Settle down, class. Settle down. So for today’s lecture, I’ll be dissecting a scary scene, much in the same way I’ve studied Ends and Beginnings. As you’ve obviously deduced, class, a scary scene requires the same DNA as any other portion of a novel. And they are comprised of the same building blocks, specifically: Care-ine, Voice-ine, Theme-ine, and Hook-ine. However, they require some distinct characteristics to make them truly frightening.

Care-ine:

• If you recall, this literary molecule provides the reason for the reader to care.
• Before the scary scene begins, the Care-ine has already provided clear stakes for the heroine (there’s a killer on the loose and he’s chasing after our heroine).
• Note: No further explanations are required. In fact, if they are present…it can terminally degrade the Care-ine present.
• Most often, the character is scared. Or, at the very least, the reader must be aware of the dangers lurking for our heroine.

Hook-ine:

• Hook-ine keeps the reader turning the pages from cover to cover. It’s the big questions that fuel the reader’s interest. And it’s never more obvious than when examining a scary scene.
• Since most scary scenes are life-and-death type situations, the most prevalent Hook-ine structure is “will she live?”
• However, remember that the novel’s other over-arching questions (“Will she find her sister?” or “Will she ever love again?”) also remain in the background of the reader’s mind. While they won’t be addressed much or at all in the scary scene (living steamrolls those sorts of thoughts), but they do serve a purpose. They up the stakes of the situation. After all, our heroine won’t find her sister or love if she’s been hacked apart by the serial killer.

Voice-ine:

• This portion of a book’s DNA defines the mood, tone, and pacing and is one of the least understood – though most critical – components of writing a scary scene. 
• Fear is a primal emotion and the Voice-ine present in a suspenseful segment must be reflective of this. As humans, when we experience fear, we become walking medulla oblongatas. All of our filters are removed. We don’t think about the future or the past. We don’t wonder or ponder who to take out on a date.  We experience only what’s in the moment – our focus shifts to the most basic details. The clock ticking. How hard it is to breathe. The creaking in the closet.
• Interestingly, Voice-ine popped out in the sentence and paragraph structure.
• Sometimes it was in short, punchy sentences (gasp, even fragments)…letting the reader bulldoze through information. The light went out. My breath snagged. Something deep in the shadows growled. Low at first. Then louder.
• In other instances, Voice-ine pulls the reader along in lengthy sentences. (double gasp, possibly run-on). One of the shadows sprung to life and barreled for me. It’s him! I turned and bolted down the hall, hearing the pounding feet behind me and feeling him snatch at my braid.    

Theme-ine:

• Theme-ine is always subtle, but ever present and it behaves the same in a scene chalked full of fear.
• A scary scene in a fantasy may involve a werewolf chasing the heroine, but the same creature chasing the sheriff in a western out-of-the-blue would likely be completely out-of-place.   

Ok, that’s it for the lecture. Now, for homework…

HEY! Where are you going? You didn’t get the assignment…Wait! Come back!

This week, we're talking about Writing Scary.

It's something I'm trying to improve upon in my own craft... Right now, for me, "writing scary" makes me think of my first drafts. Those are pretty frightening. I'm right in the middle of one now, for Book Three in the UNDER THE NEVER SKY Trilogy.... I do think I might have kept my editor up a few nights with those....

I digress.

What I know about writing scary is limited, but it is this:

Scary is built on anticipation. It's built on not knowing, more than knowing. Scary slows down, and gives us minute by minute information. It is visceral, and yet it is also mental. Our hearts beat fast, or imaginations gallop ahead of us, wondering, what's really behind that door?

Here is a far more eloquent post by my pal, author Susan Dennard, on the subject.

Now, if you really want to see scary, I give you my new writing pants. I think they need a name, don't you?

Writing scary is about more than confronting fears on the page.  It’s about eliciting fear in the reader.

