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I've been reading 'The Fire in Fiction' by Donald Maass lately. What I found useful was the following tip (paraphrased): The character must believe the danger is there. If you can build up the cha...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T01:58:12Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4087 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Lexi
·
2019-12-08T01:58:12Z (almost 5 years ago)
I've been reading 'The Fire in Fiction' by Donald Maass lately. What I found useful was the following tip (paraphrased): The character must believe the danger is there. If you can build up the character as someone the reader empathises with and can connect to, then when you start to build up their fear, it comes across to the reader. Doesn't matter if the reader doesn't find an enemy head on a pike scary (and these days, many people are so inured to gore and violence a simple description would wash over them) - what matters is that the _character_ is completely creeped out and terrified. In short, one effective way of creating fear is to tie that emotion to the character whose POV we are seeing the scene from. We as readers are emotionally connected to that person, so even if we're not scared, seeing how scared they are will feed our fear.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2011-09-28T23:31:46Z (about 13 years ago)
Original score: 8