This is a guide on how to write a successful horror story. Follow the steps and create a horror story quick and easy!

Step 1: Step 1

Step 1: the first thing you have to do is come up with a topic for your story, based on what you want to happen. And you should already start thinking about the plot since that is what you are going to base your story on. After you have done this you can already start to think about a title for your story that is mysterious and makes the reader want to read but you have to be careful not to have that title give away any important answers to the events that will happen in your story. One of the most useful ways to do this is create a flow chart or a brainstorm of the things you want to include in your story. You can also decide to come up with the title last if you aren't sure what your story will exactly be about, which is absolutely fine. You might just need some inspiration.

Step 2: Step 2

Step 2: come up with characters for your story. You want to make at least one of them special in one kind of way to make the story more interesting and mysterious. There are also always protagonists and antagonists in stories. A protagonist is usually the main character that has a main goal and the antagonist gets in the way and does something that stops the protagonist from reaching their goal.

Step 3: Step 3

Step 3: come up with your setting/settings. They have to match your characters and plot. Some ideas are a graveyard, a creepy house, a forest, in the middle of nowhere, an empty dark supermarket, etc. You have to have them match your characters and plot because if you are going to write about monsters you are not going to need a creepy setting and mysterious, not something happy and positive.

Step 4: Step 4

Step 4: come up with a plot. You need to come up with a story line and plan when you will have events happen and where you want them to happen. Horror stories are all about building up suspense, and scaring the reader. Horror stories don't always have a clear plot and come up with all the solutions for the events that happen.

Step 5: Step 5

Step 5: come up with a multiple of events. These events have to be scary and unsuspected. They also have to match the characters, the setting/settings and the plot. You can already give wrong clues as well so that when something happens the reader is shocked since they though something else was going to happen. Save the scariest event for last, you will need it for the next step.

Step 6: Step 6

Step 6: most horror stories have a cliffhanger at the end, which is always made of the most scary event in the story. You shouldn't come up with a reason that it happened, let the reader come up with their own solution to have a greater shocking effect and because it lets the reader fantasize about the answers and leaves them wondering, shocked and/or scared.

Step 7: Step 7

Step 7: read over your story and check for spelling mistakes and have someone else read over your story as well to make sure it's good and has a clear plot and meaning. If you didn't already come up with a title, now would be a good time to come up with it since you already read the story and you already have all the inspiration from the story.

Step 8: Hints and Tips

-use a lot of imagery and description.

-don't forget that horror stories are usually only about building up suspense and they don't always have a clear story lines and not all questions will be answered.

-make sure you don't have any mistakes in your story.

-use imagery, symbolism, irony, and similes. These are all literary elements common in horror stories.

Imagery: descriptive writing allowing the reader to imagine whatever you're describing without using pictures

Symbolism: using symbols to describe and represent what you're talking about.

Irony: an event that happens while the previous actions suggested it to happen differently.

Similes: words that have that have the same overall meaning