“What Makes a Good Horror Story”

I’ve written several horror stories in my life.  One is even available at Smashwords.com and at many fine ebook retailers.  The title is Root Magic.  Here’s the synopsis:

In April 1969, a U.S. Navy attack submarine, the Tulsa, sank off the coast of Brazil, during routine maneuvers.  Six men survived, one of them Bart Millen, the captain.  A reluctant hero for saving the other five, Millen is haunted with guilt over what happened.  He moves to Bayville, South Carolina years later, to get away from the press.  What Millen doesn’t know is that there was another survivor.  His executive officer, Nathan Caden, managed to make it to shore and now thirsts for revenge against his former commanding officer, whom he believes deliberately left him for dead.  Caden follows Millen and his family and sets himself up deep in the pine woods and swamps of Bay County, biding his time until he can put into action a plan to discredit and destroy Millen.  Adopting the guise of a renowned white witch doctor, long thought dead and gone, Caden terrorizes Bay County and the Millen family for months, until the reluctant son of a local black root doctor helps Millen turn the tables and defeat Caden’s plan. 

A good horror story is written by taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary, turning the commonplace into something sinister, menacing and frightening.  Real horror and terror comes not from ghosts and vampires and zombies, though they can stir our most primal dreads when done well, but from seeing something common and comforting turn into something deadly and unexpected. 

In a blog post at Writer’s Digest, author Cris Freese lists six things that writers of horror stories should do.

1. Good horror means a good setting
2. Don’t go overboard on the scares
3. Use source material to find true horror
4. Know the strengths of your characters
5. Create underlying themes in your story
6. Remember to sustain the tension
    
   All these are good points, though I might take issue with number five.  Here’s how I applied these to Root Magic.
    

1. The setting of my story is the Carolina Low Country.  Anybody who’s ever traveled the back roads of this area at night knows how naturally eerie it is, with the water oaks, Spanish moss, creeks and swamps.  I did everything I could to lay on the setting details pretty thick, partly to draw the reader into the strongest possible sense of place and then abruptly turn that place into something grisly, unexpected, and terrifying. 
2. A little goes a long way.  Less is more.  Author Cris Freese says this the best way: The simpler, the better. It gives readers some opportunity to fill in the gaps and imagine what could happen next. If you’re throwing a lot of scares and horror elements at them, it can be overwhelming. Give some room for their imagination to run wild. That can provide plenty of scares.
3. Ground your story in the commonplace and use reality to give it extra kick.  My story involves a witch doctor, a root doctor is the proper term, a sort of faith healer, of the type indigenous to the Gullah culture of the Low Country.  There really are and were such people and in fact, my story is loosely based on an actual white witch doctor, actually a county sheriff of a local jurisdiction in the area.  He wore two hats: witch doctor and sheriff.  Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.  And several years ago, I had the pleasure of hearing from a reader who had traveled extensively in west Africa and who said the story reminded her of the faith healers she had encountered there.  That’s where the Gullah culture originated.
4. Knowing your characters inside out should go without saying.  In my case, the sympathetic lead was a former Navy submarine skipper named Bart Millen, who was consumed with guilt over losing his boat in an accident and being one of the few survivors.  This guilt made him more susceptible to the depredations of my villain, Nathan Caden, who had assumed the guise of a local witch doctor and ‘mythical’ Gator Man, to play on Millen’s guilt and ultimately destroy him.  The relationship of these two men, former Navy shipmates aboard the ill-fated submarine, from their past and into the present, drives a lot of the story.  I tried to depict both men in detail to make their motives and actions believable and the results ultimately inevitable.
5. I have some issue with this one.  Any kind of underlying theme should be applied very lightly, so as not to overwhelm the story itself.  Author Freese says this:  It can be something that’s in the reader’s face, or something more subtle. But the theme should be tangible by the end of the story. And generally, with a good resolution, this is usually true in the horror genre. Think about it. There’s the family that’s falling apart, but comes together due to intense and trying circumstances. There’s friends who conquer fear and tragedy, growing up in the process. Many themes are used over and over again, and are universal in other novels and genres. Read widely. Find a theme in something literary and see if you can give it a good twist.  I might add that as the author, you have to be careful not to bury the story in an agenda or rub the reader’s nose in an obvious theme.  But Reese does make a point: the best stories, horror or not, often deal with universal themes and even in my story, good wins out in the end.
6. Sustaining the tension is always good, even a necessary storytelling practice.  There should be lots of plot twists and turns in your story, unexpected detours that take the reader somewhere other than where they anticipated going.  Outline this in detail before you put the first word down in your first draft.  Make sure the connections hold up and aren’t too obvious, except after the fact.  This is especially important in writing horror stories, which depend for much of their impact on turning the ordinary into something menacing.  Get the reader familiar with the commonplace details of your story, then jerk them sideways into dark corridor.  As Freese says: Tension is the key to any good novel, but it’s particularly important for anything involving horror. If you can’t get the reader to bite her fingernails, sit on the edge of her seat, glance nervously at the darkening corners in the room, or jump if something creaks, then you’re not adding enough tension in your story. The best way to do this is to add twists in your story. This keeps an air of mystery in your story; it keeps the reader guessing. The longer you can keep the reader in the dark about what’s happening—and about what’s going to happen next—the stronger the horror.
    
   Horror stories are a delight to write and when done well, can achieve a power and resonance with readers seldom found in other genres.  When done poorly, horror stories cause readers to roll their eyes and snap the book closed.  Then it becomes a dust magnet on their shelves.
    
   Make sure your story doesn’t become a dust magnet.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed will be one of my quarterly updates on downloads…how my stuff is doing with readers out there in the real world.   You’ll find some surprising results from this analysis.
    
   See you on July 24.
    
   Phil B.