Chris Eboch on The Thrill of Horror and Things that Go Bump in the Night

This post is adapted from an article that was originally published in Children's Writer. Publishing professionals' titles have been updated when possible.

For many people, Halloween is a favorite holiday. It’s a chance to get dressed up, taking on a different persona for a while (something writers do all the time). It’s a holiday that focuses on fun – candy, costumes, tricks – with any religious background largely lost to modern thought. And it’s a time to get scared, but in a safe, playful way.

From ghost stories around the campfire to summer slasher flicks, many people enjoy being scared. Children and teenagers are no exception. “Growing up is intrinsically horrific,” author Cynthia Leitich Smith says. “You’re a shape-shifter in your changing body. You’re a vampire in your thirst for life. Your emotions can turn you from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. Essentially, gothic fantasy is all about reflecting this reality through metaphor that asks the hard questions, tackles the classic themes, but in a fresh – sometimes bloody fresh – and sometimes funny way.”

Many authors are drawn to this genre because of their own childhood love of the macabre. “As a kid, I adored anything scary – ghosts, monsters, mummies, you name it,” Laura Ruby says. “So, when I sat down to write my own books, I wrote the ones I would have liked to read when I was a kid.”

Who could resist the chance to tell scary stories for enthusiastic fans? But it’s not enough to throw together a bunch of ghosts or monsters. Horror stories have been around since prehistoric people tried to explain the things that go bump in the night. For authors to catch a reader’s attention today, they have to do something different.
 

“Horror has its quintessential themes,” Leitich Smith adds. “The key is in your twist or twisted retelling. In crafting Tantalize, I drew my initial inspiration from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Stoker’s classic includes a Texan, Quincy P. Morris, among its original vampire hunters. I brought the mythology ‘home’ to Texas, offering my new protagonist, Quincie P. Morris – an updated and gender-flipped nod to Stoker’s old school.”

Ideas can come from everywhere, including real-life facts or mysteries. Ruby wrote Lily’s Ghosts based on stories a friend told her about her family’s “haunted” house.

The Monsters Among Us

With so many human monsters in the real world (not to mention dangerous beasts, scary diseases, and the basic fear of death), readers may find it easy to believe in fictional monsters. Still, horror stories need a grounding in reality. Human characters should be realistically human, points out agent Ashley Grayson. “No juvenile novel today can omit cell phones, the Internet, and the new relationships kids have. As one teen told us: ‘No girl I know would go anywhere without her friends and certainly not into the woods. If she did have to go alone, she’d IM or SMS her friends the whole time.’ Ask yourself, would this story be scary if the protagonist could make a cell call to his/her best friends within moments?”

Fantastical elements should ring true as well. “Monsters, ghosts, supernatural creatures of any kind should be described in the same sort of physical detail that any human would,” Ruby says. “They should also have distinct personalities, personal tics, etc., to round them out.”

Andrew Karre, Executive editor at Dutton Books for Young Readers, says, “I think the impact of good horror/suspense writing is directly proportional to the author’s ability to describe scenes, situations, and characters in surprising yet evocative ways. How can you translate whatever gruesome thing you’ve conjured up in your imagination into words that seem simultaneously surprising and true?”

Susan Van Metre, Senior Vice President and Publisher at Abrams Books for Young Readers, concedes that, “Perhaps there’s more of an emphasis on fun and a little less concern about logic than for other sorts of books.” However, believability benefits “when the fear or concept has some basis in reality. Peni R. Griffin wrote The Ghost Sitter about a girl killed in a firework accident (didn’t we all worry about that growing up, after all our parents’ dire warnings) who haunts her suburban home until a family with a girl her age moves in, and the girl helps free her. So it became a wonderful novel about the power of friendship to reach across a seemingly impossible divide.”

Yet there’s no point in writing horror if you’re not going to make it spooky. “Mood and atmosphere appeal to me as a reader,” Candlewick Senior Editor Deborah Noyes Wayshak says. “I want to go where angels fear to tread, but you have to coax me there.”

The best horror also goes beyond the merely spooky or grotesque, and touches some deep truth. “The most engaging horror or ghost stories are psychologically complex,” Wayshak says. “The horror or ‘haunting’ reflects the protagonist’s psyche in some way, what she or he is hiding or suffering or grieving on the mundane plane.”

To find these deeper truths authors must be emotionally honest and willing to take risks. “The main challenge is writing into the heart of the horror – what’s on the page, what’s inside oneself – without protecting or skirting or offering apologies,” Leitich Smith says. “The challenge is in unleashing your own monster within.”

Growing Up Scared

Children of all ages might enjoy horror, but they don’t enjoy the same kinds of horror. Stories for younger children tend to balance fear with humor. Plots are spooky but not terrifying. Teen novels, on the other hand, can include more gore and death. Writers have to find the right balance for their books.

