How I Write a Scary Scene
You know that feeling when you wake up in the middle of the night? Everyone gets it—fuzzy and disoriented, caught between a dream and reality. The delicate skin of your eyelids flutters as you struggle to adjust your vision to the initially impenetrable darkness. Eventually you remember where you are. It’s your room, a beloved sanctuary, and a soothing wave of relief sweeps across your frozen muscles. You curl up in your snuggly blanket, secure until there’s a small noise. The creak shouldn’t happen in a house of sleeping people, and you begin to catalog those familiar surroundings just in case.
Example:
What was that?
My eyes snap back open as a gasp hitches in my chest.
No worries, must’ve still been dreaming. It’s ok.
There, that’s my nightstand with the red numbers blaring across the silent face of the alarm clock. 3:03, plenty of time to get back to sleep before work. And that hunched mound across the way, it’s nothing. Only the full clothes hamper next to the closet, a guilt-stained reproach from the laundry I’ve avoided washing all week.
Wait, why is the closet open? I always shut it.
The steady drumbeat of my pulse picks up, a staccato tempo as my now razor-sharp vision fixes on something dark and limp curled beside that impossibly cracked door. A discarded sock, a shirt sleeve? Such a shapeless lump could be anything. Well, not totally shapeless. A flat, wrinkled swath of leathery skin engulfs a delicate and recognizable skeletal structure. No, impossible…can’t be a hand—shriveled, desiccated as a mummified child. Lifeless until it stirs, one slender finger slowly rising to curl in an unspoken question.
Christ, is this for real?
A whiff of brimstone wafts across the room, the sulphurous stench searing my tortured lungs. My airway spasms, inadvertently gulping down more of the toxic fumes. Hot tears leak down my flushed cheeks to mingle among a budding sheen of sweat. I choke, unable to make my dried lips curve to shape the right words. The syllables clump and stick in the impassable vault of my throat.
Help, there’s a monster in my room!
No one will rescue me, not unless things begin working again. Can’t move in this persistent dream state…paralyzed, helpless. The commands spill from my brain like water from a broken dam, an internal riot but ultimately ineffectual.
I’m all alone…but not. The shadowed claw stretches a little further, crooked fingers capped with dull nails tentatively clicking against the hardwood floor. A pensive noise, Tap…Tap…Tap, like the thing’s deciding what to do with me. I struggle within my invisible chains, an unwilling prisoner in my own body. A new sound floats above it all, a lazy swoosh then a thump like a sleepwalker stumbling forward in their comfy slippers. It’s moving closer.
Well, that will tuck itself in the back of my mind, ready to pop out of nowhere when I lie down for sleep later. But, that’s part of the fun of living in my brain. Because, you see, I’m a horror writer and I love scaring myself.
Horror isn’t always about blood and guts, and big men in hockey masks carrying machetes. Real horror elicits emotions—fear, panic, terror—which all point to the same culprit. Death, but maybe not the general idea of dying. No, I believe what scares most people about death is the idea that it will hurt and we’ll suffer at the hands of our greatest fear. There’s also the anxiety lurking beneath our rational minds that we’ve lost control, snapped the delicate tether mooring us to the familiar. Something is out to get us, strange and relentless, and there’s nothing we can do.
The monster claw is unsettling within the scene, but it’s not scary by itself. We know monsters aren’t real. But, the closet monster represents the unknown. A lingering fear from our childhood, something evil lying in wait in our safe bedroom. It’s hungry, licking its chops in anticipation of one nice bite…unless it has another purpose which eludes us. And that mysterious purpose is even more terrifying because it’s beyond the borders of our imagination.
The tension mounts for our groggy protagonist. Is she awake or asleep? Her rational mind wars with her body’s automatic response system, desperate to prove the danger she senses isn’t real. Doubt and paranoia, those always spice things up especially when the character’s fears are confirmed or even worse than imagined. Who doesn’t love an unreliable narrator?
