Best Practices: Write Something Scary! 

Hey, writers! Give me your one best piece of advice to help someone learn to write something actually scary for a reader. And… GO!

Jessica Nettles: Mine the things that scare you the most, especially childhood fears. Then crank them to 11 (that is a different level for different people). I never fail to hit my mark when I go there.

John L. Taylor: Make the reader care about the character who will have the worst fate. Horror fails if you’re rooting for the protagonists to die. Get them emotionally invested in someone who really doesn’t deserve their fate and slowly pick them apart like a daisy. They will know fear from that.

John Pence: It’s got to scare the author. It’s got to be something the author had to be brave and confront.

That’s not true for all horror, and can be applied outside of that genre.

Scariest damn thing I ever read was Poe’s first-person narrator popping his cat’s eye with a pocket knife in “The Black Cat.” I read that when I was like 9 or 10, and I still feel it.

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https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2024/10/best-practices-write-something-scary.html