[Bonus Post -- Link] Worldbuilding & Writing 201: Scary stories

by Vivian Sayan

Greetings and BOOOO!!! 👻 It is the Spooky Season and we, well, I and my resurrected zombie, Anne Winchell, decided to give something befitting of the season of BOOO!!! So here we are, discussing scary stories. I hope you will be able to use this for your own worlds to enrich them.

What is a scary story?

We’ve all been told scary stories, sometimes sitting around the campfire as night descends, sometimes cuddled in our pyjamas at a sleepover with flashlights out, and as the Spooky Season draws near, let’s analyse what goes into these stories that we tell when the lights go out, and it’s only us and our fears.

A scary story has generally one singular purpose: to instil fear in the listener or, in modern times, the reader. Some might ask why people would seek fear out, but it is a well documented phenomena that people greatly enjoy negative emotions in controlled settings where they can disengage at any moment they so choose. So, similarly, the same phenomena is at play here; there is joy to be had in feeling fear when you know that you are mostly safe.

What makes a scary story scary?

When it comes to scary stories, they all share many similarities, and in this section, I will outline what these common factors are.

• They generally contain a monster or ethereal being. Some stories contain living people and might be considered thus “not monsters”, but they have, in the story, behaviours such that they can by general perception be considered inhuman and thus a monster.
• The story is often tied to the situation at hand. If it is told while camping in the woods, it is forest-based stories, if it is told at abandoned buildings, it is told from such. This is generally to make it more applicable to the listener and thus increase the fear factor.
• The ghost, monster, whatever it is that torments the victims, has inhuman motivations such that their morality can be utterly alien to the point where even “orange-blue morality” is even insufficient to explain it.
• A common occurrence is that the scary story is based on a very common fear of the society. Risk having to eat your beloved ones (Wendigo), fear of drowning in lakes (Näcken in northern mythologies), and such. Whatever society at large fears can gain physical form.
• They generally take place in environments with extremely limited perception. For humans, a sight-based species, it is in darkness, but species that focus on other senses would have that sense be severely deprived. This is because the lack of sensory input creates a huge degree of uncertainty and thus fear.

Read the full article: https://www.viviansayan.com/blog/worldbuilding-writing-201-scary-stories