When spooky season starts, you might find yourself inspired to try creating a creepy story. Whether you’re sitting around a campfire or curled up in your bed at night, scary stories are an effective way to capture your audience’s attention, set the mood, and send chills down their spines.
In his memoir and craft guidebook On Writing, prolific novelist Stephen King offers many helpful tips for writers, contextualized within his preferred genres of suspense and thrillers. Let’s take a look at three key “secrets” from King to help unlock the spooky potential of your scary story.
The term ‘speculative fiction’ applies to writing across many genres, from science fiction and fantasy to the paranormal and scary. When writing is speculative, it raises questions about the world by applying conjecture and imagination to potential situations. King writes that the most interesting situations are often a simple ‘What-if?’ scenario, and uses several of his own book premises as examples:
“What if vampires invaded a small New England village? (‘Salem’s Lot)”
“What if a policeman in a remote Nevada town went berserk and started killing everyone in sight? (Desperation)”
“What if a young mother and her son became trapped in their stalled car by a rabid dog? (Cajo)”
King says that each of these what-ifs occurred to him in his day-to-day life. A compelling scary story often starts with a simple or familiar situation, and then adds an unlikely but frightening possibility. The more relatable a scenario is, the more realistic it becomes. If your reader can imagine themselves in place of the characters, the scary elements are all the more effective.
Small towns and long car drives aren’t necessarily interesting on their own, but when you add an unexpected what-if question, everything changes. What if your hometown was infiltrated by vampires? What if it was you and your mom stuck in the car?
King writes that description makes the reader a “sensory participant in the story.” By engaging the reader with all five senses (touch, taste, sound, sight, scent), you can immerse them in whatever atmosphere you want. For a spooky story, the mood and atmosphere is especially crucial, because you are tapping into the reader’s instincts, emotions, and fears.
In regard to description, King says that “It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to.” With scary stories, both extremes of how much description – very little, or a lot – can be effective.
Minimal descriptive elements set an uncertain, unknown atmosphere, where mysterious things hide in the shadows, quiet words are whispered, and questions are left unresolved. If you are sparse in your illustrative language, you leave the most frightening elements of your story up to the reader’s imagination.
On the other hand, intense description fully immerses your reader into the character’s experience. King emphasizes the power of well-chosen details that communicate the most important things about the character and situation. Here, sensory descriptions are especially helpful. What would it feel like to run barefoot at full speed away from a monster in the woods? How fast would your heart beat and how sweaty would your palms be if you were trapped in a tiny closet, hiding from a horde of zombies?
We all know that unpleasant tickle that skitters down our back when something eerie occurs. We might be walking alone down a dark road, or hear a strange noise downstairs in an empty house. Such experiences trigger our sixth sense—our internal instinct that something might be wrong—which sets us up for a confrontation with the unknown.
These scary moments cause fear because we are caught off-guard. Our fear also builds on itself, compounding as we begin to notice each creaky noise and flickering shadow. Try to pair the startling and unexpected with a slow, suspenseful escalation of events to create a thrilling and spine-chilling moment for the reader.
King explains this in terms of pacing: “I believe each story should be allowed to unfold at its own pace, and that pace is always double time. Nevertheless, you need to beware–if you slow the pace down too much, even the most patient reader is apt to grow restive."
When you’ve found your what-if, decided on a descriptive mood, and set the suspenseful pace of your story, you’re ready to write something spooky!
If you’re still brainstorming, consider the following questions:
Whether you write about skeletons, cryptids, hauntings, or crime sprees, hopefully these scary story secrets help define your direction and elevate your ideas to their ultimate frightening potential!
Madison Zuñiga is an undergraduate student studying creative writing and studio arts in Southern California. She's enthusiastic about strange experimental fiction, and in her own writing she likes to incorporate eerie settings and imagery that serves as metaphor. Recently, she has spent time researching the concept of the grotesque in the gothic literature of Flannery O’Conner and Alice Munro, and has been inspired to address similar themes in her creative pursuits.