How to Write a Horror Short Story: A Complete Guide for Beginners

This resource will teach you how to write a horror short story from start to finish, even if you’re a beginner. Part 1 offers a step-by-step guide to get you started. Part 2 delivers some helpful advice and inspiration from masters of the genre!

Part 1: How to Write a Horror Short Story

Writing a good horror story is harder than you might think.

Longtime, professional writers might make it look easy. But that’s only because they’ve been through the process dozens of times in the past.

I don’t say this to discourage you, but to help you set realistic expectations from the start. Writing a good short story is like any other creative skill. It requires time and practice to excel.

The good news: Short stories don’t require a long-term commitment, the way novels do. You can write one in a week. This allows you to experiment with different approaches and ideas, while honing your skills at the same time.

Here’s a step-by-step beginner’s guide that explains how to write a horror story.

1. Come up with a unique idea for your story.

You can’t start writing a horror story until you develop an idea or premise. It doesn’t have to be a fully formed idea—and it probably won’t be in the beginning.

But there has to be something to provide a springboard.

Here’s a creative exercise you might find helpful. Think of an ordinary person, place or thing, and then find a way to make it dark or disturbing.

Here are a few examples:

• Person: A friendly neighbor who never misses a chance to chat … but their cheerful demeanor hides an unsettling secret about what they keep in their basement.
• Place: A local coffee shop where the barista remembers every single customer’s order … and their deepest fears.
• Thing: A child’s doll that has been passed down for generations … and seems to take on a life of its own at night.
• Routine: An evening jog through a familiar park where you start noticing eerie figures hidden among the trees, always watching, but never approaching.
• Digital Device: A new smart speaker that starts responding to questions no one has asked … and knows things about the listener’s life that were never shared online.
• Public Space: A crowded subway station where strangers, one by one, start to recognize you and whisper about something terrible you haven’t yet done.
• Mirror: A mirror in an antique store that shows different reflections of the same person, each one aging or decaying in ways that suggest a horrific fate.
• Pet: A loyal dog that begins growling and acting aggressively whenever it’s near a specific part of the house.

Horror stories often involve taking the ordinary and twisting it into something uncanny, unsettling, and unexpected. And there are many ways to accomplish this in short story form.

2. Choose your point of view.

In fiction, the point of view (POV) refers to the perspective from which the story is told.

Point of view establishes the narrator’s position relative to the story. It also determines how much information the reader has, since the reader “sees” the story through the eyes of the main character.

Here are the three main POV options used when writing horror stories:

• First Person: The narrator is a character within the story, directly experiencing events and using “I” and “me” pronouns.
• Second Person: The narrator directly addresses the reader as “you,” placing the reader in the story as a character.
• Third Person: The narrator is outside the story, using “he,” “she,” and “they” to describe characters. There are different versions of third person POV, but that’s the subject of another guide.

The great thing about horror short stories (versus novels) is that you can experiment with different POVs to figure out what works best. The shorter length makes edits and revisions easier.

Maybe you start off writing a story in third-person POV, but later discover that it works best as a first-person narrative. No problem. Just change it around. You’re only three pages in.

Chances are, you prefer a certain type of POV when reading short stories. If so, you’ll probably find it easier and more natural to take your own work in that direction.

3. Develop a simple hook or premise.

Short stories benefit from having a good, strong hook that pulls the reader in. That’s true for all genres, but especially for horror and suspense.

When people sit down to read a horror story, they want to encounter something intriguing within the first few paragraphs.

They’re not impatient. They just have specific expectations for a specific genre and format.

Short stories deliver a compressed narrative. They usually start in the middle, just before the climax or peak action. So you have to get the ball rolling quickly. Your readers will expect it.

Before you even start writing a horror story, think about how you can hook the reader. You could do this with a simple premise, like “a character notices something wrong with their reflection,” or “a person gets a disturbing phone call late at night.”

You don’t need to have all of the answers at this stage. You don’t even have to know how the story ends. You just need a premise to get the story moving forward.

Write the beginning. Hook the reader. And move forward from there.

4. Give yourself the freedom to experiment.

If you were halfway through a novel and decided to make a major change, you would have a lot of work to do. You might have to rewrite or significantly change 200 pages of material.

Short stories, on the other hand, are much easier to reshape due to their brevity. They allow you to experiment on the page, making changes with less effort.

You might start writing a horror story with a specific vision in mind, only to find that the vision changes as you get a few pages in. That’s a manageable rewrite.

Keep this in mind when you sit down to write a short story. Give yourself full permission to experiment and “wander,” even if it means you have to make a midcourse correction.

