Rule of Terror

A Very Spooky Shelf Life

Welcome to Halloween. Well it’s not Halloween for you, Halloween is over for you. Halloween is still upon me, as I am writing this. I’m writing you a spooky Shelf Life even though by the time you read it Spooky Season will be so last month and we’re on to Turkey Time. It’s actually already xmas season at Costco, and has been since September.

Today I’m on about how to write scary for non-horror writers. I’m emphasizing for non-horror writers because I am not, myself, a horror writer and therefore every horror writer writes horror better than me. This is not a Shelf Life on how to write scary horror fiction. I do not know how. I only know I’m still really scared of The Ring (2002) and it’s been twenty years.

I’m so un-knowledgeable about horror fiction that I’m never really sure what it is. Sometimes something will be classified as horror fiction that isn’t actually scary in any way, but has a supernatural element (like a ghost). I guess horror fiction is any scary fiction or any fiction that has a ghost. In that case I sometimes write horror fiction, because sometimes there is a ghost. Something I was working on lately had the ghost of a dead incel. That’s kind of scary but, like, existentially so. Twilight has vampires but it’s not scary. The Fountainhead has no supernatural creates of any kind but it’s scary. Anyway, I don’t know how any of this works.

For people who write non-horror fiction—meaning non-scary fiction, whether or not it has ghosts and/or objectivism—you might want to make your work scary sometimes. Or maybe you just want to get your reader turning pages faster at a certain point. Amp up the anxiety. Get the heart thumping a bit. Let’s go through some of my favorite ways to do this without going for, in the immortal words of Stephen King, “the gross out.”

Stephen King has a hierarchy of scary writing with three levels: Terror, horror, and the gross out. Here is his quote on the subject, which I think is from Danse Macabre? Or, I don’t know, he’s definitely talked about this a lot:

The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there.

Terror is the highest form of fright, which (paraphrasing King) one should aspire to use when possible. When terror isn’t possible, horror is next best. When neither is possible, the gross-out is always available. You might think of it like this: Horror intends to unsettle, frighten, or disgust. The gross-out disgusts the reader. Horror frightens the reader. Terror unsettles the reader and, done well, might leave them unsettled after they put the book down or turn off the movie, sometimes even twenty years later. 

True story: I had a DVD of The Ring and I kept it in the trunk of my car for six years because I didn’t want to bring it in the house.

Because we’re very specifically not talking about horror fiction today but instead about scariness in other kinds of fiction, we’re going to focus on terror. The psychological fear that unsettles the reader and worms its way into their mind. You probably have to have something like this, somewhere in your fiction. Somewhere in that manuscript, there’s got to be something that will worry the reader—something that will make their palms sweat a little or make them feel anxious. If there’s nothing for them to get a little wound up about you might need to revisit your stakes: Are there any? Is there no chance your protagonist might fail in their endeavor or that things might not go their way? If not, why are we reading? What’s keeping us invested in the story?

I’ve said this before but I read Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree lately, the subtitle of which book is “A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes.” It’s about an orc who quits adventuring an opens a coffee shop. Even though it promised me a low-stakes, slice-of-life, cozy fantasy read (which it delivered!), there were still moments where I worried that something would go badly for protagonist Viv or one of her colorful friends. Like what if something happened to her Gnomish-made coffee-making machine? What would happen to her coffee shop then!? This is what I mean by, you have to have some kind of stakes—you know what, I might write about stakes later this week or month. We’ll get into it more then.

All I’m getting at is, even in a low-stakes, cozy story, there must be some kind of concern that the reader has for the characters and the outcome they’re headed toward. Otherwise (most) readers will get bored.

Imagine your reader is a fish. You, the author, are the fisherperson. Storytelling is your fishing apparatus—the pole, the line, the hook, the bait, the sinker, the float. All that fishing stuff. Tackle. Dramatic tension is the fishing line in this extended and unwieldy metaphor. Dramatic tension is what you use to drag the reader through the story while you reel them in. Dramatic tension is what gets the pulse pounding. Knees weak, palms a bit sweaty. Mom’s spaghetti, et ceteretti. Here are my top tips to amp it up.

