I really liked how grounded this felt before the horror elements fully kicked in. The dialogue between the brothers made the situation feel weirdly normal in a believable way, which honestly made the chair reveal creepier. The “Here’s your pizza” line especially felt natural and gave the characters personality instead of making them feel like horror archetypes.
I’m curious from a storytelling perspective: when you’re writing supernatural horror like this, how do you decide the balance between mystery and explanation?
I'm going to take this as subjective, because I'm not a horror expert, and tell you my process specifically. If you want to steal my process, please do, if it works for you.
I write differently in horror than in most genres. I think of what actually scares me the most and I use that feeling to inform the setting. I fully immerse the reader into the protagonist's perspective and I don't let the protagonist in on the story.
The unknown is usually scarier than the known. In Sci-Fi and Fantasy, I have to have a world and a plot outline going into the project. Writing horror and thriller, I free-write as much as possible, not knowing what will happen next, then I look at both plausible explanations and paranormal possibilities of each horror event. If I can't find a way to rationalize it, it doesn't usually go into the story. If it's so easy to rationalize that I wouldn't notice it in real life, I need to ramp it up. For example, scratching sounds in the attic could be a rodent, but hearing footsteps in an empty house would set off alarm bells.
The short answer is: I use as many cheat codes as possible.
What I mean by cheat codes is: 1. play to my writing strengths (character and dialogue), 2. pull from relationships, people, and experiences in my own life as much as I can, and 3. for my weaknesses (descriptions and setting) use crutches like looking pictures of a similar building or area as I write.
This is great. It reminds me a bit of a great podcast about story-telling, I think it's The Story Grid, specifically the episode about the 5 commandments of story-telling. You hit on all of them.
1. firstly you have your inciting incident, the trip and fall, it arouses a reaction from the protag. From that the incident creates...
2a.) escalating conflict, and it does it quickly. The fall isn't just a fall, the spaghetti is spilled AND the phone is cracked...and then you have
2b.) a reversal of audience expectation resultant of this, where the source of the fall is a wooden chair in the middle of the road, one of the last things your reader expects to be the source of the conflict.
3. From there you introduce your crisis, which is a deliberation moment for you protag: either a best bad decision or a good irreconcilable decision. I think in this instance its best bad decision: either he ignores the haunted chair, or he investigates the haunted chair, which he does a little bit of both.
4. Climax = an active answer to the crisis. If there was any doubt that nefarious entities were involved, this is the first time its palpable. Where we didn't see a chair move before, we were just introduced to it in a weird spot. This time we see both actors react to a chair that is upright by itself.
5. Resolution. The chair is no longer the issue, a new scene and inciting incident (being locked out) is introduced.
Well done, close to the perfect scene from a story-telling standpoint.
Thanks for taking the time to critique! Hopefully the rest of the chapters fare as well, but I'll happily accept constructive criticism as well for when I go into second draft editing. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I really liked how grounded this felt before the horror elements fully kicked in. The dialogue between the brothers made the situation feel weirdly normal in a believable way, which honestly made the chair reveal creepier. The “Here’s your pizza” line especially felt natural and gave the characters personality instead of making them feel like horror archetypes.
I’m curious from a storytelling perspective: when you’re writing supernatural horror like this, how do you decide the balance between mystery and explanation?
I'm going to take this as subjective, because I'm not a horror expert, and tell you my process specifically. If you want to steal my process, please do, if it works for you.
I write differently in horror than in most genres. I think of what actually scares me the most and I use that feeling to inform the setting. I fully immerse the reader into the protagonist's perspective and I don't let the protagonist in on the story.
The unknown is usually scarier than the known. In Sci-Fi and Fantasy, I have to have a world and a plot outline going into the project. Writing horror and thriller, I free-write as much as possible, not knowing what will happen next, then I look at both plausible explanations and paranormal possibilities of each horror event. If I can't find a way to rationalize it, it doesn't usually go into the story. If it's so easy to rationalize that I wouldn't notice it in real life, I need to ramp it up. For example, scratching sounds in the attic could be a rodent, but hearing footsteps in an empty house would set off alarm bells.
The short answer is: I use as many cheat codes as possible.
What I mean by cheat codes is: 1. play to my writing strengths (character and dialogue), 2. pull from relationships, people, and experiences in my own life as much as I can, and 3. for my weaknesses (descriptions and setting) use crutches like looking pictures of a similar building or area as I write.
i love your writing style!
This is great. It reminds me a bit of a great podcast about story-telling, I think it's The Story Grid, specifically the episode about the 5 commandments of story-telling. You hit on all of them.
1. firstly you have your inciting incident, the trip and fall, it arouses a reaction from the protag. From that the incident creates...
2a.) escalating conflict, and it does it quickly. The fall isn't just a fall, the spaghetti is spilled AND the phone is cracked...and then you have
2b.) a reversal of audience expectation resultant of this, where the source of the fall is a wooden chair in the middle of the road, one of the last things your reader expects to be the source of the conflict.
3. From there you introduce your crisis, which is a deliberation moment for you protag: either a best bad decision or a good irreconcilable decision. I think in this instance its best bad decision: either he ignores the haunted chair, or he investigates the haunted chair, which he does a little bit of both.
4. Climax = an active answer to the crisis. If there was any doubt that nefarious entities were involved, this is the first time its palpable. Where we didn't see a chair move before, we were just introduced to it in a weird spot. This time we see both actors react to a chair that is upright by itself.
5. Resolution. The chair is no longer the issue, a new scene and inciting incident (being locked out) is introduced.
Well done, close to the perfect scene from a story-telling standpoint.
Thanks for taking the time to critique! Hopefully the rest of the chapters fare as well, but I'll happily accept constructive criticism as well for when I go into second draft editing. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
This was a fun first chapter! Just enough mystery to intrigue me to keep reading. Great job!
love this!!