Two Pretty Good Rules of Writing Paranormal Horror

There are no rules about writing anything, and, also, there are precise rules about writing everything, and if you get it wrong in either direction, Goodreads reviewers will eviscerate you.

(5 Tough Tips for Surviving Really Rotten Book Reviews.)

This is as true of horror as anything else—and be doubly warned, all ye who attempt to write anything that’s kind of horror but also kind of a thriller or kind of a character study or kind of a science fiction romp… But that warning is from the world of the bad faith reader.

When writing for the reader of best faith (to quote Melissa Febos), there are less rules than things we tend to love most about the works that speak to us, tricks our favorite authors pull off time and time again that delight us, upset us, and draw us back for more. As a voracious consumer of horror in all its forms, and a horror author myself, there are a few of these tricks I’ve started to recognize as essential to my favorite work—much of which falls into the broad and blurry category that is “paranormal horror.”

All this term really refers to is upsetting fiction that includes some element of the fantastic and doesn’t stray too far into sci-fi. Delineations like this can be fraught for writers, in the sense that most authors I spend time with care less about what labels are used to categorize their work and more about how it makes people feel, and needing to define a subgenre can be frustrating.

But I do think there are some tricks that are, if not unique to really great paranormal horror, at least common to it, and I’ve tried to distill what makes those stories so effective into the two “rules” that follow. I certainly remind myself of them over and over when I write.

Figure out what makes you squirm emotionally, and write about that.

I have a lot of room in my heart for jump scares and gore, but one hazard of paranormal horror is the fact that, well, it’s supernatural. Including elements that literally can’t occur makes it that much easier for readers to step back from the work; you’re asking for a suspension of disbelief that starts at a higher bar than, say, making them consider the real reason their neighbor built that hunting shack even though they don’t own a gun.

I’m not arguing that all paranormal horror must grapple with themes of trauma—although who doesn’t like their catharsis just a little bloody?—but you do need to counter your readers’ instinct to detach from the scares because their lizard brains understand there’s no way it could happen to them.

One of the most effective methods of getting under people’s skin and staying there is to ground your work in fears that are plausible: fear of loss, or ruining a good thing because of your own shortcomings, or being helpless to stop something terrible from happening to people you love. Perhaps even bringing it about because of choices you’ve made, always a horror classic.

This can take vulnerability and resilience to write, edit, and put out in the world for others to consume and react to—but when it works, it really works.

Check out Jaq Evans’ What Grows in the Dark here:

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The spooky thing is spookier when you can’t quite see it—but if there’s a reveal (and there doesn’t have to be), lean in.

Any horror reader or watcher will tell you that when it comes to paranormal horror, the monster/ghost/what-have-you is scarier before you face it head-on. As soon as that sucker comes into full view, it’s author vs. reader, and the reader’s imagination is generally quite powerful.

There are various ways to address this, including avoiding the reveal altogether, and leaving the story in a place of ambiguity. But if that’s not your jam, as my mentor and friend Elizabeth Hand once said to a workshop full of early-stage authors such as myself, “When in doubt, make it weirder.” Pair this with advice from the great Kelly Link, who wrote, “The weirdest story ideas come from your own obsessions.”

There can be an odd bashfulness in writing horror; I’ve experienced this, anyway. I get nervous that I’ll let readers down: everything feels derivative, and whatever my reader is imagining is at least unique to them, so how could I compete? What scares me might not be what scares someone else at all. And, of course, you can’t control what will or won’t spook a reader, but the best way to combat the former concern (and, anecdotally, help your odds on the second) is to follow your idea to its absolute zenith.

Take that base idea, which to be honest probably is derivative, and push it farther. Give us everything you have, in hyper-specific, technicolor detail. Crank that dial as hard as you can; delve into the strange, horrible, fascinating possibilities that made you want to write about this monster in the first place. As readers, we want to see what happens when you go too far.

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