Thread: The key to writing a good horror script

Hello everyone! I'm new here and thought I would start a thread in this forum.

I really love the horror genre. Lately, however, I feel that the horror movies being made are falling short of expectation. The plots are transparent, the script is crap and usually covered up with a bunch of special effects. In general, it is a let down to buy tickets to see these movies.

I have started writing a script but I do not want to fall into the transparent plot trap.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Write an original plot that will still satisfy fans of the genre.

i.e. Not so original that there aren't naked girls getting sliced and diced.

This is why low budget horror is the easiest way to get a script made... and the easiest thing for a new or cheap producer to float.

It doesn't HAVE to have some amazing script or great actors or anything. The fans don't care.
There has always been a money-in-the-bank genre like that. There was a time when it was Westerns. Get some horses and hats and go to a ghost town with a camera and crank something out. When legal and cop shows were at their peak, same deal. How expensive is to shoot a courtroom drama?

I see plenty of room for innovative scripts in the horror genre: I've thought of a few concepts and setups myself just haven't bothered to write them. If you are a big fan of horror and feel you can do better, go for it. You're lucky your favorite isn't big budget SciFi or Period Costume pix.

Since you know a lot about horror movies and the ones you love, study them to see the things they did right. Also, think about something interesting that hasn't been done before. That's the hard part, right? I'd start looking up myths, curses, bio of murderers, books on paranormal, etc until I find something that hasn't really been done. (I was reading Hans Holzer's Ghosts I've Met... there's this phenomenon in a few English houses where rocks fall on people inside the dining room. Not really the stuff of a slasher film, but I can tell you it gets the mind going.) Wikipedia is also a neat place to look.

That is definitely what i'm looking for! I like horror movies that extend beyond the typical "hack and slash of naked chicks". I don't know about anyone else, but I get bored with those plots. I like plots with a biblical undertone. Something having to do with an evil character in Mythology would be awesome as well!

When "The Ring" came out, I practically jumped out of my seat with anticipation throughout the whole movie. Then they made a sequel and it was.... 'eh', as many sequels are.

I came across an episode of "A Haunting" that mentioned a specific place in Korea where it was believed by the locals that the dead had more power than the living. Building a story around something like that has awesome potential!

I always liked the Alfred Hitchcock approach, where suspense comes from where you least suspect it.
For slasher films keeping the killer hidden in the shadows is wonderfully provocative, this is why I liked the first and yes second Halloween films as they had a rather Hitchcockian feel to them.
For demonic possession/ ghosts its always good to give hints there is something wrong but never be upfront about it until the time comes.
The first exorcist film kept you on your toes till the end, from heads rotating 360 degrees, to messages written in the flesh of the possessed it was a film meant to be scary.
I always liked alien personally, and yes aliens and even alien 3...

Wallmaker is precisely right about looking into films you like. And it's good to read the scripts if you can, so you don't get caught up in the film and can see what's going on.

And learn to see the general principles or setups involved.

For instance, Sunny mentions Alien. Notice that the most horrific things happen as intrusions into the most peaceful and relaxed moments, when tension has been resolved.

Unlike so many slashers, where they're creeping around a dark house or cave in fear when shit happens, notice:

They are in the still, somber cathedral of the alien ship when suddenly the egg launches onto the guy's face.

That whole crisis is finally resolved and they're sitting around the table, eating and joking, everything back to normal..including your pulse. And POW. the thing comes out of the guy's guts.

Ripley has escaped to the Pod and is sitting in her undies stroking a cat on her lap when she realizes the critter is in there with her.

Etc.

There is a difference between imitation and analysis/application. Once you see that sort of thing happening and decide it works for you, you can apply it in any setting or with various characters, boogymen, etc.

Or how about this... some weird, horrible sadistic creatures are on a campout and one by one they get slashed up by naked babes?