Withhold Information From Your Reader

When I say “withhold information from the reader,” this is a little tricky to get exactly right in a way you might not imagine. After all, when we write for an audience, we’re doling out information how and when we see fit. That’s literally what writing is—giving information to the reader so they can put it together in their head to ingest the story.

In that sense, anything you haven’t yet told the reader is information you’ve withheld. Anything you don’t intend to tell them at all, and anything you’re going to tell them after this point, is information that is presently withheld. But that’s not necessarily what I mean. I mean to withhold information from your reader but make sure the reader knows they don’t have the whole story.

For a masterclass in this, read (or re-read, more likely) “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. As the reader makes their way through the story, it becomes apparent that they—we—are missing a crucial piece of information: To wit, what’s this lottery about, exactly, that half the town wants to stop doing it and nobody wants to win? It starts off ordinary enough but the dribs and drab of information the reader receives about the lottery process add up quickly to reveal that something isn’t right here, but it’s not till the end that the last piece of information is handed over.

In first-time readers, “The Lottery” almost universally produces a slow-growing sense of curiosity and dread as they realize that they’re missing something—something important—and that everybody (in the story) knows it but them. When the reader knows they’re being kept in the dark about something critical, that’s excellent motivation for them to make it to the end for the payoff. Just make sure the the payoff is worth the reader’s time and effort. 

Withhold Information From Your Character

Another trick for ramping up the reader’s stress is to give the reader critical information and then withhold that same information from a character in whom they are invested.

This can be challenging to do—very challenging, depending on the narrative structure and point-of-view you’re using. In a short story with a single point of view, I would say this is a very difficult—but not impossible—exercise. You have to be very creative to sneak information to the reader via the point-of-view (POV) character without the POV character noticing it. In this format (single point of view), this is easiest to do if the POV character’s awareness is limited in some way: For instance, if they are a child. A child can hear adults talking about something and know the words but not what they mean in context. Another example is a character who is not paying attention and missing critical information here and there so that later information means nothing to them (but perhaps means something to the reader). I’m looking at you, Gideon Nav.

A story with multiple points of view is where this technique really shines. A fairly famous example comes from the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin (also known as Game of Thrones), wherein the reader receives information from a large host of point-of-view characters. By piecing together discrete bits of information and facts known to several characters who don’t interact with one another, the reader is able to make an important discovery about Jon Snow that is known to almost none of the characters, and certainly not to Jon (he knows nothing, actually).

Another deft use of this technique is from Six of Crows, a multi-POV heist story, in which the six main characters are split up for the main action. During the course of the heist, most of the characters learn something that would be pivotal for a different character to know, but have no way to tell that other character the information they have learned. 

Both of these examples are great for building a sense of foreboding in the reader, who realizes they have learned important information ahead of the character they’re invested in and they have no way to convey the information to that character and no way to know whether the character will receive this information in time to avert disaster—except by continuing to read.

Change Up the Pace

Finally, a trick to get your reader feeling frantic and panicked that has nothing to do with when you choose to reveal  information and everything to do with how.

When you write prose, you’re not just imparting information (even though I said above “that’s literally what writing is”). You’re also controlling the rhythm and speed at which the reader takes in your text. Part of every writer’s style is the pace and prosody of their writing.

When a writer uses long words, sentences, and long paragraphs, the reading pace slows. Longer, more esoteric words, more complicated sentences, and paragraphs with many ideas in them cause the reader to slow down in order to absorb everything they’re reading. A word of caution: Don’t get too esoteric or complicated. You never want to write a sentence or paragraph that the reader has to go back and read a second time because they’re not sure if they read it right!

Conversely, using smaller words; shorter, simpler sentences; and briefer paragraphs causes the reading pace to speed up. The words and sentences don’t require as much thought to parse so the reader can move from one to the next much more quickly. This creates a subconscious sense of urgency (and even frenzy) for the reader, which can give the impression of barreling forward in the story a little bit out of control. As you’re bringing you’re reader toward the crux of climax of your story, try this trick to get them reaching for a chill pill afterward (just kidding—Xanax is not that easy to get).

If you don’t think a little sped-up, fast-paced rush to the end is scary—you must be done your holiday shopping. Because how is it November already? Frankly, I’m terrified.

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