Writing horror stories is like a detonation and a reconstruction all rolled into one. You start with a specific idea (or part of an idea) as to where you think the story is headed. But then you actually start writing it and everything just blows up. Bits and pieces fly everywhere.

So you look at those pieces and realize there’s actually a different kind of story trying to emerge. You reorganize. You reshape. You take things out and put other things in.

And eventually … voila. All of the pieces fit neatly into place.

It doesn’t always work like this. But it often does—and usually with better results.

5. Figure out what your character wants and fears.

In fiction, character actions are often driven by their wants and desires. The character wants something (or wants to avoid something), but obstacles rise up in their path.

This “want-plus-obstacle” formula is the basis for most fiction, including horror stories.

Here’s how the legendary Ray Bradbury describes it, in the preface of his book Zen in the Art of Writing:

“What do you want more than anything else in the world? What do you love, or what do you hate? Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all his heart. Give him running orders. Shoot him off. Then follow as fast as you can go. The Character, in his great love, or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story.” 

If you don’t know what your character wants, you don’t know what drives them. So try to figure that out before you write the first words.

Or figure it out as you go, and then go back and revise accordingly.

6. Introduce something uncanny or unsettling.

Think about how you can hint at something being “off” at the start of your story, before the real horror unfolds. Small abnormalities or oddities make for excellent story openers.

You don’t have to reveal the scary thing in the beginning. Your story will probably be better if you don’t. Instead, look for ways to unsettle the reader with subtle, eerie hints.

7. Know that you don’t have to explain everything.

In a novel, you could include an entire chapter that reveals backstory or provides historical context.

In a short story, not so much.

When writing a short horror story, you’ll have to omit a lot of the backstory. You need to stay “in the moment” for the most part, right there with the main character.

And you don’t have to explain everything. You only have to explain (or better yet, describe) whatever is relevant to the character in that moment and shortly before it.

If you need to color in a little of the backstory to make the story work, then by all means do so. Just know that you have the freedom to omit such details.

You could even start your story with a little mystery. For example, a character might sense something strange but not fully understand it—not yet. With horror, the unknown and the unexplained are often scarier than the clearly defined.

8. Rewrite the ending several times, especially the last line.

Short stories end differently than novels, and readers expect this.

The ending of a story can come on quick, right after the climax in some cases. This leaves the reader with a quick emotional punch rather than a gradual landing.

Novels, on the other hand, provide a more comprehensive resolution. They have space to develop subplots and multiple character arcs. So the ending often has to tie up various threads to offer a sense of closure.

Short story readers are usually willing to accept (and might even expect) an ambiguous ending. They know it’s all part of the formula, part of what makes short stories unique and special.

In contrast, a person who has invested weeks into reading a novel might feel “cheated” if the ending poses more questions than it answers.

Keep this in mind when writing horror stories. If you’re struggling to find the ending of a particular story, look in the rearview mirror. You might have already passed it.

And pay particular attention to the last sentence. Short stories are known for having a strong final sentence that lingers in the mind, possibly altering the context of what came before it.

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Part 2: Horror Writing Advice from the Pros

Want to learn how to write good horror stories from masters of the genre?

This is the place! Below, I’ve gathered some writerly tips and advice from a few of the best horror writers of past and present.

Stephen King: Keep the Ball Rolling

We might as well start with the reigning king of horror fiction, Stephen King. Having written somewhere around a gazillion novels, King has some hard-earned wisdom to share on the craft of writing horror stories.

His 2000 book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a riveting read. True to its title, much of the book is about his life as a writer.

But it also offers some insightful tips on how to write horror fiction — or any type of fiction, for that matter.

One of King’s suggestions is to keep the story moving by using description sparingly.

As he puts it:

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

Sure, there’s a time and place for details and description. But too much of it can bring a story to a grinding halt. So be selective. Above all, keep the story moving.

Dallas Mayr: Scare Yourself, if You Want to Scare Others

Dallas Mayr (who wrote under the pen name Jack Ketchum) knew how to write some truly disturbing horror fiction.

Sometimes his “monsters” lived right there in the neighborhood, as in The Girl Next Door. Sometimes they were cave-dwelling cannibals who hunted human prey, as in his novels Off Season and Offspring.

Some of his works might be too disturbing for some readers. But trust me when I tell you he was a master of the genre who is missed by a legion of fans. The man knew how to write.

Through his past interviews and correspondence, Dallas Mayr offered a wealth of advice on how to write horror fiction. One of his best tips for aspiring writers — scare yourself.