This is where the horror genre shines. The monster is a metaphor. The book or movie provide a safe setting to examine certain conflicts or issues. It’s a simulation which allows us to identify our greatest fears and troubleshoot survival methods.
We journey into the heart of darkness with the protagonist, experiencing everything through their eyes. We’re sympathetic to their plight, connecting on some level to their struggle. And the most human part of all is our gratitude. It’s them, the protagonist who suffers, not us. When the story is over, we exhale a sigh of relief. We made it! Our subconscious stores all those emotions and tricky scenarios away in case we’re ever in a similar situation.
For instance, people love zombie shows like The Walking Dead. They connect with those characters, either mocking their mistakes or praising their ingenuity. When the episode ends, they turn to each other with smug expressions, “Now I know how to survive the zombie apocalypse!” It’s a joke, because of course the zombie apocalypse will never happen. It’s all make-believe. But a little voice pipes up from the bottomless well of our subconscious, that dark corner of our primal animal brain, cracking its knuckles before stating calmly: I’m ready.
But some will say, “Nothing scares me—I’ve seen it all.” So, how do we write a scene that will frighten our audience? What’s the best way to wow generations of complacent horror fans?
Authenticity.
Everyone’s heard the adage Write What You Know. A sound notion in theory, but it’s not meant to take literally otherwise our stories would be too limited. All that’s needed is a pinch, a garnish that pulls the various components of a dish together in one unified presentation.
I begin by creating creatures and settings that scare me. I imagine myself in the position of the character, witnessing something terrible unfold. Use all five senses—what do they see, hear, feel, smell, or even taste? Blend the ordinary with the extraordinary, such as a familiar setting invaded by a strangeness that starts our mental alarms ringing.
The best scary things are relatable—something that could happen, peppered with a few fantastic elements for added effect. Sometimes I place myself in the scene, a crash test dummy to see how the fear should manifest. In the example above, I studied my own dark bedroom: the nightstand, the laundry, the white wood of the closet door that sometimes pops open seemingly by itself. And what if something was there? A shriveled claw of a hand attached to God only knows what, tapping pensively while internally debating its next move. Hello, terror.
This method works for me. The scene unfolds within my imagination like a movie. Sometimes it’s so vivid I have to sleep with the lights on, but that’s ok because it means the scene worked. And when my beta readers chastise me because I didn’t warn them what was coming, I indulge in a moment of satisfaction echoing the triumphant cry of our dear Dr. Frankenstein: It’s Alive!
What are the monsters that scare you? Or, are you more frightened of ordinary problems—job loss, a relationship breaking apart, some public wardrobe malfunction? There’s always an element of fear in any story, whether it’s a monster or something more mundane. This connects directly to the concept of stakes. All characters are faced with a conflict and an antagonist, and the stakes relate to what they could lose.
Life is the ultimate prize at stake. Death sucks, that’s no newsflash. But, there are worse things than death. How does one die? Did it hurt? Did you watch someone you love go first? The characters’ anxiety infects us as they decide the best way to proceed. What will they choose and why? And, of course, we want to know if the character lives…but more importantly, what quality of life will remain after suffering through such horrific events?
Writers have an opportunity to explore our worst fears in brutal detail. Our stories are what-if scenarios, cautionary tales to help people navigate the unpredictable waters of the human condition. The best writers leave their audiences with some type of general resolution. In horror, it’s often a moral lesson. However, like real life, the moral lesson isn’t always just. Not everyone is guaranteed a happy ending, even the protagonist we’ve been rooting for during each trial and tribulation. As in any fiction genre, the journey often trumps the destination.
Make your characters sympathetic—vivid and real so readers care what happens to them. Breathe life into your monster, boogeyman, or your palpable sense of dread. Scare yourself first, that’s always a sign you’re on the right trail. Write what you believe, what feels real to you. If you’re convinced, the audience will be convinced. And that is where the magic lives.
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