By studying the masters in the field. 

Right now, one of those masters is Mike Flanagan, the writer and director of such hits as Hush, Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and most recently The Fall of the House of Usher. One of the things he does best is develop characters who feel like people we know—or are ourselves. In my opinion, character is what he puts the most emphasis on in his stories and it’s the key to his success which is why I have watched and rewatched his movies and television series, taking copious notes along the way. Here are three things I’ve learned about character by studying him.

Characters Should be Haunted by Something.

I don’t mean physically—although in a Flanagan story this is always true as well, but in a psychological/spiritual sense. One of the most effective ways to make a character complex is to give them a history rife with dark events and personal relationships scarred by trauma. In Flanagan’s work, there is always a tightly interwoven dual plotline of confronting supernatural fear simultaneously with relationship-based fear. His characters have wounds inflicted on them by others (or that they have inflicted on themselves or others) that must be confronted and healed if they’re to survive whatever supernatural opponent they face.

A good example of this type of character development can be found in The Haunting of Hill House. The plot alternates between the present and the past, closely following the Crain children who famously lived in a haunted house decades ago, fleeing one night after leaving one of their family members behind who does not survive. The experience of living there affects each of them very differently but in equally profound ways. How they cope with the death of that loved one, and the truth of what happened in the house shapes their relationships with each other into their adulthood. The adult children are just as haunted as their younger counterparts, but mostly by their inability to relate to one another or reconcile the hurts they each experienced at the hands of each other and the ghosts they faced. Each child is vividly wrought, their reactions so psychologically accurate that it’s impossible not to get swept up in the horror surrounding them.

Characters Need Ethical Dilemmas

Giving all characters, even your heroes a certain amount of moral ambiguity can be very effective in the horror genre, especially if it leads to redemption. Characters who grapple with blurred ethical boundaries and moral quandaries that don’t have clear cut solutions are riveting because they are enigmatic—the reader can’t easily predict what they are going to do. As a result, they can’t put the book down. What is the right choice? Would the reader make the same decision the character does if they were in their shoes? The uncertainty/lack of an obvious answer adds tension and unpredictability to a narrative.

Riley and Father Pruitt from Midnight Mass are both excellent examples of characters with moral grayness. Riley’s struggle to figure out how to return to his life after being incarcerated for killing a young girl in a drunk driving accident is compelling. Here is a character in need of redemption—someone who, by all accounts, does not have the makings of a hero. And yet, his personal guilt and the way he’s haunted by what he’s done draws viewers in, making them care deeply for him despite his awful wrongdoing. When he’s faced with a supernatural evil twisted to look good, we have to know if he’s strong enough and brave enough to do what’s right. Father Pruitt, on the other hand, is a revered priest who seems on the surface to be the example of morality—but who is actively grappling with the temptation to take his fate—and that of his congregation and the people he loves most—into his own hands even if doing so means deceiving himself and everyone else about what is good and true. Both of their struggles with their faith and morality engender empathy and unease while underscoring the show’s spiritual themes. If you watch only one of Mike Flanagan’s shows/movies, this is the one I recommend most for character study. It’s horror with so much heart I dare you not to cry.

Characters Need Hidden and Not So Hidden Vulnerabilities.

For us to be drawn to a character, we need them to be relatable. The best way to achieve this is by giving them insecurities and fears that reveal themselves over the course of the story. These aspects of character make them more vulnerable and three-dimensional, like us. A mix of obvious fears and insecurities with more hidden ones gives characters depth. It elevates conflicts when those insecurities/vulnerabilities are in direct opposition to what the character needs to do to overcome it.

Flanagan utilizes this technique to great effect in the movie, Gerald’s Game, based on Stephen King’s novel by the same name. This is a story many people thought could not be made into a film because it’s basically about a woman who is stuck handcuffed to a bed after a tryst with her husband goes wrong and he ends up dead. Almost the entire movie takes place in the bedroom of a remote vacation home with just one character who can’t move. It’s a story that rests wholly on the main character, Jessie, a seemingly submissive woman who must find a way to escape her bonds or else die slowly alone in the house—well, maybe not completely alone. Jessie’s predicament is awful—a true nightmare—and one that she can’t escape without facing some awful truths about her past and who she’s allowed herself to become and as a result, something she comes to grips with over the course of the movie. Revelations are doled out one by one, at a pace so unsettling the movie is a psychological nail-biter.

