I write folk horror and adventure horror as J.F. Penn, alongside my thrillers and darker crime novels. I read a lot of horror, mostly of the supernatural kind, and definitely no slasher gore. What draws me is good versus evil, elements of religion, myth and folklore, and places that hold ancient power.
Horror writers are also some of the nicest people I know. Everyone has a dark side, and those of us who write horror get it out on the page, so it is no longer in our heads. That’s one reason I keep coming back to the genre, as a reader and as a writer.
This page gathers everything on The Creative Penn about writing horror: tips on the craft, podcast interviews with horror authors, my own horror books as examples, and books on the craft to go deeper.
Is it worth sacrificing a human life to the land? Human life is so short, and this land lives so much longer than us and produces something so wonderful… Is it worth the sacrifice to make art? … And this is what I come back to in horror. And perhaps the real horror is sometimes we might say yes.
J.F. Penn on Blood Vintage, in conversation with Natalie MacLean, 2024
Key tips for writing horror
Horror is like a buffet, as Tim Waggoner puts it: supernatural, psychological, cosmic, folk horror, dark fantasy, and more. These tips come from my podcast interviews with horror authors. Each one links to the episode, and the full list is further down the page.
1. Horror happens inside a person. A monster alone in a field is just a monster. It only becomes horror when someone perceives it and is threatened by it. Don’t write like a camera, as visual media trains us to. Put readers inside your characters’ heads. (Tim Waggoner)
2. Fear comes from taking away basic human needs. Being stalked in dark woods takes your sight. Being trapped, chased, or starved brings out the primal fears underneath our comforts. Work out which needs your story strips from your characters. (Iain Rob Wright)
3. Build the dread slowly. Fear of the unknown is the strongest fear. Aim for an atmospheric build-up to a crescendo, so that by the time you realise what is going on, it is already too late. Sea and space horror work because we are staring at the abyss. (Boris Bacic)
4. Find the core of a trope, then put new clothes on it. Jason is the Grim Reaper, Freddy Krueger the devil. Keep the power at the heart of the trope, lose the baggage, or reverse it: zombies who don’t know they are dead. Success comes from doing something first. (Tim Waggoner, Iain Rob Wright)
5. Judge events by their effect on the character, not the body count. What damage is each event doing, where is it pushing them, is it pushing them past their limit, and what is left of them at the end? (Tim Waggoner)
6. Horror starts where the thriller ends. A thriller keeps you running ahead of possible tragedy. “In horror, you start out with tragedy having already occurred and the threat then becomes loss of self, damnation.” Horror isolates people and strips away everything but the self. (Michaelbrent Collings)
7. Know what your characters fear, and give your villain some humanity. Figure out what your characters are afraid of, then confront them with it, because readers confront those fears by proxy. If your villain is human, find the part that is still human, even when they do terrible things. (Chuck Wendig, Tim Waggoner)
8. Horror is the genre of hope. Without great terror there can be no great hope. Bury your characters in insurmountable odds and let their endeavour bring them through, stronger. Good versus evil is why I read horror, and The Stand is the iconic book for me. (David Viergutz, Iain Rob Wright)
9. Mine place and folklore. Anywhere you go, you can see horror if you look hard enough. Boris Bacic draws on the superstitions and scary stories of his Serbian grandmother. I am always interested in sense of place, and English pagan folklore runs through my own horror. (Boris Bacic)
10. Write your darkness without re-traumatising yourself. Writing our darkness maps it, so it loses its power over us, and giving trauma the face of a monster lets readers overcome it too. But you don’t have to hurt yourself to make art: glance at it obliquely and fictionalise. (Tim Waggoner, P.D. Alleva). Go deeper with my book, Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness into Words.
Two more on process. Don’t self-censor: write what you want, and let beta readers and editors tell you if it goes too far. And write into the dark, as if walking a road with a lantern that shows one step ahead, letting the silences in a creative life do their work. (Chuck Wendig, Matt Cardin)
What other horror writers say
Some of my favourite thoughts on writing horror from other authors:
I don’t write about monsters. Not really. I write about people who fight monsters, which is a heck of a lot different.
Jonathan Maberry, Tara Laskowski’s website, 2021
What terrified me will terrify others
Mary Shelley, Introduction to Frankenstein, Project Gutenberg, 1831
I thought it should have atmosphere, lots of atmosphere, an isolated location which in itself is unnerving, and I was absolutely sure that the ghost needed a reason to be there.
