Fear is one of the most fascinating things I really enjoy writing into a story, because when you get to the point where you’re freaking yourself out on behalf of your character, you know you’ve captured it. It gives you a rush as if you have finally had a ‘real’ writer moment.
Ideally, you would best describe me as a morbid writer, because I write about fear, death, murder, and even torture as passionately as a sappy person writes a romance novel.
We write about the things we know about from experience. That does not mean that I am a psycho murderer who enjoys torturing people. I just enjoy capturing the emotions; not the happy sort.
Back to the introduction: What kinds of people do and do not write about fear? Why?
Outright Avoidance: Maybe you are afraid or maybe you just did not know how to write about it
There are those who outright avoid writing about fear and the emotions involved in it.
The majority of this group are those who have lived in fear or survived traumatic events and are too terrified to face those memories. Psychologically, we adapt to life and survive situations beyond our comprehension. We cannot digest the emotions involved with it very well and for many, trying to write a story about it or writing the emotion into a character, it becomes too much and we avoid it.
Our job as writers is to capture emotion, good or bad, and put it on paper. Some people just are not capable of doing that yet and I really do not blame them at all.
The other half of this group are those who have not really ever felt fear like others describe it and they tend to avoid writing it, because they don’t understand it and don’t want to do an injustice by writing it poorly.
I recommend the following for this group, which works for both sides:
If you cannot write for yourself, write for someone else who is not a writer. There are so many people in this world with life experiences that you would never understand personally, but you can use it as a way to write your characters. We just want to capture emotion; it does not have to be your own.
There are several ways that you could obtain experiences, obviously, I cannot list them all, but I can give you somewhere to start.
1. Visit centres aimed for troubled youth: They are full of children and teenagers who have a story to tell, need someone to listen and talk to them; they are good about helping you, because you are doing them a favour in return by being there.
They have had a hard life, whether at home, foster homes, school, or on the streets. From molestation, bullying, parents who fight all the time, to street gangs. They have stories to tell. Trust me.
2. Visit centres aimed for the elderly or disabled: They are full of people who have a dependency on those around them and many wish they did not have to. Many of the elderly have felt fear as each member of their family, friends, and acquaintances die off. They are getting lonelier and lonelier. They wait each day, swallowing tons of pills, hoping today is not the day their heart will stop. They are also happy, but in the end, we all fall asleep alone, even if someone is next to us. That matters. Many disabled people had dreams crushed by accidents and often have traumatic nightmares about what happened to them. They have something to tell you too.
3. Visit centres aimed for the homeless: They are less open to talking, but if you can get a few to talk, they have a lot to tell you. Will there be food tomorrow? Shelter? Is winter coming up? Who is going to find my quiet spot on the street and stab me? We do not know how they feel, because we are inside our warm homes with food in our stomachs. Many write the homeless off as lazy bums; and while many are, many others are not. Life just fell apart. We complain that they have resources and should use them, but they do not have an iPhone with internet access to show them where all these resources are. Maybe you can help these people while you ask them about their stories.
4. Visit centres aimed for juvenile offenders: This is a tougher group to question and get answers from, but they are a gold mine if you can get them to talk. They are young and have witnessed or committed crimes involving murder, assault, rape, theft and various gang-related crimes. You could have the point of view of the victim and offender. Why does it matter if the offender felt fear? Even fear can motivate a murder of something. Kill or be killed. Self-defense. To save someone.
Diminish the Impact: Some people do not know how to write it, but they try to anyways
This group is a little different from the first, though very similar at the same time.
Some of them have not had much experience writing their feelings or those of another person and so are just out of practice, which is not bad; just keep working on it. You can refer to the information above for some people you could hunt down to practice.
Others think they understand fear, but do not because they have never really felt it. I do not recommend going out and putting yourself in a dangerous situation just to find out.
If, however, you are going to go ahead and try to write about fear, please use some common sense and really think about it, while you’re doing it. What kind of fear are you trying to send a message to the reader?
I recommend the following for this group:
You do not understand fear, so take it in steps. Do you remember a time when you walked down some stairs or down a hall and someone jumped out at you? Your heart was racing and you probably slapped, hit or shouted at them for startling you. I use that example, because it is the most common way people are scared. We call that a gimmick; It is the most common cheap-ass way that Hollywood tries to scare people in most horror films.
If you want to freak people out, you are going to want to use psychology. The power of the human mind is almost reeling. We have the power to scare ourselves witless and be recklessly fearless. Another thing we are capable of is using something against someone.
We have that moment when we are alone and we hear a sound in the house, knowing that we are alone. That moment when our heart skips a beat and we realize that maybe, we may have watched one too many suspense movies. So we turn down the sound on our television sets, radios or stop talking to someone on the phone to listen closer. We do not hear anything and so we go back to what we are doing and then hear the sound again. We decide to have a moment of bravery, in the hopes that whoever is in the house is more afraid than we are. After all, this is our turf.
Writing that for males and females will be different in this case. Men will get angry and start shouting, slamming a stick or bat against stuff, or work themselves up, ready to kill anything that moves. Women will opt mainly to stay quiet, grab a knife and sneak around looking for the perpetrator or a way out. They are very different reactions, both work well, and of course, I understand that there are men and women who will do what the opposite sex normally would. I am generalizing here.
The point is; fear is very different. It is important that you decide what kind of fear you are trying to write before you try to write it at all. Know how your character is going to react and how to scare your particular character. If you really scare your character, the reader will feel for them or fear for them. It helps.
Coming Up…
I do not claim to be the ultimate expert on writing fear, but I want to help other writers be able to capture emotion and so that is what I am working on. Coming up, I have been working on a few exercises that I hope will be useful for writing subtle fear to extreme fear.
I hope you all have a great day!
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