If you think about it almost all horror movies and stories in general are based on one type of primal fear or another. like for example Alien. by our nature we don't want anything invading our personal space, let alone our bodies. so then, the guy who got a face hugger was, essencially, raped. we fear the unknown and death, which is why ghost storys scare us. and of course Jaws just explains itself. alot of people utilize this fact and packege it with a neat bow on top. alot of us don't even realize why we are being scared. there are even stories based on phobias. Stephen king is a good example of someone who uses this technique. as a kid i watched Creep show and there was one section about a guy who was a germaphobe. I swear, I'm surprised I'm not more of one after seeing that. LOL.

so my best advice is to write about what scares you.

oh, and BTW, The Ring didn't scare me at all. Neither did the Grudge, and me jumping when the ghost chick appeared in the subway window doesn't count. lol.

You don't go for the cop-out.

You don't look away.

You break all stereotypes and cliches by showing the truth.

The heart of man is much scarier than any monster.

One of my favorite scenes in "Batman Begins" is the realization that the psychiatrist is using mind games and drugs to induce fear into his patience by playing on Jungian archetypes, particularly shadow. Studying what these archetypes are can help you to get into the mind filled with fear and nightmares. Japanese horror recently embraces these archetypes. I think the best horror embraces these archetypes.

"The Ring" succeeded in many ways because it used the archetype of shadow successfully where, like in a nightmare, our logic center is turned off and we have no choice but to confront what's in front of us no matter how we try to ignore it: a video where the dark shadow comes out of the television and kills you. This is what nightmares are made of. "Dark Water" was another Japanese horror movie that had a similar concept but I think lost us in the story's execution. Of course, it didn't work for everyone. Much of horror requires a setting in mood at the very beginning to prepare the audience. Try being scared by watching a horror movie from the middle. Also, you still have to be able to tell a story that's well-told.

Go to your nightmares. If studying Jungian psychology seems too much for you to study, then go to your dreams. What are your nightmares made of and why do they scare you? Study them and get to the root of that fear. The next nightmare that you have and can wake up and remember it, write it down. After a few days, it will look silly and hardly scary but try to remember why there was real fear in your dream because the reality is that you were scared. Search what caused that fear and discover the root of it. That germ can help you to create fear in your readers as well.

As a child (around 10 years-old), one of the nightmares that I had was that a very tall dark shadow entered the bathroom late at night while I was sleeping (3 am), shut the door and turned on the shower. Being awakened by the sound and seeing the light under the door from my bedroom, the shadow knew I would have thought it was my mom. But why was she taking a shower at 3 am? That's very unusual. The shadow's goal was to get me into the bathroom to ask why mom was taking a shower so late and therefore would corner me in the bathroom for purposes I didn't want to discover. Like in "Nightmare on Elm St.", in the morning I might be found dead with my wrists cut open and the bathroom door closed. The premise of that movie used these basic psychological archetypes but unfortunately forgot about its importance in the later sequels and relied on only cheap surprise.

Watch and read all your favorite horror stories and find the common thread that creates fear and pulls you into it.

Suspense is extremely important in horror stories but all stories must have suspense. In horror, you will probably use it much more explicitly and more than likely use cheap surprise as the popular teen stories do (e.g., you hear someone creeping in the forest and then there's a hand on your shoulder, you turn and see it's your friend who brought you another beer or you turn and it's an ax murderer wearing a hockey mask). The "Final Destination" movies, "Scream", and the "I know what you did..." movies did this very successfully. Of course "Nightmare on Elm St." and 'Friday the 13th" did the same thing. Are these stories that you thought the scripts failed in general? I don't think any of these truly entered into the sublime, but most people were very entertained.

The horror genre is said to be divided into three subgenres:

1. Uncanny This is where there is a rational explanation of the source of horror where it might be from monsters, aliens, or serial-killers
2. Supernatural The source of horror is some irrational phenomenon including ghosts or the paranormal.
3. Super-uncanny This is a mix between the two where the audience is kept guessing between the possibilities. Movies that include the super-uncanny are "The Shining" and "The Sixth Sense".

There is a lot more to writing horror but hopefully this will give you a start. Truth-Teller said you've got to tell what's True and I agree. Your story must be true about human choices and consequences and how people change if it's going to escape pure entertainment and enter the realm of the sublime. But, that principle goes for any genre.