Necessary Elements of Horror — Help?

I don't think there are. You can look at works as diverse as The Haunting of Hill House to a book by Richard Laymon. Horror is wide open in terms of what you're asking.

I think the only really *necessary* element I can think of is this: In order to be horror, your readers must be horrified in some way or another. This can range from mild tingling chills of suspense to out right screaming terrified. In other words, events must be eerie, which can range from childhood fears of an imagined bogyman under the bed to the actual terror of finding your best friend half eaten by zombies.

If you are looking for a basic outline to follow, here is how most horror novels unfold:

Usually a horror will start out with a nice happy, boringly normal person, living a predictably dull life, in a predictably dull town, where nothing out of the ordinary ever happens, but by the fifth page, s/he'll start noticing that today is not an ordinary day - a few out of the ordinary things have happened, and out of curiosity s/he decides to investigate.

By chapter 3 his/her life in turned upside down by *INSERT EVIL FORCE-MONSTER-VILLAIN-BAD GUY HERE*, and now his/her *life-friends-family-school-town-or-world* is in eminent danger. Your main character for whatever reason is the only one that can stop the evil force and save the day.

Evil force seems unstoppable and gets progressively creepier, scarier, and seemingly more undefeatible with each chapter.

In the next to the last chapter, all hope is lost, and it seem the evil force has at last won, but that somehow your MC takes control of the situation and defeats the evil force.

The last chapter is reserved for tying up lose ends and show how your main character picks up the pieces and gets back on with their ordinary dull boring life once again.

Of course you can change that, but that is the basic story board that most * published* horror novel use.

As for determining what horror elements you should use, I think of it this way: Ask yourself what would scare you if you met it face to face, and write about it. For example, me, I've always been scared of the dark so my stories are always set not only at night, but also in a secluded dark place with no street lights - say in the middle of a forest - on a night with no moon. I've never felt to well about rats either, not after a weird childhood experience of living in a house infested with hordes of them, and as such, my horror stories tend to have rats scurrying here and there. I've been a fan of the Universal Monsters for 30+ years now - resulting in me writing lots of stuff with vampires, werewolves, and their kin. I've also a morbid fascination with insane asylums and escaped serial killing psychos - so these run rampant in most of my horror stories as well.

Long story short, my point here is - write what you think of when you think of horror. If you think of haunted houses and ghosts - write haunted houses and ghosts. If you think zombies - write zombies. What type of horror do you read? What type of horror do you watch? Reread and rewatch your favorite horror books and movies and see if you can find any reoccurring elements in them. Chances are good that those elements are the ones you are personally most attracted to, and thus the ones you are best suited to writing about.

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The only requisite for horror is to, well, horrify. How you do this is entirely up to you. Do you want to create a tense atmosphere where the reader is always on edge, expecting something to happen? Or do you want to horrify them through intenslely brutal bouts of violence? Either of these, or any other, can be very effective if done well.

My suggestion would be to read a lof of horror-based novels to get an idea of what others do. I would read some classics like Dracula and The Exorcist. And of course, dabble with Stephen King (whose scariest works I think are The Shining, Pet Sematary and Bag of Bones.) He's also written a book that is part autobiography and part creative writing lesson titled "On Writing." Though it doesn't specifically deal with writing in horror, it gives some sound advice from one of the most prevalent writers in the genre.

If you are looking for strictly horror advice, I would invest in a book put out by the Horror Writer's Association titled, "On Writing Horror," edited by Mort Castle. I believe you can order this on Amazon.com for around eleven dollars.

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed...

I'd take a look to Poe and Lovecraft too, for a subtler yet not less effective kind of horror (though they both wrote more short stories than novels).

*smacks head*

Why didn't I think to mention Poe? OMG! I love Poe! Yes, read everything by Poe to get a feel of how classic horror is written. Also watch all of the Vincent Price movie remakes of Poe's stories. I get most of my inspiration from Poe and Price. Nothing can inspire me to wite horror the way they can.

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I agree with what some people have said here about horror being meant to horrify. It should be scary. That said, everyone is not scared/horrified by the same things, or they don't have to be. If you want a starting point, go with something that scares you in particular. It will probably be easier to write if you feel the unease yourself as you're going along.

That's my two cents anyway. ;)

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2009: Blue Soul (continuing w/ rebel-status :P)

On Writing Horror is one hell of a good piece of advice. Also Writers workshop of horror. And if you want to see how to turn anything into terror, you should check out specific writers. Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee (he made everyday worms terrifying.... go figure), David Schow, and John Skipp (He made a strip club scary for christs sake).

Thanks, all!

I was concerned that there were certain set pieces, I guess, that I didn't know about, certain that are generally adhered to, and to break those conventions one has to be especially skilled as an author. As a probably bad example, if one is writing a Sherlock Holmes short story, one should have the initial amazing deduction about something irrelevant; Holmes's arrangement of a scheme we can only guess; and so on.

Thanks again.

^_^