There’s something really cool about writing horror that makes it incredibly fun to play with, and that is its ability to be layered on top of almost any other genre and still be effective. Think about it – how many genres can you really say this about? Romance and mystery come to mind, but they both rely on evoking emotions like affection or curiosity that are far more common in everyday life than the visceral terror you need for horror.
And that’s not even to start on the multitude of genres where you can’t really pull this layering trick at all. When was the last time you read a book with just a hint of high fantasy, or a sprinkling of historical fiction? I can’t say that I ever have, which might be because these genres tend to lend themselves heavily to a kind of all-or-nothing style, with tropes deeply rooted in things like worldbuilding that are hard to do by half-measures. These genres often end up forming the basis of whatever story they’re used in, rather than merely an added layer.
Horror tropes, by contrast, tend to be plot points that evoke a strong and very specific emotion from the audience, rather than relying on facts of the world or some system the characters are using. You can combine any two genres, sure, but this phenomenon means you’ll have a much easier task ahead of you if one of those genres is something like horror.
Here’s the thing: anything can be horrifying. Anything can have a dark twist on it. Sci-fi horror? That’s everywhere (and it’s what I write!). Fantasy horror? Sure, you could have those fairies go on a murder spree – I’d run. Historical horror? Yup, people were just as twisted back in the good old days as they are now. Comedy horror? Surprise, that’s actually a thing. The list goes on and on and on.
So how do you do this? How do you make anything horrifying? What are the secret ingredients in this delicious cocktail of “oh, hell no”? Let us investigate. I’m going to draw a lot of examples from sci-fi horror, because that’s what I write and what I most like to read, but you can apply these lessons anywhere. While I will be keeping these examples as spoiler-free as I can, it is horror we’re discussing today, so if you consider “well, some people die” to be a spoiler for a horror story… sorry.
What scares people, anyway?
Hint: the answer is in that sentence.
It’s hardly original of me to suggest that the most universally terrifying thing in the world is just straight-up other people. But it’s more complex than that. I promise, this is not just social anxiety talking. Let me explain.
A staggering amount of horror out there leans heavily on the concept of humanity. A quick way to generate feelings of horror is to take something that isn’t supposed to be human-like and make it so, or strip the humanity from something that would normally have it in spades. A lot of horror relies on the trope of something that isn’t human (like a monster, an artificial intelligence, or an inanimate object) beginning to act human. Haunted dolls only scare us when we realize they can come to life. AIs are just silicon and electricity … until one gets angry.
In fact, even when you don’t warp or twist or exaggerate it at all, humanity can be a scary thing. I mean, just look at us: highly intelligent creatures with intense emotions, boundless creativity, and a shocking ability to survive in even the most inhospitable conditions on practically nothing but stubbornness or spite – who knows what we’ll do next? The ideas, feelings, and judgements of your characters are all gold mines for generating circumstances that are horrifying not only because of their consequences, but because we can imagine ourselves doing the same thing.
The movie Alien is a masterclass in this technique. Leaving out the obvious horror of stuff like monsters exploding out of people’s chests and looking instead at just the story itself, the scary stuff in Alien (in my opinion) boils down to two main sources:
- The alien itself, which is scary because its intelligence is on par with (or surpasses) that of the human crew it’s hunting, and
- The humans, who arguably kind of mishandle the situation, eventually being killed as much by their own egos and emotions as by the alien itself.
Here, the alien is frightening in large part because it surpasses the humans around it in terms of traits that we, as humans, tend to pride ourselves on, such as intelligence and creativity. A dumb or uncreative alien would still be scary, but not horrifying, at least not in the way that sticks and keeps you afraid beyond the shorter-term terror of the more shocking, gory scenes.
Additionally, the human factor in the story adds another layer of horror because the mistakes the crew make can largely be traced back very common, very human emotions like anger, sympathy, defiance, overconfidence, greed, or doubt. In fact, the movie devotes a large part of its opening (as well as some of the moments directly preceding some of the most horrific scenes) to showing you the crew interacting in natural, relatable ways: laughing together, telling stories, bantering, complaining about bad food. The kind of things you can see anyone, or more importantly, yourself, doing. The movie reminds us that these people are human beings, just like us… and five minutes later, that’s just what gets them killed.
Keep the bomb under the table
Alfred Hitchcock had a famous piece of advice for writing suspense, which is very relevant here:
Four people are sitting around a table, talking about baseball, whatever you like. Five minutes of it, very dull. Suddenly a bomb goes off – blows the people to smithereens. What do the audience have – ten seconds of shock? Now, take the same scene and tell the audience, “There is a bomb under that table, and it will go off in five minutes.” Well, the whole emotion of the audience is totally different, because you’ve given them that information that in five minutes’ time that bomb will go off. Now the conversation about baseball becomes very vital, because they’re saying to you, “Don’t be ridiculous; stop talking about baseball; there’s a bomb under there!” You’ve got the audience working.
