How Can I Write A Good Horror Book?

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How Can I Write A Good Horror Book?

4 Answers

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Answer 1

Writing a good horror story can be more difficult than any other type of writing.

To be truly effective and scary, you really have to create a world that the reader will buy into and believe in.

How to write a good horror story

In my opinion, there are way too many trashy Hollywood movies that rely on cheap thrills and CGI to get us screaming.

This makes it even harder to write good horror, because people are so used to special effects and violence that reading something off a page becomes tame and predictable.

Writing a horror novel

I've written quite a few horror stories because it's my favorite genre, and in my opinion there are a number of things you HAVE to include to really terrify your audience:

Start by writing in a spooky environment - I like sitting at the back row of a big church!
Build up psychological suspense. Don't worry too much about the overall story-line, as it will change as you go along. Focus on how to get the reader wanting to know what's coming round the corner
Use spooky words and vocabulary. Build an image in the reader's head. Use sentences like, 'it was a morbid November morning'
Include some reality. Getting too crazy makes things unbelievable, so keep things feeling 'real' by putting in real places and real people. The more believable the world of the book is, the scarier it will feel.

Answer 2

sarah johnson answered

You can think about what scares you the most.

For example, I'm scared of being alone. I would write a book about something that could happen when I'm alone.

Answer 3

The best thing to do is write about things that scare you, then put it onto paper and hopefully you will scare other people too (if you write it good enough).

The most important thing in horror is tension building.
If you can slowly build up a frightening story line, the reader will eat out of your hands.

Answer 4

Look at existing books to get an idea of how other writers approach this genre. Stephen King is a well-known writer of horror, so you might want to take a look at his work. Perhaps you should also consider watching some horror films for inspiration.

You also need to think about which audience you are thinking of writing for. If it is a young audience, then you might want to take a tamer approach, such as writing a scary but humorous picture book.

Examples of horror picture books include 'Funnybones' by Janet and Allan Ahlberg and 'Haunted House' by Jan Pienkowski. There are also the Point Horror books - which are aimed at teenagers which you might want to have a look at to gain ideas.

If you are writing for adults, then try Stephen King, or Clive Barker.