Leaves are turning colors, temperatures are dropping, and candy is getting its own featured section at grocery stores… Halloween is nearly upon us!
It’s a fun holiday for spooks and thrills, but my personal favorite part is that most of the stories we tell around Halloween are based on tales that were written in books. The horror writers behind the great spooky works you and I know have a unique ability for penning fear into the heart of the reader.
So to celebrate the approach of the scariest night of the year, let’s look at some horror greats and study the ways they’ve managed to strike fear into so many of us!
Stephen King: “Great Horror is Almost Always Allegorical”
Whatever your flavor of fear might be, there’s no denying that the name Stephen King has become synonymous with modern horror. His novels are steady bestsellers and his work adapted for both the big screen and the small.
King has also produced a sizable body of work on the art of writing itself, and regularly drops bits of wisdom (and some odd controversy) available for free on his Twitter feed.
On writing horror in particular, King said, “Great horror is almost always allegorical.” Or, in other words, the scariest stories present situations to which we can all relate.
Maybe your reader isn’t afraid of hotel ghosts, but they’re probably familiar with the fear of isolation. That’s the psychology of The Shining that creates as much creeping unease as the odd-goings on. And you don’t need to be worried about Michael Myers lurking in your home to know that you should double-check the locks before bed–news headlines have instilled this fear into all of us.
If you want fear to grip your reader, you must be ready to hit on something universal. Not only do we like to be scared… we like to be scared together.
R.L. Stine: Keep Your Eyes Open
If you were browsing the Young Adult section of a brick-and-mortar bookstore in the 90s or early 2000s, you might remember a not-insignificant chunk of shelving being occupied by the works of R.L. Stine.
It’s Stine’s prolific Goosebumps series that’s earned him the title of “the Stephen King of children’s literature,” and although he writes for children, he remains a respected name in the horror game as his work is widely read and adapted for television.
Stine’s advice on horror writing can be seen as a sort of expansion on King’s. “Fears never changes,” Stine says, explaining that many fears are ubiquitous to the human experience.
He’s right. We fear the dark. We fear solitude. We fear falling. And we face these fears in some capacity every day. A chance encounter, a headline in the newspaper, an offhanded anecdote shared by a coworker. There’s no telling where inspiration will strike, we just have to keep our eyes open for the inspiration to arise.
Read the Greats
You’ve probably heard this many times, but for good reason: reading good horror helps us write good horror.
And for the horror junkie, there’s so much material to choose from! Consider the amount of material King and Stine alone have generated and you’ll have enough to keep you occupied for a good while.
Looking for something else to read?
Today, HP Lovecraft is commonly accepted as the father of “weird fiction,” a cosmic terror that blends both sci-fi and horror to a chilling effect. But Octavia Butler is, in that case, its mother. Her work demonstrates that a good horror writer can find a way to reach those deep-down fears in a reader whether their story is set on a Southern plantation or a faraway space station.
Relatability is important, but that doesn’t require conformity. So read. Read everything. Read the classics and read new releases. Read an author you’ve never heard of. Read as much as you can.
And now… write!
After giving some thought to the words and wisdom of the great writers mentioned here and reading as much as you can of their work, it’s time to start writing!
Embrace the chill in the air and the darker nights of October as you work to craft something unsettling. If you get scared writing it, that’s fine too. All part of the fun!
Happy Halloween! Please let me know if you have any questions. Reach out to me at @authorjjhebert!