ago
Hello Reedsy, Jenna Moreci and you inspired me to write...thanks a lot for your content and consistency...Keep it up.
It is just about the most entertaining genre---if well written and not too lengthy
Another fun use of color in horror came to me in a movie I just watched today, the green inferno. It takes place in a bright rainforest jungle type of area and the bad guys are covered in red body paint, with a few in yellow. It’s so bright and colorful and the shots with just the red dudes crowding around the main characters is so unsettling.
“People don’t read horror for relaxing escapist read” I’m gonna be completely honest with you here, a ton of people do. It’s a great way to take a step back and focus on a fiction problem instead of getting too caught up in your own.
Stephen King's It was the best Horror novel I'd ever read.
Horror is where kishotenketsu narrative structure really shines
Thanks for making this! It was extremely helpful. I’m trying to adapt my script into a horror novel. My favorite horror film is The Haunting (1963)
Hatful of Hollow is a great psychological horror novel. It deals with how place plays an important part in our fears.
This comment is more to do with movies than novels, but could we also PLEASE drop jump scares from horror. All too many horrors build tension exclusively for the jump scare and it feels lazy/ cheap. Just my ten cents
Thanks for the awesome and informative video, I definitely needed this for the Mystery horror, wilderness horror, cosmic horror, apocalyptic horror and steampunk western horror novel series that I’m writing book 2 for. This advice really helped me a lot, I’m not stuck on writing my horror novel anymore.
Let The Right One In by J. A. Lindqvist is my all-time favorite. Loaded with all kinds of social commentary.
Excellent, excellent suggestions. Very well stated and a very good tutorial. Thank you.
I'm an amateur writer and this video's really helping me out to flesh out horror stories. Especially focusing on a character and thinking about descriptions in colour pallets feels particularly helpful!
This is so helpful, thank you
Hi Shaelin! Love your videos!
I'm going to need this for NaNoWrimo, thanks for the info.
Been needing this for my writing prompt in ELA class
Edgar Allen Poe is my favorite horror author. I get a lot of inspiration from him in my writing.
I really like the movie from the 90s "The people under the stairs" directed by Wes Craven, specialy because the main protagonist is a 10 year old black kid and the story happens in an old house full with traps and secret tunels everywhere.
My favorite horror movie is definitely “Bird Box.” I wanna read the book, just haven’t found it yet.
Make titles that make your reader curious, like a question. "There's a Man Spilling Juice on our Porch" was mine. Makes you curious why there's a man spilling juice on the porch and who the man is. Well, it's not juice. It's blood. The title references that the little girl narrowating it does not understand what it happening. To her, it's just red juice. To her, how will Aunt Lisa get any work done if they bury her? To her, the man is sleeping. To her, the masked man outside is just dragging the sleeping man to bed. And that, I think, is really creepy.
Very clever!
I tend to avoid writing first person, because you know if you're hearing the story from the person that they survived, the horror element going to be depended on how awful or traumatizing the protagonist's experience was. I read the book "Theme Music", and while it was a chilling read, I think the author made the mistake of telling us the scary thing that happened in the prologue of the book and actually inspired me NOT to read it because there was no element of surprise. Plus the personality of the main character was vague and I didn't really know how she was personality wise for the past two chapters. Third person stories you can control more, plus you can establish the rules and explain the rules of the universe while introducing characters before having some suspense and foreshadowing, making you wonder who's going to live and who's going to die. That was how "Michael Crichton'" wrote, the creator of Jurassic Park.
Totally not watching this at night :’)
Oh my goodness the background music in this video made it so intense. 😳
Movies and locations are a big inspiration, but the thing that personally gets my creative juices flowing is music. Usually the scores without words that build up emotion for a setting. For example, I'd play creepy carnival or music box music if I want to invoke nightmares and evil clowns, or I'd play something with an eerie growl or thrum if I want to invoke something in the shadows.
Hollywood needs to make more classic Vampire movies. Set in 1800s.
The following I refer to are the original films, no prequels, sequels or remakes; The Exorcist, Blair Witch, Salem's Lot, The Shining and The Fog. These five are my favourites and although I have watched them all several times each, they still do the trick on a dark winter evening.
My storys in past tense and at the end he gets killed by a axe splitting his axe open
awesome vid
I love how this is my little corner of infinite knowledge :)
You want a good survival horror experience? Play Resident Evil: Village, specifically in the House Beneviento section. I promise you will question your own sanity on your first playthrough. Maybe on your second one, even.
Good advice here 👍
Halloween (1978), Suspiria (2018), The Wicker Man (1973) are all on my watchlist for the next few days. Also, can’t forget Hocus Pocus 😆
Right now my favorite horror movie is "The Storm of the Century" by Stephen King. I really liked its atmospheric quality, but that is probably just my personal taste. There might be some who don't like it. It is an intense morality play, with many different kinds of tension. I'm not such a fan of movies that scare you to death and do nothing else. I am often not in the mood to be scared. I also liked "The Stand" by Stephen King, but not as much as I liked "The Storm of the Century". I liked the atmosphere of "The Storm of the Century" better than I liked the atmosphere of "The Stand", but again, that is probably just my personal taste. I'm not as taken by sunny movies with vivid colors., but that might change in time. One thing not mentioned here is that the anticipation of terror is just as terrifying and the catastrophic event. I saw one movie where these people on this island had triggered some kind of massive mutation of all the reptiles on the island, and as a result all the reptiles were attacking the humans. There was this episode where this woman was out running around, and the camera kept cutting to the large rattlesnake. You know the woman is going to get bitten by the mistake, and your fear builds as the woman gets closer to the snake. But then, when the snake bites her, it is kind of anticlimactic. And like I said, I'm not a fan of movies that scare the bejeezus out of you and do nothing else.
The Shining novel was my favorite horror read so far. The Ring and Hereditary are my favorite horror films, no reliance on jump scares and unnecessary gore, just pure dread and terror, and the mystery.
The 6th Sense, the Blair Witch Project, The Witch, Hereditary, Fright Night, The Evil Dead, Nope, Scream.
I love you
It chapter 1
Pet Sematary is my favorite horror book and movie ever. Of course, I'm speaking of the original movie not the 2019 disaster. That was the most disappointing trip to the movie theater of my life. Absolute mess
Really? You need to look at some of the mysterious disappearances of people in the national forests if you want horror…..don’t have to make it up.
I’m not first
First
I want to marry this woman
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
. . . the first words of a wonderful horror novel
No thanks. Never want to write horror and never will.
My stories deal with the creation of humanoid spider creatures by the Military, & plays on man's primal fear of spiders.