Writing a monster that’s actually scary to read is not easy.
So let’s go over some examples of terrifying monsters from books, talk about why they work, then practice writing some of our own together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to write a terrifying monster.
You can watch the video here to or scroll down for notes/highlights.
How to Write a Terrifying Monster
- Writing a monster that is actually scary to read is not easy
- Most of the terror that a monster brings is in the buildup to it: the anticipation and suspense is quite often scarier than the creature itself
- So if you want to make sure that your monster lives up to its hype, be sure to follow these four points:
#1. Make The Monster Interact
Example: “Pickman’s Model” by H.P. Lovecraft
(In this story, a man makes terrifyingly realistic paintings of monsters, which the twist ending shows are not from his imagination, but photographs.)
It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. But damn it all, it wasn’t even the fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountain-head of all panic—not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn’t the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, though any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.
It was the technique, Eliot—the cursed, the impious, the unnatural technique! As I am a living being, I never elsewhere saw the actual breath of life so fused into a canvas. The monster was there—it glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared—and I knew that only a suspension of Nature’s laws could ever let a man paint a thing like that without a model—without some glimpse of the nether world which no mortal unsold to the Fiend has ever had.
- The description of the creature itself here isn’t too scary, but what it’s DOING is terrifying: eating the person and driving the narrator to madness
- Having the monster interact with people in blood-curdling ways is a great way to show why it’s horrifying
- It can interact with the main character, or others, depending on the type of story you want to tell
#2. Make the Monster Unpredictable/Uncontrollable
Example: In the Tall Grass by Stephen King/Joe Hill
(In this scene, main character Cal has wandered into a field of very tall grass with his sister, and despite the two of them shouting for each other and not moving, they seem like they’re getting further apart. Cal decides to stand still for thirty seconds, jump as high as he can, and see what happens.)
Thirty. He had been standing in this one spot for thirty seconds. He thought he should wait a full minute, but couldn’t, and so he jumped for another look back at the church.
A part of him — a part he had been trying with all his will to ignore — already knew what he was going to see. This part had been providing an almost jovial running commentary: Everything will have moved, Cal, good buddy. The grass flows and you flow too. Think of it as becoming one with nature, bro.
When his tired legs lofted him into the air again, he saw the church steeple was now off to his left. Not a lot — just a little. But he had drifted far enough to his right that he was no longer seeing the front of that diamond-shaped sign, but the silver aluminum back of it. Also, he wasn’t sure, but he thought it was all just a little farther away than it had been before.
- Fields of grass aren’t scary by themselves, but a field of grass that is unpredictable and uncontrollable is terrifying
- Defying logic, going against human intuition, these are all scary things for a monster to do
- The less control your character has over the situation/monster, the scarier it will be
#3. Make Its Appearance Based on Primal Fears
Example: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
(In this scene, the main character has come back home to his family’s wagon train to see them all murdered, seeing a group of spirit-like murderers sitting around a fire.)
The voice came from a man who sat apart from the rest, wrapped in a shadow at the edge of the fire. Though the sky was still bright with sunset and nothing stood between the fire and where he sat, shadow pooled around him like thick oil. The fire snapped and danced, lively and warm, tinged with blue, but no flicker of its light came close to him. The shadow gathered thicker around his head. I could catch a glimpse of a deep cowl like some priests wear, but underneath the shadows were so deep it was like looking down a well at midnight.
- Humans have many natural fears: the dark, spiders, drowning, vomit, etc.
- Don’t try to go against human nature, go WITH it by using those to make your monster scarier
- In that scene, darkness played a huge role and made the creature far scarier than if it had been hairy or rubbery or puffy or something else
#4. Leave Some to the Imagination
Example: A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
(In this scene, the men are far north, attacked by a group of strange creatures from the woods.)
A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice.
- Note how in that scene, we don’t get a ton of details about the monster. In fact, it even seems to change halfway through.
- It focuses more on conveying a FEELING of the monster, rather than what it specifically looks like
- Less is more when it comes to describing a monster, limit yourself to only showing exactly what is necessary for the story, and focus on the important stuff (ie: the eyes)
- Nothing you ever describe will be scarier than what the reader imagines for themself, so give them enough to form an image in their head, but not enough to draw it perfectly for them
After that, chat voted on some monsters that we wrote descriptions for. You can read what they voted for in bold below, and then what we came up for them
#1. Sentient darkness
I was tossing and turning all night after Maddie had told me the stupid ghost story about The Sorrow. Yes, I was twenty-four years old, living on my own with a roommate, and shouldn’t let stupid stories get to me anymore, but I’ve always been weak when it comes to the spooky stuff. I remember when I watched The Ring with some friends in high school and I had nonstop nightmares so bad I had to go to the doctor. It was my first and last horror movie.
So now I lay in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, sweat covering me from head to toe, wishing I could just fall asleep and let it be morning.
It’s not like the story about The Sorrow was even that scary. The only reason I even listened to Maddie tell it was because I thought it was a real story at first, something about that girl who had gone missing in the apartment above us. But then came the part about her curling up in the tub and her depression squeezing her so hard as she wailed and screamed that she collapsed into living darkness, now only existing to suffocate those who she happened to drift onto.
Of course, it was that ridiculous part that kept me up all night.
“Kelly!” came Maddie’s voice from down the hall. What the hell was she doing up this late? It was the middle of the night. “Do you want pancakes? I’m making some.”
