How To Describe Surroundings In Your Horror Story
HOW TO DESCRIBE SURROUNDINGS IN YOUR HORROR STORY
As a storyteller, your first job, while seemingly simple, is also exceedingly crucial: to get your readers on board so they want to read on. As any experienced writer will tell you, that first job rarely has anything to do with the plot of the story, or even the characters. It has everything to do with your descriptions.
This is as true in the horror story genre as it is anywhere else. Remember that you don’t have the luxury of using jump scares like a screenwriter. Yours is a subtler trade, engaging the reader’s senses and imagination to instill gripping fear.
To succeed in this, you should be able to make your fictional world seem convincingly real and intense, perhaps even more than the real world itself. Vivid descriptions are necessary to achieve this effect. The locations, buildings, materials, trees, weather, rooms, and everything else that makes up the environment should not only be believable, but emphatic and engaging components of the overall mood.