Alfred Hitchcock
(There’s actually a little more to that quote; watch the whole thing here.)
This advice is at the core of why successful horror stories tend not to rely too much on cheap jump scares or the pure shock value of a genuine surprise. Those are useful tools, to be sure, but they must be used sparingly, and you have to understand that they alone will not be enough to cultivate the atmosphere you’re looking for. These scenes pack a punch, often serving to show the audience and characters just how much under threat they really are. But horror is about more than simply communicating, “Hey, there’s a threat” in the moment. It’s about cultivating a persistent atmosphere of fear that joins the party early and lingers long after the shock has faded, and you get that by not just telling your readers about the threat, but by telling them in advance.
There’s a good example of this in S.A. Barnes’ recent sci-fi horror release, Dead Silence, which I’m reading right now (and will be reviewing soon, by the way!). It’s plenty suspenseful and carries an eerie, foreboding tone throughout every single scene. And it’s filled with the most counter-intuitive thing: flash-forwards. Throughout the story, we get scenes showing the main character being interrogated about her experiences after all is said and done – scenes that are full of things you’d think an author, especially one hoping to generate tension, fear, and suspense, would keep to themselves, including sometimes telling you exactly who dies and how.
The magic of this is that you then return to the main chapters with your nails already half chewed off because you know so-and-so is going to die by such-and-such, but how in the world does that end up happening, and when?! You don’t know, but you know it must happen, and you know that no matter what the characters try to do to save themselves, it’s all for nothing. That’s scary.
Weaponize tone
As you may have realized by now, horror tends to rely heavily on tone to make it work. Now, tone is less about what you write than how you write it. For a beautiful example of tone being the thing that tips a story into the category of horror rather than just plain sci-fi, let’s look at Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. The horror element of this book is deeply atmospheric, conveying that atmosphere right from the very start, before you have any information about what’s going on. In fact, written with a different tone, this story could easily read as far less horrifying than it is.
The thing is, VanderMeer has completely mastered how to convey the feeling of walking into a place and just getting really, hella bad vibes, and he does it using one of the most distinctive tones of any novel I think I’ve ever read. Guys, this is a book where descriptions of a pile of decomposing paper make you want to throw up. It’s some seriously good stuff. Exhibit A:
We were on a dirt trail strewn with pebbles, dead leaves, and pine needles damp to the touch. Velvet ants and tiny emerald beetles crawled over them. The tall pines, with their scaly ridges of bark, rose on both sides, and the shadows of flying birds conjured lines between them. The air was so fresh it buffeted the lungs and we strained to breathe for a few seconds, mostly from surprise.
Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation
Now, is anything he’s describing here objectively horrifying? Not really, right? I grew up in/near the woods, so maybe I’m biased, but I’d say that all sounds pretty similar to the trail I can see from my office window. But just from the way he’s describing it, you know this isn’t a place you ever want to find yourself. He doesn’t describe the birds themselves, but their shadows. Tree bark is described as having “scaly ridges” – a descriptor that, if I saw it in isolation, I’d probably attribute to a passage about a T-rex rather than a tree. He’s even found something unsettling to convey about breathing fresh air.
Now, I pulled this segment from the very first chapter. At this point in the story, you have little more than the bare bones, back cover blurb explanation of what’s going on. Yet VanderMeer’s careful choice of what to describe and how tells you exactly what kind of book you’re dealing with. It tells you that anything could be lurking behind those scaly trees or under those dead leaves. And the best part is, it tells you this long before you find out that something really is.
Also, I discovered while researching this post that Jeff VanderMeer has a page on his website where he posts pictures of his back yard and all the wildlife there. It’s wonderful. So if you need a nice, wholesome break from thinking about dark, atmospheric sci-fi horror, or perhaps just a reminder that nature is not always out to get you, go look at this. You’re very welcome. (And Jeff, if you ever read this, I love your yard.)
Putting it all together
I want to point out, the tools I’ve talked about here – playing with tone, careful characterization, plot points that play off of the humanness of your characters (or the inhumanness of something else), even the method we talked about for generating suspense – are all things you will find applicable to every single genre. Changing the decisions your characters make, or using different words to describe something, or rearranging the order of a scene to show the readers the metaphorical bomb under the table isn’t going to make your story not sci-fi or not fantasy or whatever. You’re still in your painstakingly-crafted fairy kingdom, your magic system still works like you wanted it to, and your rocket ship will still fly.
But now, the fairies are out for blood, and that rocket isn’t coming back.
Happy writing!