Writing Dark Stories: Writer's Craft, #6

By Rayne Hall

Learn to haunt your readers with powerful, chilling tales. Make their spines tingle with anticipation and their skins crawl with delicious fear. Disturb their world-view and invite them to look into the dark corners of their own souls.

This book gives you a wealth of tools and techniques for writing great short stories. It is part of the acclaimed Writer's Craft series.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
1. FEED YOUR FICTION WITH YOUR FEARS
Places. Weird Shudders. Phobias. Childhood Fears. Dreams. Human Attitudes. Ordinary Things.
Assignment.
2. WHY THE TITLE IS A STRONG START
Gathering Ideas. Assignment.
3. WRITING BY THE SEAT OF YOUR PANTS
Now Write. Prompts. The Freewriting Experience. Assignment.
4. FIFTEEN MASTER PLOTS
Plot Ideas You Can Use. Assignment.
5. DARK FICTION AND HORROR GENRES
Horror. Splatterpunk. Extreme Horror. Psychological Horror. Dystopian. Lovecraftian. Thriller.
Mystery. Dark Fiction. Supernatural. Paranormal. Paranormal Romance. Dark Fantasy. Urban
Fantasy. Gothic. Erotic Horror. Horror Comedy. Romantic Suspense. Steampunk. Ghost Stories.
Slipstream. Speculative Fiction. Weird Fiction. Flash Fiction. Slice-of-Life. Cross-Genre.
Collection. Anthology. Assignment.
6.  POINT OF VIEW
Deep PoV Techniques. Serial Point of View. Omniscient Point of View. Other Point of View Styles.
Assignment.
7. MANAGING TENSION
Goal. Raising the Stakes. Conflicts Among Characters. Peaks and Troughs. Assignment.
8. BUILDING SUSPENSE
Pose a Question. The Ticking Clock. Pacing. The Door Opens. Assignment.
9. HOW TO SCARE YOUR READERS
Darkness. Sounds. Chill. Isolation. Meet the Monster. Get Visceral. The Gory Bits. Assignment.
10. CREEPY LOCATIONS
Select the Setting. Inspiring Pictures. How to Describe the Setting. Practical Research. Setting
Research Checklist. Assignment.
11. MAKE THE MOST OF THE WEATHER
Create Atmosphere. Deepen the PoV. Make it Difficult for the Characters. Strained Tempers. Mood
and Foreboding. Beware the Pathetic Fallacy. Collecting Descriptions. Assignment.
12. HOW TO OPEN YOUR STORY
Opening with Setting Description. Opening with Dialogue. Opening While All Seems Well with the
World. Assignment.
13. HOW TO END YOUR STORY
Endings to Avoid. Seven Possible Endings. Leave Questions in the Reader's Mind. Assignment.
14. VILLAINS AND MONSTERS
Human Villains: Clichés to Avoid. Motivation. Depth. Describing the Villain. Monsters: Reveal it
Bit by Bit. Keep it Plausible. Assignment.
15. GHOST STORIES
Plot and Backstory. Setting and Mood. Characters and Point of View. Assignment.
16. VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, ZOMBIES
Vampires: Sparkling Versus Traditional. Vampire Tropes. Fiction Ideas. Werewolves: Werewolf
Tropes. Questions to Consider. Zombies: How Zombies are Made. Zombie Tropes. Fiction Ideas.
Beware the Bite-Hiders. Assignment.
17. RELIGIOUS HORROR
Horror in Holy Books. Faith Versus Fear. Religious Historical Horror. Unbelievers Meet Scary
Gods. Stories Presenting Religion as Evil. Writing About Other Faiths. Controversy. Assignment.
18. Why Do People Read Horror Fiction?
Seven Psychological Reasons. Assignment.
19. MARKETING AND PUBLICATION
Traditional Publishing. Markets. Rights. Payment. Self-Publishing. Trends. Assignments.
20. SAMPLE STORIES WITH COMMENTS
Burning. Seagulls. Only A Fool.
DEAR READER

 

British English.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rayne Hall Ltd
• Release date: Jan 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501443084

Book preview

CHAPTER 1: FEED YOUR FICTION WITH YOUR FEARS

Cowards make the best horror writers, because we know what fear feels like, and we never run out of ideas.

