Write Horror Fiction in 5 Simple Steps by Laura Baskes Litwin

Author:Laura Baskes Litwin [Litwin, Laura Baskes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4645-1006-9
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Setting

Perhaps more than any other genre, horror relies on setting. Creating an atmosphere of tension and suspense is crucial to a successful horror story. To do a good job with this, think about how each of your senses can contribute.

For example, picture yourself in a Greyhound bus terminal at two in the morning on a sweltering August night, in-the-middle-of-nowhere Nebraska. A single fan drones overhead, barely moving the heavy air. Cigarette butts litter a cracked linoleum floor. Outside the window, the silent pitch-black plains stretch in four directions, with no sign of the scheduled bus, or any other traffic. A morbidly obese woman presses her sweaty flesh against yours on the waiting-room bench. You take a bite from a tuna fish sandwich that went bad from the heat hours earlier.

Your story can continue in many directions from here, but an atmosphere of bleak menace is a nice attention grabber. Your reader’s curiosity and anxiety levels will start inching up from the start.

Now let’s turn our attention to the enormously overweight woman. She is wearing a loose-fitting, brown sleeveless smock. The exposed skin on her beefy arms and legs is badly bruised. A plastic bracelet on her wrist identifies her as a patient from the local psychiatric institution.

Your heart pumps faster. Why is she at the bus depot alone, in the middle of the night, still in her hospital gown? And why, in a nearly empty lobby, is she sitting so close that you can smell her bad breath?

After you set the stage, let your characters tell your story. Aim to create three-dimensional characters, so real they seem to think for themselves. Consider what they look like but also what they grab for snacks, what music they listen to, where their grandparents were born. Can they swim? Are they afraid of heights? Allergic to bees?

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