If you want to write scary-good horror fiction, you have to create scenes that scare you as the author. Your story should thrill and chill you. After all, how can you expect your work to frighten readers if it doesn’t even frighten you?

Here’s how Mayr explained it, in a 2011 interview for This Is Horror:

“I figure if I don’t scare myself, if I don’t feel that dread of what’s coming up next, I probably won’t scare you. But the same is true of any emotion or feeling I try to get down right on the page. If I’m doing comedy, I damn well better make myself laugh. If I’m doing tenderness, I want to feel that too—I want to bleed a little.”

That’s some sage advice for those who want to write horror fiction.

Anne Rice: Go Where the Pain Is

Anne Rice, the undisputed queen of vampire fiction, prefers to write about her own obsessions and personal pains. In addition to being a cathartic experience, this approach can help writers produce more meaningful fiction.

We all have pain in our past. We all have shadows that follow us, ghostly echoes of previous traumas or tragedy. Believe it or not, these things can help us write better horror fiction.

This isn’t so much a “technique” as a natural tendency. It’s a gravitation. The mind just goes there, all on its own.

Anne Rice says she is drawn to her own obsessions, including the dark chapters from her past. She incorporates these forces within her fiction.

Here’s how she puts it:

“Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I’m writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.”

Writers of all genres could benefit from this philosophy, but especially those who write horror stories. What pains lie in your past? How can you bring them into your fiction?

Shirley Jackson: Analyze Your Own Fears

Gothic horror legend Shirley Jackson used a writing technique similar to what Anne Rice described above. The author of The Haunting of Hill House (and many other great works) said that she tried to understand her own fears and to channel them into her writing.

Want to know how to write horror fiction? This is where it begins.

You have to understand fear if you hope to evoke that kind of emotion in the reader. And where better to look than your own psyche?

Our writing is a direct reflection of who we are and what we’ve been through in life. It mirrors our inner selves.

Here’s how Shirley Jackson described it:

“I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.”

Think about a time in your life when you were truly afraid. Think about the nature of your fear — how it was born, how it affected you, and what you were like on the “other side.” Channel that into your writing.

Victor LaValle: Write Until You’re Convinced

Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom, believes authors should find their own scenes and characters convincing. If you’re not convinced by some element of your story — if you don’t believe or accept it — you should see it as a red flag. You have more work to do.

This isn’t necessarily a “how to write horror fiction” pro tip, but rather one author’s personal methodology. Still, it fits into the overall theme of this article.

Besides, any writer can benefit from this kind of self-criticism.

Think of this way: If you’re not convinced by a certain element in your horror story, how can you expect the reader to accept it?

This is how LaValle put it, during an interview for the Los Angeles Review of Books:

“There are plenty of times when it’s obvious to me that a scene, or a chapter, or a character, isn’t working. By that I mean they’re unconvincing. It doesn’t matter if we’re on Mars or in Montana, I simply don’t believe these characters in their actions, thoughts, or dialogue. That’s the easiest to deal with, in a way, because if I can see it’s false then I know other readers will, too.”

For this reason, you might want to put your work aside for a while, before editing or revising.

When writing the first draft of a horror story, writers tend to get caught up in the moment. We might write a scene and think it’s brilliant, simply because it’s fresh and new. A month later, we might review that same scene and see a dozen things that need fixing.

You’re probably here because you want to know how to write horror stories. But don’t overlook the importance of rewriting it.

Clive Barker: Embrace the Chaos

Clive Barker, the playwright and novelist who brought us Hellraiser, Candyman and the Books of Blood story anthologies, believes that horror fiction speaks to a lack of control.

With our technology, our science, and our relatively high brain-to-body-mass ratio, we humans like to think we’re in control. We think we have a pretty good grasp on things. (Most of us, anyway.)

But what happens when that control slips away? What happens when the universe throws us a curveball or pulls the rug out from under our feet? Horror happens.

Here’s how Barker expressed it:

“Horror fiction has traditionally dealt in taboo. It speaks of death, madness and transgression of moral and physical boundaries. It raises the dead to life and slaughters infants in their cribs; it makes monsters of household pets and begs our affection for psychos. It shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”

This insight adds a universal element to our “how to write horror fiction” theme. Chaos. Helplessness. Lack of control. Most of us fear these things on a deep, primal level. We are born with such fears. They’re part of our DNA. So they certainly have a place within horror fiction.

P.S. If you’re an aspiring horror writer, but you haven’t yet read Clive Barker’s Books of Blood series, you might want to give them a look. Some of those stories are creepy. Some are downright gruesome. All are wonderfully written. They might teach you a thing or two about how to write horror fiction.

