I'm not sure where to start with writing a horror story
I haven't written anything horror, but I have had scenes in my past stories that my friends have stated was 'creepy,' so I've decided I wanted to attempt to write something scary. I tend to lean into Fantasy when I write, though, so I feel like I may end up writing some super cliché variation of a ghost story everyone's heard before. Knowing this, I want to try something more realistic, but I'm not sure exactly where to start.
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To be fair, writing horror is where I struggle most in writing as well, but I do listen to a lot of very creepy stories online.
One thing I am certain about is with all of the stories, they all have 1. a protagonist, 2. an enemy force or person or thing, 3. and they all have a twist of surprise.
My personal favorite is a story called "The Minimalist" It has the main character, who is roommates with someone who went to Japan, and learned how simplistic their living conditions were and decided to adopt them too. The roommate took the minimalist life too far and got rid of everything in his apartment, while the main character watches this happen.
In the end, the main character ends up just like his roommate, squished inside of a cramped wardrobe, nothing to eat, and nothing to wear.
It's got all of the elements present, and it brings an eerie feel when it's told.
I suggest following those guidelines in order to have at least a good start.
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The most terrifying novel I ever read and one of the greatest horror novels (Stephen King's Pet Sematary) started with a happy family moving into a suburban house. The horror element starts many pages later. Such a simple beginning -- an everyday event as mentioned in Emily's answer here -- can be disquieting on its own if the reader knows this is going to be a horror novel. As other answers have stated, horror is not about horrifying scenes alone, but equally about terrifying possibilities as in W.W.Jacobs' all-time classic "The Monkey's Paw." Of course if you are writing a short story like that you might need a more impactful opening.
I am no writer myself but a very experienced 'constant reader' and I have found that great power can be achieved by surreal scenes which some writers describe as 'a few degrees off-angle to reality' or 'just a shade insane' -- somebody even called it 'the mind going off the rails for a few seconds' and that somehow tremendously intensifies the reader's unease. A brilliant example is the 'boys' boarding school scene' in Talisman by King and Straub, as also several scenes related to the magician's craft from Peter Straub's great novel Shadowland -- I write this to make the point that in our over-exposed age when youngsters are thoroughly familiar with slasher genres, a subtle terror that disturbs the subconscious mind can still be extremely effective, paradoxically more sinister than obviously florid horror.
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Start with introspection. Your friends said some things you wrote were creepy; so it sounds like you did not even think so until they told you so.
What was creepy about it? Do you write cold-blooded characters well? Do you write scenes of blood and guts well? Do you write emotional devastation well? Are you good at brutal rape scenes? Or is it a feeling of dread? or supernatural presence?
You are writing something that gives them the creeps, and it is always a good thing to be able to write something that evokes a visceral feeling, but you need to focus and figure out a type of scene (or more than one) that you are naturally good it.
You want to build on that foundation; in an escalating manner, and (as Stephen King says) build yourself a kind, sweet, normal kind of character, somebody the reader can identify with, the girl next door, and then put her in the cooker. A small bit to start, a frightening but ultimately forgettable incident (like a car wreck, or being present for a bank robbery, but horror type). Then another, and another.
A horror story is like any other in the sense that the first act moves from normal to a clear problem, the problem escalates and the hero fails to stop it, then a key is found and after more losses the hero finally prevails after giving their all; or gives their all and fails, and the problem laughs and moves on to its next victim.
The villain can be personified, or environmental (e.g. cancer, poverty, mental illness, trapped, etc).
You need to start with generalizing whatever it is you are doing right, and stop doing it by chance or accident and start doing it on purpose.
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