Susan Hill, Theatre South East, 2021
And it was only when I started to write “Interview With The Vampire,” … that I was able to talk about all that, about good and evil, about grief over the loss of faith, that kind of thing. I use that supernatural character to speak in those spiritual terms.
Anne Rice, NPR Fresh Air, 2021
As a writer, when you write what you’re afraid of, you’re making yourself vulnerable to the reader. Each book is you showing your soft parts and asking the reader if they’re afraid of those things too.
Catriona Ward, LitReactor, 2022
That’s why it’s so great to write horror: you can really explore those feelings. You don’t have to be polite, you don’t have to turn away.
Alma Katsu, Library Journal, 2022
Podcast interviews on writing horror
Each episode has show notes and a full transcript. Newest first.
Writing Cross-Genre, Selling Direct, and Serialising on Substack with P.D. Alleva. Why horror puts the human condition on display better than any other genre, how horror writing can help readers and writers work through trauma, and why cross-genre fiction takes longer to find its audience. P.D. is a psychotherapist as well as a horror author.
Writing at the Wellspring with Matt Cardin. Writing at the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity: the ancient ideas of the muse and the daimon, living into the dark, and why the silences in a creative life might be gifts rather than obstacles.
Writing Horror with Boris Bacic. The subgenres of horror and how they have evolved, finding inspiration in personal experience and place, deciding whether an idea is a short story or a novel, and why some horror books succeed in Kindle Unlimited while others flop.
Writing Horror and Selling Direct with David Viergutz. The blurred line between dark fantasy and horror, why horror is the genre of hope, religious elements in horror, and selling readers a fiction experience rather than just a story.
Writing in the Dark: Horror Writing Tips with Tim Waggoner. How to write your darkness without re-traumatising yourself, the variety within the genre, finding empathy for your villains, and how to be original while using horror tropes.
How to Be Successful in Writing Horror with Iain Rob Wright. Horror based in hope, where horror meets thriller, crime, and paranormal, the tropes and clichés to avoid, and the financial security of going deep in one genre as a full-time indie author.
Writing Horror and Making a Living with Your Writing with Michaelbrent Collings. Where the edges of the horror genre lie, writing your dark truth without self-censorship, how writing helps through dark moments, and his three rules: confuse me and lose me, bore me and die, leave the world a better place.
Writing Metaphor, Memorable Characters, and Horror with Chuck Wendig. Why every story is, at its core, a horror story, writing dark characters while staying psychologically healthy, and metaphor as the writer’s fingerprint.
My horror books
If you want to see how I put these ideas into practice, here are my horror books as J.F. Penn.
Bones of the Deep. She stole their saint. Now the ocean wants her back. A folk horror thriller on a tall ship in the South Pacific.
Blood Vintage. The perfect wine requires the darkest sacrifice. A folk horror novel set on an English vineyard.
Catacomb. How far will a father go to save his daughter? An adventure horror novel set beneath Edinburgh.
The Buried and the Drowned. Eleven dark stories and a poem from the landscapes that hold ancient power and human secrets, with an author’s note behind every story.
The Black Church. A week alone in Iceland’s most isolated church, a grief too heavy to carry, and an ancient darkness stirring beneath. A short story, free to read direct.
A Thousand Fiendish Angels. Three linked stories descend through Dante’s hell, bound by a book of human skin passed down through generations.
Looking for horror to read? See the horror books I love: supernatural, folk and creature horror.
Books on writing horror
Writing in the Dark by Tim Waggoner. The one I keep on the shelf. Why horror matters, building monsters, generating ideas, the physiology of fear, suspense, and avoiding clichés.
On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association, edited by Mort Castle. Essays from Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Ramsey Campbell, Jack Ketchum, and many others on the craft and business of horror.
Danse Macabre by Stephen King. King’s study of horror in books, film, radio, and television, and how the fears of each era shape the genre.
Writing Monsters: How to Craft Believably Terrifying Creatures to Enhance Your Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by Philip Athans. How to build monsters that are more than a collection of fangs and claws, and use them to drive the story. Philip is in this episode on writing monsters.
Writing Poetry in the Dark, edited by Stephanie M. Wytovich. Genre poets on bringing fear to the page, writing from the wound, channelling the weird, and tackling the dark side of daily life, with a foreword by Tim Waggoner. Stephanie is in this episode on writing poetry in the dark.
Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness into Words by Joanna Penn. My own book on writing from the darker side of yourself, whatever your genre, and getting past self-censorship and the fear of judgement.
For thrillers, mystery, and crime, see my How to Write Thrillers, Horror, Mystery, and Crime Fiction page. New interviews on writing craft arrive every week on The Creative Penn Podcast.