Mastering the art of creating complex characters in the horror/thriller genres is essential for creating stories intense enough to grab the reader and never let go. If we don’t care, there’s no scare. We must be invested in the survival of the people on the page. By studying experts at character development like Mike Flanagan, we can learn to craft characters of our own who leave a lasting impression in our readers’ minds, people they love long after they reach the words, the end.

Amy Christine Parker is the critically acclaimed author of the thrillers Gated, Astray, Smash & Grab, and Flight 171.

You can find her on her website and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

The post No Scare if We Don’t Care: Tips from Mike Flanagan’s Work appeared first on DIY MFA.

But how do we do it? What’s the magic sauce we need to catch readers by surprise in a way that seems logical and inevitable without them predicting what’s coming?

Let’s explore three essential techniques that can help you master the art of the twist.

The Bait and Switch: Look Over That Way

The reversal of expectations is a classic way to take the reader’s assumption about what’s true and flip it on its head. We accomplish this by leading our main characters down a false path while simultaneously seeding in reinforcing clues and actions that lull the reader into thinking that it isn’t a false path at all. Then, just when they start feeling confident about their predictions concerning what happens next, we reveal something to the plot or about the character that contradicts everything they thought they knew to be true.

Example: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

One of my all-time favorite thrillers, this book took readers by storm and has one of the most memorable and unsettling first lines ever. The protagonist, Nick Dunne, is the suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Amy. Gillian skillfully manipulates her readers into believing Nick’s guilt throughout the first half of the novel. However, just as the reader is sure Nick is done for, it’s revealed that Amy faked her own disappearance and meticulously plotted to incriminate Nick. It’s a gasp-worthy twist that transforms what appears at first to be a conventional mystery into a gripping tale of manipulation and deceit.

The Unreliable Narrator: I’m Telling the Truth, I Swear!

An unreliable narrator is a character who tells their story from a distorted perspective—either intentionally or unintentionally. They don’t have to be unreliable because they’re bad. They just need to have compelling reasons to cherry pick the details they reveal to the reader with a goal of deceiving them for some hidden (to the reader) personal gain. This is an effective technique because it gives the story hidden layers and a compelling psychological element.

Example: All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban

This twisty YA thriller revolves around a group of teenagers with secrets to protect who are invited to attend a scholarship dinner only to find themselves trapped in a locked room with a ticking bomb. They have an hour to choose one among them to die if they’re going to survive. Diana’s narrator, Amber Prescott appears to be telling a straightforward story—at least at first. But as the secrets surrounding each teenager are revealed, a series of subtle revelations begin to build that suggest maybe Amber isn’t telling the whole truth. When the twist comes at the end of the book and the reason why Amber’s doing this is revealed, the entire story shifts, compelling the reader to finally see Amber for who she really is.

Twisty Foreshadowing: Set Up to Knock ‘Em Down

Planting seeds of anticipation—something’s not right, but what—is a skillful way to set the stage for a plot twist that, when revealed, feels both surprising and inevitable. This technique involves introducing subtle hints and clues throughout your story that readers don’t realize are important until the moment the twist is revealed.

Example: The Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan

You knew this masterpiece of a movie was going to end up somewhere inside this article, didn’t you? It’s literally impossible to talk about effective plot twists without mentioning it, it’s that brilliant. Throughout the film, Shyamalan’s careful and deliberate use of color symbolism, careful blocking, and cleverly constructed dialogue lay a groundwork for a revelation that leaves viewers stunned, revealing how the pieces of the puzzle come together in one, gut-punching moment of realization people are still talking about years later.

Crafting Your Own Twist

A successful plot twist is so much more than a surprise. It’s an element that can enhance and connect your overall narrative in a very satisfying way. And there are some tried and true tips for employing them well. Here are just a few:

Create Internal Logic: Twists need to be logical within the rules and context of your story world.

Strive for Emotional Resonance: We need to care about the characters of your story deeply and how the twist affects them for it to be powerful. The more the reader cares, the more powerful their reaction will be.