I'll never forget the first time a book truly terrified me.  It was The Amityville Horror.  I was thirteen, babysitting for a neighbor, and alone at night.  I had just read about a pig with red eyes that appeared in a bedroom window.  A few minutes later, there was a tapping on the french doors of the living room.  I looked up and saw, you guessed it, a pair of red eyes.  It was the neighbor's cat, asking to come inside. But for a brief second, the words came off the page and directly into my life.  I was terrified.  

I'm not suggesting that a reader needs to experience the fear in a book to relate to it.  One of the miraculous things about books is how they allow us to feel and experience things we wouldn't want to in real life.  Books expand our world from the safety and comfort or our couch. And scary books allow us to experience and confront fear.

How do they do it?  I’ve noticed a few elements common to books that genuinely scare me.

      Atmosphere:  "It was a dark and stormy night."  It may be cliché, but mood, setting, and tone all contribute to scary.  If you want to instill fear in the reader, you can set the tone by placing your character in a scary place or situation.  You can play with the time of day (yes, night is scarier than day), weather, location, sounds and smells to create an atmosphere that evokes fear and trepidation.  Or you can play the opposite- sometimes events are scarier when we think the character is safe, when we don’t see it coming.  A murder in a dark alley in the middle of the night might not be as scary as one that happens during a six year old’s birthday party on a sunny Saturday.  

      Stakes:  Nothing ratchets up the fear factor like stakes.  Not just life or death stakes, but personal stakes.  If the reader is invested in the characters and what happens to them, then the readers will be afraid for them too.  Make your characters relatable, likeable and give them a personal stake in the outcome.  No one is afraid for the red shirt guy who dies on Star Trek, but they care about what happens to Spock.  

      Foreshadowing:  Hints that something bad could happen or that something is coming will rachet up the fear factor.  Anticipation builds tension.  Give readers the opportunity to worry about what might happen along with the character.  

      Primal fears: we all have fears that are unique to us, but there are some primal fears that virtually every person is hard-wired to feel.  The survival instinct is strong, and most of us fear death, loss, and evil.  There are other fears of course, but I think on some level they all relate back to survival.  For example, the fear of speaking in public is really the fear of embarrassment and rejection (loss), and the fear of flying or heights is the fear of injury or death.  You can give your characters’ quirks and unique fears based on their own experiences, but find a wait to relate them to universal, primal fears to incite fear in the reader.

      Pacing:  Writers who write fear well are usually masters at pacing.  The apprehension, tension and fear builds and intensifies as the story moves forward, leading to the inevitable moment when the fear must be faced head-on and defeated (or not).

Red herrings:  readers love to anticipate, but they also need to have moments when that tension is released a bit.  Keep readers on their toes, train them to expect the unexpected by including some twists and false alarms along the way.  Maybe that guy who is following the character down a dark alley turns out to be a friend who just wants to say hello.  Perfectly innocent or not?  Keep us guessing.

 Pay-off:  Now that you’ve built a novel that is full of tension, atmosphere, and apprehension, there needs to be a pay-off.  Is your character constantly looking over her shoulder for an unknown threat that never materializes?  Readers will expect an explanation.  Has the book been building to face off between the character and his nemesis?  We want to see that scene. Your character doesn’t have to win the battle, but we want to see him fight it.

Katherine is handling a family emergency today so I'm  posting a really helpful link about writing a scary scene by PUB(lishing) Crawl.

Check it out by clicking here (if you dare!)

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” 

― Stephen King, On Writing

“...So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely if ever crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.”   Stephen King, On Writing

I adore this quote.  I've always read scary, but I don't write what I consider to be scary stories. This quote, however, made me wonder how writing "scary" might apply to building character.  A unique, well-written character has fears.

So here are a few questions to contemplate today as you're writing:

What is your main character afraid of?

What fears do they bring with them from their past? Their childhood?
What was your biggest fear as a child?  Why?
Is there a character in your current writing could have that same fear?  How could you reveal that?