How to Write a Short Horror Story

Writing a short story can be horrible enough by itself, but making it a horror short story adds all sorts of additional challenges. With most short stories, the writer can usually get in and out, sometimes just get away with making a point; with a horror story it needs to shock the person or at least unnerve them: The writer needs to build an atmosphere with as few words as possible, and this is one of the biggest problems facing horror writing. Fortunately, it's not that hard.

Idea

Like any other story, it needs to start with an idea. The idea needs to include the reason for the horror, be it a monster, the environment, or the situation. That is, you need to know where the fear is coming from right from the start.

This allows you to better plan for it from the beginning and therefore better organically integrate it into the story.

This also helps in world-building because you have a better idea of what concepts you're going to need and which need to be better built up. In this case, the idea works more of a mission statement: Your story now has its goals and concepts it needs to work.

The Rule Of Three Beats

Horror stories tend to rely on some sort of twist, be it ironic ("humans were the monsters all along"), humorous ("they serve man for dinner"), or surprising (just watch "Tales From The Crypt").

However, the problem is that sometimes you can have a great story but the twist kills it ("The Village"). This means that you need to know if you're going to end with a twist, and if so allow for it. The best way to do this is the Rule of Three Beats.

Your twist can't come out of nowhere; there has to be some foreshadowing and build-up. This is why you need at least three beats in the story to do your twist: Introduction, Follow-Through, Boom.

Start with the Boom; you need to know the end so you can build the path there. Now, you need to introduce it, but do so subtly enough that they won't notice it on the first pass.

Through in a beat where you mention it but in connection with other chaos so it may be missed. For example:

Introduction: Three characters pass by a mirror. Two of them stop and fix something about their appearance, a tie or make-up, for example. The third just goes on by.

Follow-Through: The first two are rude and just go into an apartment. The third person apologizes for the rudeness of his friends and asks if it's okay if he comes in.

Boom: In a warehouse, there's a fight with vampires but the trio is triumphant. The first two hug, one mentions to the other that he's glad they got all of the vampires. The third person gets in on the hug and bites both of them.

Sure, it's a bit prosaic, but you get the idea. Your short story should have about 6–8 individual beats so you don't have room to really flesh things out; these three beats really speed things up for you.

Building The Atmosphere

This is where "show don't tell" rules. Telling takes up too many words, so showing the atmosphere really pays off. It only takes a few words and sometimes just choosing different words to create the atmosphere you need.

First, choose a good title: Forget being clever; you want a title that tells something about the situation. Something with a deadline builds up the suspense ("Until Dawn," "When The Tide Returns," "The Bell Tolls"); the reader is expecting something to happen when the event in the title happens. Others just put the reader in the right mindset by letting them know what to expect ("Tea & Blood," "Emotional Support Demon," "Day in the Life of Grandma Boah").

In the story itself, you need to start off with some quick descriptions to set up the atmosphere. These need to have as few words as possible but be evocative ("the beam from the lighthouse pierced the fog," "the waves lapped the pier," "the thunder rattled the windows").

In the story, add a few more similar details ("they couldn't see each other through the fog," "the stream burbled," "the lights flickered"). Sprinkle a few more such phrases throughout the story and you'll find they'll be very effective.

Much more effective than paragraphs of purple prose, and much more efficient, which is great for short stories.

Episodic Or Social

There's nothing saying that you can't link stories. The major disadvantage is that things that happen in one story will have a bearing on other stories so you will need to track continuity and make sure that you have some sort of timeline.

However, that's also a major advantage as it allows you to build things up over the story and then let it crash in a story down the road.

This allows you to put foreshadowing and clues in stories that will be important in other stories, as well as build up characters and establish bonds over a series of stories. This is the serial option.

Or you can go with the episodic option and they have nothing really in common. There's also nothing saying you can't mix the two, with some stories in a collection having a serial continuity and others being purely episodic. Whatever works, right?

Fill In The Blanks

You're going to have about 6–8 individual beats in a short story; that is, if you were outlining it you would see 6–8 different scenes that need to flow into each other.

If you're doing a twist, you already have three with one being your conclusion. Even if you're not doing a twist, decide what your conclusion is first; it's just easier to charge through things when you know where you're going.

The other beats need to be something like: Introduction (state the premise), Purposes (why is the character doing this), Reveal (show the BBEG), Downturn (the MC suffers a drawback), Illusory Advantage (the MC only thinks he has the advantage), Discovery (how to defeat the BBEG), Real Advantage (the MC has the BBEG over a barrel), and Consequences (what finally happens).

To avoid things getting too formulaic, you don't need to have all of these beats; only use the one you want and as often as you want. These also don't need to be full chapters; you can get away with just a few words on each.

By combining each of these concepts, you should be able to write some very short horror stories. Reach into the bottom of your psyche and pull something out, and you're off to the races.