I shot a look over to the clock on my nightstand. The bright red numbers read eight in the morning. That was impossible. My windows were open, but there was nothing but darkness covering them. My room was filled with the thick shadows of nighttime.
My mouth opened to shout back at Maddie, to cut it out with trying to scare me, but the sound was sucked away, tinny like it was only in my head. Maddie warbled something back, but I couldn’t even hear her anymore. The air gooped and clawed, distorting the sounds as I struggled to breathe in, tasting mold and metal, thick as spoiled pudding.
Shooting up in bed, I reached over for my bedside lamp. The red numbers on the clock were only a dim crimson now, gashes in the heart of the pulsating darkness. Unable to see anything, I groped for the lamp’s pullchain, my sweaty fingers relying on muscle memory alone. When they wrapped around the cold metal beads, I yanked it hard.
No light. Only a sound. A soft, sorrowful whimper in the blackness.
“Don’t do that.”
#2. A creature that once you lose sight of it, appears to you again with a different face.
Dustin pulled on his jeans after he climbed out of the bed from last-night’s catch. What was her name? Anna? Laura? They all blended together the same way that nighttime desserts probably blended together for other people. A nice, sweet snack before bed, but you can’t recall any of them individually.
“Hey,” came the voice of what’s-her-name. “Are you leaving already?”
Dustin groaned as he zipped up his pants and looked around for his shirt. He was hoping to get out of here before she’d woken up.
“Yeah, I’ve got work early,” he lied. “But I’ll call you later.”
Not seeing his nice turquoise polo anywhere, Dustin turned back to the bed. Maybe it was lying on her side, thrown off in a fit of dessert-loving rage last night.
His eyes landed on something else. The girl’s face, something about it was off. He couldn’t remember exactly what she’d looked like, it was all a blur of thrusting and grunting, but he was at least pretty sure she was blonde. He liked to get a nice variety of hair colors, you know, all the food groups.
But now she was full brunette. And it seemed shorter than before. Had she given herself a bob cut between passing out last night and now?
“Where’s my shirt?” Dustin asked. There was something familiar about the girl, besides the obvious, that made him tingle in a sickly way.
She didn’t reply, only smiled at him, sitting cross-legged on the bed in her oversized nightshirt with her hands tucked in her lap. Dustin peered past her, but there was no turquoise in sight, so he gave up and turned back to the other side.
“Your shirt’s here,” she said from behind.
You couldn’t have said that a second ago? Dustin grumbled internally. He spun around.
A different girl was looking back at him. She was still sitting in the same position, hands in lap, nightshirt oversized on her small frame. But her hair was curly and red, dangling past her shoulders, and freckles dotted her pale skin.
Dustin stumbled backward, blinking hard. As soon as his eyes opened from the brief respite of darkness, a new girl was sitting there. This time dark-skinned, straight black hair, with a mole on her cheek.
She was still smiling.
“What the…” Dustin barely choked out. The girl slowly sat up and walked toward him, placing her fingers on his bare chest. They were so cold it stung his heart and lungs with ice. Dustin groaned in pain and clenched his eyes shut. When he opened them, yet another girl was there. This time dyed blue hair done up spiky, with red lipstick the color of fresh blood.
This one, Dustin recognized. Even when you eat the same dessert every night, you remember the time you doused your ice cream in blue syrup. Her name was Spyke, but he hadn’t seen her in months.
Then the memories crashed open. The brunette, the redhead, the black hair… they were all girls he’d been with before.
“I’ve been trying for so long to get through to you,” the girl spoke in a slow voice, trailing her icicle fingers along Dustin’s shoulders. “So many different forms, and yet.”
Dustin snapped out of his shock. He shoved whatever this thing was away from him. Screw the shirt, he was getting the hell out of here!
He turned to run, but something clasped him from behind. This time not cold, but sharp, digging into his sides. Dustin cried out and collapsed to his knees on the floor. Squishy, wet footsteps crept in front of him. Something throbbed in the corner of his eye.
“I was a fool,” came a voice from all around him now, a horrific choir of all the girls he’d been with. “You don’t love anyone but yourself. But that’s okay.”
A pink tumor riddled with popping veins and arteries slowly descended into Dustin’s vision. A dozen faces protruded out of it, each one a different expression of agony, speaking in perfect unison.
“I will just take your face now, Dustin,” they spoke. “And I will finally become the person you love.”
#3. “The thing that pretends to be a door”
The thing that pretends to be a door is at the front of the thing that pretends to be a house. It waits, silently breathing in the sweet giggles and laughs of the children running up and down its street. Drinking in their cries of scraped knees and sunburns. Listening carefully to their whispers about the house that no one has lived in for a long, long time.
And it waits.
It waits for a child who pretends to be brave. Who pretends to be older. Who pretends to not believe. It holds back the tremors of pleasure as its overgrown walkway is trod upon by small, dirty shoes. It does not cry out for joy at feeling a sleeved elbow bounce across the handrail of its rotting staircase. It does not say anything as the child stands on its dusty welcome mat. There will be plenty of time for talk later.
The child who pretends to be brave puts their hand on the doorknob of the thing that pretends to be a door. At that touch, the warm flesh wrapped around its appendage, it cannot take it anymore. The child cries out, not squeezing cold metal like they expected, but something soft and beating.
The thing that pretends to be a door grins at the child — neither of them have to pretend anymore.
Be sure to check out the video for dramatic readings, and for more examples!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso