How can I make my readers feel the fear of my hero/heroine?
24 April 2010
3 Comments
Neci M asked:
I want people who read my stories feel their heart rate quicken, their breathing become shallow. I want their hands to sweat, and their stomach clench in dread. How can I transfer fear from my characters into my readers accurately? I don’t want them to understand the fear, I want them to be scared themselves. I want their mouths to be dry! I want them to check under their beds twice!
Thanks!
I want people who read my stories feel their heart rate quicken, their breathing become shallow. I want their hands to sweat, and their stomach clench in dread. How can I transfer fear from my characters into my readers accurately? I don’t want them to understand the fear, I want them to be scared themselves. I want their mouths to be dry! I want them to check under their beds twice!
Thanks!
Okay, well if you get scared writing then the novel, then we’ll get scared reading it. The only way the reader will get scared is if you write the fear accurately. It has to have the correct pacing–too fast and we won’t get scared, too slow and we’ll get over it after a while–and it has to be about something that universally feared or something that most people are scared of. Things that you don’t read about often, such as stories of vampires have now been basically beautified because when most people think of vampires, they think handsome Edward and aren’t scared.
Good luck! And remember to get it right on paper, so that when we open the book we’ll be scared. Stephen King is good at creeping people out. Check his books out. And keep the fear alive and mysterious.
Make sure you take time describing each and every detail. imagination is very important. If you don’t have enough definitive details of the scary things in your story, the reader will not be able to create that graphic image in their mind that you expect them to. The mistake many people writing stories make is that they imagine their story while writing it and forget to include the description in writing because the graphical images are already in their head.
♥
Good luck
x
What scares you? How do you feel when something does this to you? What would make you check under the bed twice?
What scares you will probably also scare your reader.
When you imagine this nameless fear creeping up to your hero/heroine, put yourself there. What is this dreadful thing going to do to you. If your hair stands up on end, if the back of your neck starts to prickle. Then you have it.
Good luck. Look forward to seeing your books in the shops.
P.S. It might be a good idea to start with a series of short stories to begin with.
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