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What makes a good horror story

There are so many ways to tell a horror story and really spook the reader, listener or viewer, depending on the format, that it can become hard to tell what makes a good horror story. In making or presenting a good horror story there is much to consider.

There is also much that affects its reception. There is a little of the personal taste of each audience member, a touch of their interpretations, a lot of the susceptibility of the audience to be spooked, a tad of how familiar the audience is with the storyline and a fair dollop of whether or not the horror story manages to make the audience members laugh or scream.

So what is likely to succeed?
Well, what has succeeded over the years of audience's listening to, reading and watching horror?

The basic principles of horror:

• Tie the story to a moral, whether drawn from religion, folklore or social norms.

• It is preferable that the moral of the tale be delivered in a bloody and/or lethal fashion.

• Focus on issues that affect all humans, such as death, the afterlife, good and evil, the devil and the demonic.

• Use a supernatural being to impart the moral, namely witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, demons, the Devil or another such creature.

• If the story's twist is that a while everyone believes the one visiting moralistic justice is supernatural then make the deliverer of moral justice entirely human but evil, unstable or misguided.

• Insert Gothic aspects for a bleak view of society and allow this to couch and enhance the darkness of the moral deliverer.

• Gothic aspects help to show either that the society is corrupt, the characters are pessimistic or the world does in fact contain the supernatural. Rules of nature can be bent and broken far more easily using this format.

• Create a new monster or revamp an old one into something more sinister.

• Emotional responses to aim for: fear, tension, dread, shock, disgust, outrage, nervousness, claustrophobia, agitation and to some degree self-criticism (stemming from the moral aspect).

• If these are impossible to incite with the horror story then aim for dark humour. This is equally useful in creating a successful horror story.

• Without a moral aspect to the horror story, use of the chaos principle can be applied. To have the protagonist/s randomly maimed, tortured or killed without apparent rhyme or reason will leave the audience wondering why and whether such a horrific thing could happen to them.

• Another principle to use if the moral aspect is left out is to rely on the twisted, barely understandable yet eerily familiar worldview of the antagonist in creating the reason for the misfortunes of the protagonist/s.

• If a Gothic portrayal of the world is not desirable then a gritty and realistic portrayal will work equally well. The impact of a realistic setting, if a little grim, is that the audience can accept such events as is happening to the protagonist happening to them, thereby inciting the desired range of emotional reactions.

• To have build the most horror, first create empathy, sympathy, affection or a connection. Then move onto suspense leading to tension and dread so that when the protagonist meets the moral or random event the audience feels shock, horror, dismay, outrage, agitation and to some extent denial. Disgust can also be involved but is just a side effect of the event and their recognition of the mindset of the antagonist.

• Another way to build horror is to have the audience sympathise and identify with the antagonist rather than the protagonist. The role reversal forces the audience to reflect of the horrors within their own minds. Used alongside event based horror this is a subtler format with regards to its emotional impact but leaves the audience thinking about the story for far longer.

• Blurring the lines between protagonist and antagonist, with regards to motivations and actions, is effective in creating a psychological impact upon the audience.

• Animals can be used to replace monsters but again monstrous attributes are usually applied. If monstrous attributes aren't then a starkness of the landscape, randomness in attack and an escalation of the unexpected horrific events should produce adequate horror in the audience.

There are likely more principles to making a good horror story but these will help you get started.