Create the Proper Timeline: Where you decide to reveal your twist matters. Too early and it might fall flat. Too late and it could feel rushed. Decide at which plot point the twist best serves your story before you start writing.

Pitch Your Twist to Betas: Memorable plot twists are nearly impossible to accomplish without multiple revisions and outside input. Reach out to trusted beta readers—different ones for each stage of revision—to gauge their reactions to what you have planned and refine your reveals according to their feedback until you achieve the impact you want.

Let the Master be Your Guides: Study successfully twisty books, movies, and television and take notes on the techniques they employ. Personally, I annotate every book I study, so I can refer back to it again when I’m working on something similar for ideas/inspiration.

With careful planning and impeccable execution, you can master the art of the twist and elevate your novel to new heights!

Some of My Favorite Twisty Media to Consume:

Movies:
Frailty
The Sixth Sense
Gone Girl
The Usual Suspects
Bodies Bodies Bodies
Fight Club
The Village
Unbreakable
Buried

Television:
One Cruel Summer
You
Game of Thrones (The Red Wedding)
The Good Place

Books:
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban
The Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins
The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Amy Christine Parker is the critically acclaimed author of the thrillers Gated, Astray, Smash & Grab, and Flight 171.

You can find her on her website and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

The post Plot Twisting Techniques for Horror and Thriller Novels appeared first on DIY MFA.

Imagine The Shining by Stephen King without the Overlook Hotel—I can’t. It is so much a part of what I love about that book and movie that I wouldn’t want to. It’s such an iconic setting that imagery from the movie permeates other works of horror to this day. (I’m looking at you Evil Dead Rise and your bloody elevator scene.)

But how do we do what Uncle Stevie did? How do we create a spine-tingling setting that lives in the minds of our readers long after they turn the final page?

We start with these three killer tips to get our brains moving in the right direction:

Make Curiosity a Priority

Most readers who choose fiction want an escape from their everyday lives. A compelling setting helps them do that. 

In most genres, this means choosing places people want to explore because they are exciting, interesting, or fun—anything from an exotic island to a cozy small town. 

But horror is different. Bad things are going to happen, so the settings might be in locations like an abandoned asylum, an ancient, crumbling house, or a derelict spacecraft—places you are unlikely to see on any mainstream travel brochure. 

The reader’s reason for wanting to explore them is different from why they read romance or contemporary fiction. It’s not aspirational longing or nostalgia, it is curiosity, especially around the idea of survival. How would they fare in the settings we choose? A pivotal question to ask when crafting your spine-tingling setting is what sorts of places incite survival curiosity?

It could be the ocean—being out in the water away from land with any number of creatures swimming in the depths just beneath you is a fear most of us have. Jaws used this to great success. 

We read (or watch) to experience our fear safely. We get the adrenaline rush without the actual loss of our lives, and we see someone else who is a lot like us survive.

Underscore Theme

When choosing your setting, look for ways to use the physical elements of the space to unsettle your readers and hint at themes. If you can manage both, your setting will shine as brightly as the Overlook. 

For instance, a common theme of horror might be the corruption of good. One way to show this with setting is to place your story somewhere that people largely regard as safe and innocent enough—a playground, a suburban home, or in a child’s bedroom—and slowly show the physical erosion of that setting alongside the erosion of the characters themselves. 

A good example of a movie that does this well is Sinister. The plot centers around a creature who takes innocent children and turns them into killers who attack their families with common household items. 

Scribbled childish drawings on walls become tainted and unsettling. Stacks of home movies depicting what appear to be fun family moments take horrific turns. All the normal items we take for granted in family life are laced with doom. Lawnmowers, cups of coffee, backyard pools all become corrupted and wrong which ups our unease to an uncomfortable level because we are familiar with all these things and have thought of them as good—but now we can never be sure they will remain that way. And it subtly prepares us for the gut-punch ending so that, surprising as it is, it feels not only plausible, but inevitable when the characters are corrupted in much the same way.

Buck the Expected

Don’t get me wrong: sometimes the best setting for a scary story is the obvious one—no matter how many creepy haunted houses have been explored in other novels, there is always room for another—as long as you figure out ways to make it fresh. 