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Lightning Round: Quick Tips on Writing Horror

Need more advice on how to write a horror novel or story? Welcome to the lightning round!

1. Come up with an original story idea readers haven’t seen before.
2. Or, put a fresh spin on familiar horror tropes (e.g., a haunted cruise ship).
3. Take the time to develop your characters before you introduce the horror.
4. Create authentic, three-dimensional characters (with flaws).
5. Reveal your character’s inner thoughts and fears, to help readers connect.
6. Horror isn’t about monsters, but the character’s reaction to monsters.
7. Give your story emotion. Let us know what the protagonist wants, and why.
8. Raise the stakes. Make sure your protagonist has a lot to lose.
9. Make the “monster” or villain mysterious for a while, to prolong suspense.
10. Remember that people are often the scariest monsters (see Buffalo Bill).
11. At some point, force your protagonist to confront the evil / monster / threat.
12. The big “showdown” should come toward the end of the story (climax).
13. Leave some things to the reader’s imagination. Don’t over-describe.
14. Feel free to disorient your characters (and readers) by twisting reality.
15. Rewrite your scary scenes until even you find them frightening.
16. Be yourself. Channel your own fears and experiences into your story.
17. Read, read, and read some more. It will help you learn the craft.

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Glossary of Terms for Writers

Here are some terms and concepts you should be familiar with if you want to write horror stories. You might think of them as the “tools of the trade.”

• Ambiguity: A technique where details or outcomes are deliberately unclear, leaving readers to interpret them. Used in horror to create mystery, tension, and lasting unease.
• Antagonist: The character or force opposing the protagonist, creating obstacles or conflict that drives the story forward.
• Arc: The development or transformation of a character or theme throughout a story, showing growth, change, or resolution.
• Atmosphere: The mood or emotional tone of a story, crucial for creating horror. An effective atmosphere can make even ordinary settings feel ominous.
• Climax: The highest point of tension and action in a story, often involving a confrontation with the source of horror or a significant twist.
• Complication: An event or obstacle that makes the main conflict more complex, raising stakes and adding tension to the plot.
• Conflict: The central struggle between opposing forces in a story, such as character vs. character, character vs. nature, or character vs. self.
• Denouement: The resolution of a story following the climax, where loose ends are tied up.
• Dread: A slow-building sense of fear or anxiety about something impending, often worse than the actual event. Dread is a key component of psychological horror and builds suspense.
• Exposition: The introductory portion of a story that provides background information on characters, setting, and basic plot elements.
• Flashback: A narrative device that takes the story back in time to provide context or reveal important details about characters or events.
• Foreshadowing: Hints or clues about what’s to come. Effective foreshadowing can make later twists or scares more satisfying and coherent.
• Monster: The central “antagonist” or creature in horror that embodies fear. It could be supernatural (vampires, demons) or psychological (serial killers, malevolent humans).
• Paranoia: An intense, irrational fear or mistrust of others, often used in psychological horror to build tension and question reality.
• Plot: The sequence of events and actions that make up the main storyline, usually structured with a beginning, middle, and end.
• Point of View (POV): The perspective from which a story is told, such as first-person, third-person, or omniscient.
• Protagonist: The main character or central figure in a story, usually facing challenges that drive the plot forward.
• Revelation: A sudden, often horrifying discovery that changes the character’s understanding of the threat or their own situation.
• Rising Action: The series of events that increase tension and build toward the climax, deepening conflicts and raising the stakes.
• Setting: The time, place, and environment in which a story takes place.
• Slow Burn: A narrative that builds tension gradually, creating suspense and dread over time rather than through immediate scares.
• Subplot: A secondary storyline that runs parallel to the main plot, enhancing or contrasting it and adding depth to the story.
• Subtext: Underlying meanings or themes that are not explicitly stated. Horror fiction often explores subtext related to fears, taboos, or social anxieties.
• Suspense: The feeling of anticipation or worry about what will happen next, essential for building tension.
• Tension: The sense of heightened anticipation, uncertainty, or anxiety that keeps readers engaged in the story.
• Theme: The underlying message, idea, or insight about life that a story conveys, often through character experiences and plot.
• Tropes: Common storytelling elements or conventions in horror, like haunted houses, cursed objects, or mysterious strangers.
• Twist: An unexpected plot turn, often in the climax or denouement, that changes the reader’s understanding of the story.

So there you have it, a crash course on how to write a horror story. I hope you found some useful tips, techniques, and strategies in this article, and I wish you well in your writing adventures.