I have been looking into writing modern horror recently. I really enjoyed some of the one shots on the site and some other short stories I found on the Internet.

So, for any of you who have written a horror or urban fantasy piece, I have a few questions for you.

How do you set the mood and tone of the story? How do you make a story seem dark and gritty? Is it a layering process, like with each revision adding more and more subplots and dark details?

 

I'm not a very good writer, so you should take my comments with a pinch of salt... But I'd say the most important for the world to seem dark and gritty is by making it seem real.

If you're writing in the real world, use real places and real details. Take the streets we all think are perfectly normal and then show us how they're not. The more believable, the scarier it would probably be.

Check out "Let the right one in". It might've had more effect on me because it's set where I live, but it's a genuinely disturbing book.

 

Generally when I'm writing horror, I shoot for subtle. In my experience, throwing a monster at me has the opposite affect of scaring me. It just gets me pumped for a fight or a flight, and it makes the horror surmountable. Unless you're trying to pull back on the horror, don't give it a face. Focus on little things, details that build up and make your reader more and more comfortable, give them the sense that something is wrong.

And worst comes to worst, you can always resort to eldritch horrors!

 

Huh, really interesting thoughts from both of you. I am curious to see the effect of changing simple adjectives to ones with a darker connotation, and seeing what difference it will make.

What would you guys think about this idea that has been bouncing around in my head lately:

A guy who hears a voice in his head, and calls itself God (or whatever deity you want to imagine). Now, the reader is never sure whether the man is a schizophrenic or a true prophet. Has anyone ever noticed that after a certain point in history we stopped calling people who heard voices prophets and called them mad instead?

 

Eh, doesn't sound like a horror story. To mean, horror is about inhuman things. A voice in your head isn't that scary, at least from just that premise.

 

To me, horror is about the extremes of human nature. Watch Long Pigs (mockumentary) or the original Wicker Man, it gets really surreal.

So real subtle stuff starting from a seemingly normal viewpoint that turns in the oddest and most unexpected of ways

 

Even if you would write a cosmic horror story (IMO one of the hardest to pull off), go for subtelity. Throwing Shoggoths and unpronounceable names just makes it hilarious.

As stated previously, go for the real world. Real places, real stories, or their elements. Even something mundane as missin persons posters can form a creepy and unseteling picture if you give it a good spin. For example, a short text about New York from Delta Green, a Call of Cthulhu modern world setting.

The first time I read that I was creeped out like hell. And this was after chapters describing Nazi cultists and Mythos-powered mafia-like organization. Still, I would recomend checking out both Call of Cthulhu sourcebook and Delta Green sourcebooks (main, Countdown and Targets of Opportunity - the last one, just for the Cult of Transcendence, which IMO takes the cake for fucked-up cults with fucked-up rituals), for they offer good advices and hints on building atmosphere of horror or just uneasiness.

 

Oh wow. I'll definatly check those out, the writing looks phenomenal.

 

The best way to write horror is to explore what creeps you out the most and build on it. It is said that our best writing is a reflection of ourselves - our fears, dreams, desires.

What are you afraid of?

Why are you afraid of it?

On a page, you can make your fear so real that you end up making the reader feel the same way.

Horror has so many sub-horrors, it's scary. You get the Lovecraft horrors, the King light-hearted horrors, etc. My advice is you borrow whatever works for you from each of those horrors and make your own, unique thriller.

Look at Atwood. She can disturb you differently to Laymon. Try it.