But a very effective alternative is to buck the usual formulaic locales and go for something out of the box. 

Think Midsommar. A bright and unrelentingly sunny Swedish commune makes for a very unsettling and creepy locale for good reason. The sun keeps shining despite the horrors happening beneath it. Evil doesn’t hide in the shadows in this place. It happens out in the open for all to see. The cheery, unchanging, idyllic beauty of the landscape ups the unease because it underscores the idea that there is no place safe enough. 

Evil can and will find you wherever you go. 

Some of the scariest scenes in Jaws happen on a crowded beach at the peak of tourist season.

Books to Help You Create a Spine-Tingling Setting:

A Writer’s Guide to Active Setting by Mary Buckham
The Writer’s Guide to Vivid Scenes and Characters by S.A. Soule
Million Dollar Outlines by David Farland
Writing the Breakout Novel (book and workbook) by Donald Maass

Choosing the perfect spine-tingling setting for your story isn’t easy, but taking the time to really think through your choices will pay dividends in the end. No matter how well-developed your characters and plot are, a story won’t hook a reader without compelling locations. Make them a priority of your brainstorming process and watch your writing get stronger!

Amy Christine Parker is the critically acclaimed author of the thrillers Gated, Astray, Smash & Grab, and Flight 171.

You can find her on her website and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

The post Take Me Away: 3 Killer Tips for Creating a Spine-Tingling Setting appeared first on DIY MFA.

In simplest terms, dread is a constant, certain feeling that something bad is going to happen. It can be an abstract, ill-defined sort of bad, or it can be something concrete and very real, but in both cases, the exact timetable for when this bad thing will show up is yet to be determined.

It’s intangible, this sort of fear. It lives inside the psyche and taps into our feelings of unease, our sense of foreboding.  Readers stay in a constant state of unsettling expectancy that won’t go away until the bad thing is finally revealed and confronted.

A great example of dread in fiction can be found in one of my favorite Stephen King novels, Misery. Bestselling romance novelist, Paul, has been in a serious car accident and is bed-bound, trapped by his superfan, Annie, who pulled him from the wreckage.

From the start, it’s apparent that there is something… not quite right about Annie. She’s erratic and totally obsessed with the main character of Paul’s novels, Misery Chastain—who Paul has unfortunately killed off in his latest manuscript. What lengths will Annie go to to force Paul to rewrite his latest novel to her liking?

As Annie grows more and more unstable, the readers’s dread builds. It’s obvious from the start of the book that Annie is never going to let Paul go, that much is guaranteed by the story set up itself, but exactly what Annie is going to do to Paul while he’s trapped with her is unclear, though we know that whatever it is will be horrific. How can he possibly survive this situation. given his weakened physical state? Readers will keep reading chapter after chapter to find out.

Most successful horror writers are masters at infusing dread within the pages of their stories, but how exactly do they do it? I believe there are four key tools to building dread that they implement that if you do too, will elevate your fiction from merely interesting to unputdownable.

Choose First or Close Third Point of View

Dread is all about interiority because it is a danger your character is perceiving even before they have substantial evidence to prove it’s real. The more readers are inside your character’s head being privy to their in-the-moment thoughts, the easier it will be to convey their anxiety. 

Edgar Allan Poe uses this tool throughout his story, The Tell-Tale Heart. The main character is telling the story in first person, trying to convince the reader and himself that he is not mad when there is plenty of evidence from the start to the contrary. His accounting of his victim’s filmy vulture eye in the darkness as he visits him in his bedchamber night after night before he kills him is unsettling and repulsive—so much so that on some level the reader comes to dread it too.

In your own fiction, make sure to have your character’s thoughts feel oppressive, weighing them down so they are loath to face whatever it is that’s coming for them, but also forced to because there is no way to survive—either physically or mentally—unless they do.

Select a Remote or Closed Setting

The more hemmed in your character is, the more heightened the dread will be because there is no escape except through confronting the thing they fear: a monster, death itself, another person. Whatever their foe, there is no way out but through. 

I used this tool in my latest young adult horror novel, Flight 171. The entire story takes place on a plane being held captive by a supernatural creature in need of a new body to possess. One of the passengers must be that new body, but which one? The teens on the plane have the duration of the flight to figure this out. They can’t avoid making a decision no matter how much they want to because they are literally trapped.

