The Devil is in the details

A good writer should be able to scare you by harbouring evil in places that seem 'normal'"

One question that horror writers are frequently asked is whether they believe in ghosts. The underlying assumption is that the writer must have experienced paranormal events and has hence chosen to write about the same. However, that is not always the case; rarely are writers of horror inspired by going to a graveyard and spooking themselves. I do believe that a good writer must have tasted darkness of some kind in order to bring it alive on paper. Writing horror is mostly about turning your deepest fears into monsters on the yellow pages of books, where they can't scare you as easily.

Horror is one of the most popular genres, yet it is taken flippantly. There is no template for writing a horror story but writing one requires precision and an in-depth understanding of the craft of horror. A horror story has the usual elements of a short story, in terms of character, setting, conflict, plot and theme. Using these elements, the writer is expected to create something uncanny, which may or may not have supernatural beings in it. A good horror story need not be one about ghosts and may not feature any evil creatures, vampires or werewolves. A horror story that stays with you will scare you because it will resonate with you and bring into focus your deepest fears. In fact, some of the best horror writing does not have any ghosts in it. Think of Carrie by Stephen King or The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. The malevolence in such writing comes from the writer's play on the elements of the story.

A good writer is able to tap into your fears by building suspense using the setting in the story. A setting which complements the plot can make a horror story terrifying. A lot of horror stories are set in hill stations as there is something about dense forests, mountains and desolate places in general that lends them an air of mystery and horror. The stories in my debut collection of short stories Where Do You Go In the Dark, My Love? are set in the hills of Landour, Rishikesh and Chamoli.

Writing a horror story requires you to build the horror through your description of the setting. Once you have a setting and a plot in mind, begin working on the characters. A horror story would succeed if the reader feels an emotional connection to the protagonist, so that the character's anxieties and fears get displaced onto the readers. A good story would be hair-prickling and gut-wrenching because the readers would be sucked into a vortex along with the protagonist, one in which they find darkness and evil.

One of the main conflicts in a horror story is between good and evil and a good horror writer should try to present evil in places which the reader would not expect. The conflict in the story should be layered and complex so that it leads naturally to a twist ending. A story that makes an impact on the reader will usually have a shocking ending. The horror writer should be a master at combining elements of a thriller along with horror, for double impact. Such an ending comes spontaneously if you have built a solid plot and etched out your main characters and setting.

A horror story should be an immersive experience, one that takes a cozy setting and spins it around. To write good horror fiction, one must also read a lot. Stephen King and Ray Bradbury are masters of this craft. King excels at scintillating endings while Bradbury combines the macabre with the everyday.

The fears that horror stories present often come from the undercurrent in our lives, the wild dark that exists beyond the sanitised world we inhabit. Horror instils in us a fear of our own mortality and an awareness of death. A horror story should be able to reach deep into the abyss of our minds and resurface the fears that we all feel. A horror story succeeds only if it makes the readers afraid and that should be the foremost aim of a horror writer. A good writer should be able to scare you by harbouring evil in places that seem 'normal', by turning familiar places into haunted ones.

Horror, as a genre, is subversive and can be a powerful tool in the hands of an able writer. A horror short story needs to be the stuff of nightmares and in a limited word-count, which seems like an uphill task. But a good writer can scare you even in a few lines by shifting the paradigms of the real world.

Singh is the author of Where Do You Go in the Dark, My Love?, a collection of short horror stories, published by HarperCollins India.