How do you create a scary atmosphere in spooky stories?

That chill down your spine? Those goosebumps on your arm? The hair on the back of your neck standing up? It’s all about the atmosphere created by the author whose work you’re reading. And one of the best new writers for the spooky stuff – her debut novel is on the Stoker longlist, people! – is Ally Wilkes, author of the polar survival horror All The White Spaces.

Ahead of her appearance at the UK Ghost Story Festival – where she’ll run a workshop on landscape and location in the ghost story, as well as a talk on publishing in the horror genre – Ally shares her tips for creating a scary atmosphere with Horror Tree.

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Creating New Characters In A Pre-Existing World 

by Stephen Zimmer

A Moment In Eternity introduces a brand new character, Hongvi Shadow Walker, set in a world that has been explored so far through the adventures of two other featured characters, Ragnar Stormbringer and Rayden Valkyrie, over the course of no less than a dozen novellas and three novels.  

The introduction of a new character in a pre-existing world offers great opportunities for me as a writer to open up an entirely new area of that world for the reader to adventure within.  

With Ragnar and Rayden, the lands that they explore and interact with overlap often.  As of the release of A Moment In Eternity, the lands where the tribes including the one that Hongvi belongs to, the Shinumu, have not previously been revealed or explored at all.  Even so, there are some basic parameters relating to the world itself that have to remain consistent in the unveiling of the new territory, characters, and other inhabitants within it. 

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Installing the Fantasy Kitchen Sink in Rural Australia to Ward off Cthulhu

by: Ashton K. Rose

When I first started writing Urban/Paranormal Fantasy, I never considered using the world I knew best as a setting. My first fantasy novel that had a distinct urban fantasy setting was a vampire political/crime drama I wrote at nineteen. It was the first time I’d written fantasy entirely set in the “real” world. My teenage writing in the genre sitting firmly in the portal fantasy genre heavily influenced by the Oz Series and Narnia books.

The issue about writing stories set in the city, I’d never lived in one. I’d only been to “the city” a handful of times. The largest place I’d lived in was a small town of 4,000 people. Before that I spent the first fourteen years of my life living on a remote family farm. A lot of my ideas of what the city was like, was guess work based on the books and tv shows I’d seen. Making it easier to start writing Gaslamp fantasy in place of fiction with a modern city setting. It felt easier to write mistakes in a 19th century setting rather than a modern city. It was easier for people to notice the mistakes I’d made about life in modern cities.

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The Original Holiday Horror: A Christmas Carol 

by: Rachael Tamayo

 ‘Twas the night before Christmas… insert ghosts, monsters, bizarre themes, and chilling imagery here. Thankfully there is no shortage of classic holiday ghost stories; being the horror lovers that we are, we’d have it no other way. But the love of all things dark and spooky is not a new thing. It was a common theme in classic nineteenth-century literature, and Christmas tales were no exception. An article on Big Think goes as far as to say that it was a beloved tradition during the 1800s to gather around the fire and tell ghost stories. “Nothing satisfies us on Christmas eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about specters,” wrote Jerome k. Jerome in his 1891 anthology of ghost stories.

 Charles Dickens was no stranger to this, as we all know. In 1843, Charles Dickens penned and published what would become the epitome of past, present, and future Christmas tradition in the instant bestseller that came out December 18th, 1843. 

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“Where do you come up with this sh%t?”

That’s the question I’m asked – we’re all asked – more than any other. My brother. Parents. Friends. Readers. Co-workers. Strangely, not my wife (that’s how you know you’re with the right one).

I’ve seen writers get frustrated with it. I think it’s because they’ve been asked it so many times they just want to get onto the next part of the conversation, but it strikes me that for a reader – someone who appreciates the art – this really is the most obvious and perhaps interesting question.

While working as a freelance journalist, I used to get magazine assignments where I had to profile a tech company or CEO about their new-fangled creation. Some of the tech was pretty cool, most of it leading edge. Invariably I asked, where did you get the idea from?

As a business journalist, I interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs and innovators, and that question was always part of the interview. Sometimes I already knew the answer and just wanted to hear them say it so I could quote it; other times, I didn’t. Regardless, I asked and then often printed the answer because it was interesting, and I knew my audience wanted to know the answer. I was asking the question for them.

The desire for people to understand one another, to communicate, to draw out the secret sauce that spurs creation and generates success is timeless. If you happen to meet a magician, I bet you’ll ask – or want to ask – how the trick works, even if you know the answer will ruin it for you. Same with a bridge engineer, or someone who builds power plants. Heck, even my contractor – I was floored with a solution he came up with for part of our roof replacement, and asked him, how did you come up with that?

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When Robert Louis Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886, he struck literary gold. Lots of people who’ve never read it or seen any of the adaptations still know what the story’s about. Mr. Hyde is such a familiar figure he’s battled everyone from Scooby-Doo to Marvel Comics’ Thor.

People who haven’t read the book still know exactly what it means to describe someone’s behavior as Jekyll and Hyde. There’s no higher compliment for a writer than having your creation turn into a metaphor.

Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde play a large part in my steampunk novel Questionable Minds. In an early scene, my protagonist, baronet Simon Taggart, talks about how Hyde blackmailed the respectable Dr. Jekyll over some sins the doctor committed in his younger, wilder days. Terrified of scandal, Jekyll paid up, even changing his will to favor Hyde. Fortunately, Jekyll’s lawyer, Utterson, found evidence enough to send Hyde to jail — the blackguard’s criminal record was long and ugly — and used the threat to make Hyde flee the country.

As so often happens, what “everyone knows” is a lie, cooked up by Jekyll and Utterson to conceal the doctor’s true relationship to Hyde. In the years since, Jekyll has devoted himself to doing good works and rejecting vice. He’s buried his darker impulses so deep that he has no fear of Hyde ever resurfacing. When Jack the Ripper winds up attacking Dr. Jekyll, however, Hyde surges out of the doctor’s subconscious to fight back. Once loose, he has no intention of letting Jekyll shove him back down again.
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