Use Unsettling, Repetitive Details

The subtle and not-so-subtle things you have your character notice or that are present in a scene can add up to a large amount of dread. Having someone’s smile reveal a rotting tooth for example, immediately conjures a feeling of revulsion when your reader pictures it. 

In The Tell-Tale Heart, the two most prominent examples of this are the old man’s vulture-like eye and the sound of his beating heart, which the main character continues to hear even after he is dead, so that it drives him to confess his crime because the dread he feels over it is just too great.

Delay the Big Reveal

Whatever the big bad is that’s coming for your character, seed in hints of it from the beginning that don’t have a payoff right away. Have you ever noticed that when it comes to horror, the longer we go before we see the monster, the more scared we are? This is because the anticipation of that monster, what our imagination conjures it could be, is scariest. Once we see it fully, our terror dissipates quickly. 

In the movie, Alien, it takes a long time before Ripley and her crew get a clear look at the actual alien and even then, it’s most often shown in quick glimpses. Imagine seeing your closet door swing open on its own so that the gaping darkness inside is visible. Suddenly, something inside that darkness claws at the door frame before skittering into your bedroom and under the bed. This scenario is horrifying because it taps into a communal fear we all have of unknown danger lurking in the dark, and it allows us to imagine our own unique version of what that danger might actually be.

When it comes to darker fiction, the use of dread isn’t just necessary, it’s key. Horror, mystery, and thriller readers want to be unsettled. They come to our stories expecting we will deliver this. In order to do that, you have to become a master at lighting a fire of anxiety and foreboding inside readers’s psyches that doesn’t let up, but instead builds and builds until whatever darkness threatening your characters is found and confronted.

Five Novels to Study

Now that you know what dread is and how authors create it, it’s time to study! Here’s a list of five of my favorite dread-filled novels to start with.

1. It by Stephen King
2. Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
3. Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
4. Come Closer by Sara Gran
5. The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

Amy Christine Parker is the critically acclaimed author of the thrillers Gated, Astray, Smash & Grab, and Flight 171.

You can find her on her website and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

The post Four Powerful Tools for Creating Dread in Your Fiction appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for December is Cozy Books, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Amy Christine Parker and Lori discuss:

• Where she comes up with unsettling ideas and how she deals with fears on the page.
• The importance of the first line and why the opening chapters are the hardest to write.
• How she developed the characterization for the ensemble cast in Flight 171.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Amy Christine Parker

Amy Christine Parker is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult thriller novels: Gated, Astray, Smash & Grab, and most recently the horror novel, Flight 171.

When she is not busy dreaming up unsettling stories, Amy loves to read, go to the movies, and travel around the world in search of story inspiration.

She lives and works in Tampa, Florida along with her husband, their two daughters, and two very high-maintenance cats.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Goodreads.

Flight 171

In this edge-of-your-seat horror novel, a four-hour flight takes a nightmarish turn when a supernatural creature gives a group of high school students a sinister ultimatum.

Devon Marsh is haunted by secrets. Like the identity of the person who killed her twin sister, Emily, in a hit-and-run accident last Halloween, which Devon has vowed to uncover. Like the things Devon said to Emily just before she died.

But she’s determined to start fresh when she boards a four-hour flight along with her classmates for their senior class ski trip. Devon never could have guessed those secrets would surface in the most terrifying way when a supernatural creature hijacks their flight and gives the students a deadly ultimatum:

Choose one among them to sacrifice before the end of the flight. Or the plane will crash.

As the clock ticks down, the creature slowly unearths the passengers’ deepest, darkest secrets—and reveals that one of the teens on the plane is responsible for Emily’s death. The students must agree on a sacrifice, or there won’t be any survivors. But can Devon find a way to stop the creature, or will she give in to her anger and let revenge take control?

Underlined is a line of totally addictive romance, thriller, and horror titles coming to you fast and furious each month. Enjoy everything you want to read the way you want to read it.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 442

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The post Episode 442: Opening Lines and Characterization: Maximize Your Opening Chapters – Interview with Amy Christine Parker appeared first on DIY MFA.