In a post on DIY MFA, Amy Christine Parker offers advice on creating dread in your fiction. “In simplest terms, dread is a constant, certain feeling that something bad is going to happen,” she explains. “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.” The best part of dread is that it keeps readers turning pages until the bad thing is confronted.
Parker identifies four key elements for creating dread on the page:
- Point of View. First or close third POV put your reader into your protagonist’s thoughts, allowing them to experience dread simultaneously with your hero. “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,” Parker writes.
- 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,” Parker notes. “Whatever their foe, there is no way out but through.”
- Details. Unsettling, repetitive details can create a sense of dread. “Having someone’s smile reveal a rotting tooth for example, immediately conjures a feeling of revulsion when your reader pictures it,” Parker says.
- Pacing. Whatever is causing the dread should not appear right away. The longer it takes for your monster to appear, the more scared your readers become and the more invested in your story.