What frightens you? Fire, spiders, dentists’ drills? Use these fears in your fiction and build your stories around them. Here are some ideas.

PLACES

Do you know any creepy places? Does the thought of certain dangerous locations make you queasy? Is there an abandoned building that gives you shudders each time you pass? Does a house in your neighbourhood ooze malevolence? Do you have to brace yourself each time you climb into your attic? Are you terrified of walking a certain path? Creepy places make atmospheric fiction settings. Many of my short stories started from descriptions of such locations. You can also use those places in your novels, especially for suspense-rich scenes or the book’s climax.

‘The Bridge Chamber’ - probably the scariest of my stories – started with the uneasy memory of a railway bridge where I used to play as a child. The masonry was pierced with tunnels, just big enough for a child to squeeze through, and we dared one another to explore those dark dank spaces.

WEIRD SHUDDERS

Are you frightened of something that other people consider harmless? One of my friends can’t bear the sight of long fingernails, and the sound of nails scraping on a surface sends her into a panic. Another fears moths and butterflies, especially when they get near her face. I also know a man who is terrified of clothing zips. He always wears buttoned garments, because he can’t breathe when encased in zippered clothes. I also know people who get the creeps when they see a balloon, a clown’s face or a peach.

If you have such a fear – whether it’s a full-blown terror or just a shuddery feeling – write a short story about it. Since many things give me the creeps – garden slugs, crowded rooms, telephones, the whine of a dentist’s drill – I’ve been able to write many stories about them. Stories inspired by weird fears often get published in anthologies.

PHOBIAS

Many people have phobias – fears about specific situations, so intense that they have a paralysing, crippling effect. Claustrophobia, the fear of enclosed spaces, is a common example. Often, these fears are based on a sensible, instinctive response to a genuine danger such as heights, caves, fire or snakes, and are irrational only in their strength. Others are less easy to explain. Some people get paralysed when crossing a bridge, others freak out when they hear the hissing noise of a not-quite-closed thermos flask.

If you have a phobia, I encourage you to write a story about it. Your story will have a level of authenticity that other writers can’t achieve. However, writing about your phobia can be scary, and if it causes you more distress than you can bear, set it aside for a while until you feel strong enough to continue.

‘Burning’ - probably my best-known short story – started when I gathered my courage to address my fear of fire, a phobia that had tormented me all my life. Thinking about what fire meant to me and plotting the story was a frightening ordeal, but once I started putting my thoughts on paper and shaping them into fiction, I gained control over my fear. When the piece was complete, two amazing things happened: My phobia all but vanished, and the story won awards.

CHILDHOOD FEARS

What terrified you when you were a child? Whether the danger was real or imagined, your emotions were probably intense. What if there really was a cannibal living in your wardrobe or a dragon waiting behind the cellar door? Childhood fears can inspire awesome paranormal horror stories.

As a kid, I lived in a railway station where my father was station master, and I was terrified of the giant black steam engines that stopped outside our home to puff dark smoke and emit shrill whistles. When I had an idea for a ghost story and needed to up the creepiness, I placed the characters in an old railway tunnel with a thundering steam train.

DREAMS

Have you ever had a dream that left you disturbed? Do you have a recurring nightmare? If you dream about the same horror night after night, consider adapting it as a fiction plot.

Some of my most successful short stories stemmed from dreams, including ‘The Painted Staircase’.

You may want to keep a notebook on your bedside table so you can write down your dreams immediately after waking, because dreams tend to fade from memory fast.

HUMAN ATTITUDES

What human behaviours and attitudes disturb or distress you? Lies? Cruelty? Wife-beating? Greed? Abuse of authority? Bullying? Unbending bureaucracy? People who shut their eyes and ears to the suffering of others? Use dark fiction to explore those issues. The resulting stories will have the disturbing depth and the power to make your readers think.