“The youngest readers are more likely to enjoy what you might call the ‘gotcha!’ scares,” says Joshua Gee, author of Encyclopedia Horrifica. “Middle-graders want to be surprised on every page, but not necessarily terrified. And finally, younger kids usually prefer a little humor with their horror. Goosebumps is a great example.”

Grayson points out that different age groups have different fears. “The scariest thing for a 12-year-old is the idea their parents might die. Typical YAs almost hope they would, so most YAs are fearful of loss of social capital or that their boy/girlfriend is a psycho or vampire.”

According to Van Metre, “YA novels are pretty limitless in the amount of gore; one would try to soften this or have it happen ‘off-stage’ for middle grade readers. Also, the occasional bleak ending is okay for teens; not so much for middle graders.”

Does the world really need more monsters? Maybe so, if scary books can help young people deal with real life. “One of my all-time favorite books is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak,” Gee says. “It introduced me to my first monsters – and taught me how to make friends with them. I think that’s the role of scary literature in a kid’s life. It provides a safe and neutral realm where kids may engage their fears without becoming consumed by them. From an early age, Mr. Sendak’s words and pictures taught me that, yes, the world is a scary place, but it’s also a magical, surprising place. It can’t be one without being the other.”

PS – Ghost stories can also be a fun way to teach history. Read about that here on the “Mad about Middle Grade History” blog.

Chris Eboch writes a variety of genres for all ages. Her Haunted series for ages 8-12 follows a brother and sister who travel with their parents’ ghost hunter TV show. They try to help the ghosts, while keeping their activities secret from meddling grownups. In The Ghost on the Stairs, an1880s ghost bride haunts a Colorado hotel, waiting for her missing husband to return. The Riverboat Phantom features a steamboat pilot still trying to prevent a long-ago disaster. In The Knight in the Shadows, a Renaissance French squire protects a sword on display at a New York City museum. During The Ghost Miner’s Treasure, Jon and Tania help a dead man find his lost gold mine – but they’re not the only ones looking for it. Learn more at www.chriseboch.com or her Amazon page, or check out her writing tips at her Write Like a Pro! blog.

What Makes a Scary Story Scary?

Sally Cooper thought the lake was picture postcard perfect, something a city girl like her had only imagined. She didn’t know the lake held secrets beneath that quiet water, secrets needing to come to the surface. The past doesn’t stay buried.

That’s the description of a short story I’ve put up on my website (for free) for anyone who likes old-fashioned ghost stories. My family and I spend a few weeks every summer at a lake, and almost every night we sit around a campfire enjoying the evening. And of course we need ghost stories in such a setting. I love lakes, but as a child, I could scare myself silly by thinking about what might be under the surface of the lake. Think about that. What could be a hundred feet down in the darkest, deepest part of the lake, where no one can see? *shiver*

This summer while we were there I got inspired to write a ghost story about that very fear. If you’d like to read it, or print it out for reading or telling aloud around a campfire, click on this link to go to a page on my website. Once there, there is another link to click to get up a printable pdf:  Beneath the Lake  I hope you enjoy!

Over the past few days I’ve done an informal survey of people to find what makes certain stories very scary for them. Here’s what I heard:

1. A storyline that involves something they were very afraid of as young children. I do think residual fear can affect us very rational adults. We can tell ourselves that of course we don’t believe in ghosts any more, but some of us (me) still can’t watch a scary movie like THE WOMAN IN BLACK or easily forget a particularly scary story like THE TURN OF THE SCREW. A confession - I am particularly freaked out by ghostly children. I don’t know where this fear came from, but it’s certainly there, even though I DON’T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS.

2. Knowing there is something bad that’s going to happen before the characters do. This builds an incredible amount of tension as the reader wants to scream at the main character, “Don’t open the closet door!” I’m reading ‘SALEM’S LOT by Stephen King, and he uses this technique. The story starts with the characters who have escaped the town, and we, the readers, know something very bad happened there, even if we don’t know what. When the story shifts back to the time the troubles started, readers are able to pick up on the clues before the townspeople do.

3. Having the characters trapped in a situation where they will have to face whatever it is, and it will be bad when they do. Stephen King used that to great effect in THE SHINING with his characters snowed in at an empty haunted hotel. The movie ALIEN also fits into this category. There’s certainly no easy way off that spaceship.

4. Horrific images that get stuck in your head. I don’t like this kind of scary story, because I have a hard time forgetting certain images once they are imagined. And for middle grade writers, relying on horrific images isn’t going to work well. Our goal is not to encourage reoccurring nightmares!

The best scary opening chapter in a middle grade novel I’ve read is Margaret Peterson Haddix’s first book in The Missing series, FOUND. She does a terrific job of building up the tension as the character begins to notice odd things, trying to rationalize them, and then realizes there is something very, very wrong.

So what scares you in a scary story? And can you recommend other truly frightening books?

~ Dee Garretson