In many of my stories, you will find racism, religious fanaticism, prejudice, injustice and hypocrisy, either in the main plot or in the subtext.

ORDINARY THINGS

What’s right before your eyes? Look at the ordinary objects on your desk, the landscape outside your window, the pets in your home. What if one of them is not as harmless as it seems, but is really an instrument of an evil power, or takes on a destructive entity? What could the printer, the coffee cup, the rag rug or the kitten develop into?

‘Seagulls’ - my most reprinted story – started with the seagulls that pecked at my window every morning. Such pretty animals, white-feathered, silver-tipped, with eyes like yellow haloes around death-dark cores. Surely they were harmless... but what if they were not?

ASSIGNMENT

Using these suggestion, make a list of everything that frightens you, used to frighten you, or might frighten you. Try to come up with at least twenty. My list has over two hundred items. Can you top that?

CHAPTER 2: WHY THE TITLE IS A STRONG START

As soon as you have a title that thrills you, the ideas will come. But it needs to be a title that resonates with you, not something that pleases only other people. It should make your stomach clench or your throat constrict, something that makes you nervous or eager to discover what the story is about.

GATHERING IDEAS

Where do you find such a title for your story? I recommend you pick a title before you even start writing. Create a whole list of titles, save it, and whenever you want to write the story, you select a title from your list.

I learnt this method from Ray Bradbury and it works a treat for me, especially for dark and scary yarns. Try it and see for yourself.

Look at the list you’ve created in the assignment for Chapter 1 – all the things that frighten or disturb you. Write each of them as a title, then tweak it to create variations.

The creative part of your psyche – otherwise known as ‘The Inner Muse’ or ‘Artist Brain’ loves this approach. Once it’s in title-creating mode, it will come up with idea after idea.

Let’s say you have a fear of dentists, and you find lies disturbing. Then your list might look like this:

The Dentist

Dentists

Dental Check-up

The Dentist’s Revenge

The Dentist’s Promise

A Tale of Two Dentists

The Third Dentist

Dental Treatment

In the Dentist’s Chair

You Know The Drill

Death and the Dentist

The Tooth Must Come Out

Dental Dangers

Trust Me I’m A Dentist

Liar

The Liars

Lies

Three Lies

Four Liars

The Second Lie

Lie To Me

She Lied

No Lies

What Lie

The Lying Dentist

The Dentist’s Lie

The Dentist Who Lied

and so on.

You can come up with dozens of great titles, and each of them will be perfect for your writing.

Once your Artist Brain is in title-creating mode, it may not want to stop. Evocative titles will flash through your mind while you peel the potatoes or drive down the motorway. Keep a notebook at hand and jot them down as soon as it is safe.

ASSIGNMENT

Make a list of titles, inspired by your answers in the Lesson 1 assignment. Make it as long as you can, perhaps coming back to it after a break. Keep this list on your computer or in a notebook where you can access it easily, because you will use it often.

CHAPTER 3: WRITING BY THE SEAT OF YOUR PANTS

Pick one of the titles from the list you’ve created – the one that thrills you and makes your fingers itch to dance across the keyboard.

NOW WRITE

Write whatever comes to your mind. Don’t pause, just keep going. You can do this on the computer or by hand. I like doing it with coloured gel pens in lined hardback notebooks.

Jot down all the thoughts that come to your mind without pausing. Call up your memories of the dreams and events, evoke the emotions. This process is called freewriting.

The creative part of your psyche - Artist Brain – enjoys this approach. Don’t revise, edit, or censor your writing. Just let it flow. When you’re stuck, consider the title once more, and explore the topic from a new angle.

PROMPTS

Writing prompts help when the creative stream dries up. Pick one of these questions and write about it:

What feelings does this title rouse in me? Where in the body do I feel them? How?

Where do these feelings come from?

Have I experienced something