How do you make a character seem reallllly scared,without using the same words over and over?
Any good scared words for me? I keep writing stuff that sounds completely boring and redundant.Yuck.
I'll be eternally grateful for any help!
A character is driving to meet up his friends. They're robbing a store that day. He is thinking about his past, anything. Some amusing anecdote. But as he thought about the anecdote, I described his actions between brackets, and in bold, and bigger font. So, he's thinking about some amusing stuff, about how his friend was kicked out of the orphanage for masturbating in the girl's room, but between brackets I'm writing: (He grabbed the packet of cigarettes, and tried to get one in his mouth. But he couldn't. He's trembling).
Juxtaposition, man.
there are many problems in our times
but none of them are mine
Well, making it night is always good. Having a dark, deserted house in the middle of nowhere is useful. And then having a group of people who get split up and going from person to person.
Hope it helps! If you're writing a screenplay or something like that, the music plays a big part of it. Don't play something poppy and happy, you want it dark, usually slow and with lots of sudden bits.
*Don't expect to see me around much in the next couple of weeks. School has started again, and it'll be a couple of weeks before I've settled in. If you've asked me for a critique, you will get it, but not for a little while. Sorry*
I sometimes read what I've writen out loud, hearing the words you chose and changing them where neccesary.
Or reading it in a scary voice to a little kid *evil laugh* I sometimes read to my little bro, if he bursts into tears it must be scary enough!
Also if your using microsoft word you can use the thesaurus, just right click on the word you want and click thesaurus. Or you can use a real thesaurus (I don't even know if i'm spelling it write!) that gives you heaps of different options for the same word.
Also night time is good, either a really scary place, or a not-scary-at-all place works best.
Sometimes a lovely little forest full of flowers in the middle of spring can be terrifying!
Going inside the characters head is good, tell the audience what your character is thinking.
The scariest book I've ever read was Shadow Child, but Joeseph Citro. I slept on my mother's floor for about a week, I was so terrified. (I'm also kind-of a wuss, but even the biker gang girl in my class - we read it for English - said she slept with the lights on.)
What made it terrifying is that Citro never, ever revealed everything at once. He didn't say what it was that was after them, just that it was after them. There were external threats (the shadow children) and internal threats (a spoiler); the internal threat made it all the more terrifying.
If you want to be able to write scary stories, read them. Any fiction by Joe Citro is bound to be scary. Stephen King is supposed to be a master of scary. I know there are more, but I don't usually read horror, 'cause I'm a wuss.
Much like Meep said, the fright comes not from what you say, but what you don't say. If you tell someone not to turn around because there's a monster behind them, all the surprise, all the possibility for fear is gone. However, if you tell that person instead just not to turn around, if you insist on it no matter what they ask, they'll turn around anyway, just to see. And they'll probably be shocked and surprised, and, hopefully, scared. It can also be effective if the reader knows only what the character knows: when neither the reader nor the character knows what's around that dark corner, it can be like double the fright.
I agree with Amelia... I personally like to tell fear with suspense and desperation. Not just the *boo&scream* effect.
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"There are two infinite things: The Universe and human stupidity"- Albert Einstein
why not write about something that is REALLY scary. eg:
* I opened the fridge, hoping for some ham or something, and swore when the milk moved. I dropped the head of lettuce I had been holding. I couldn't believe my eyes - the cheese had grown legs! Real actual legs! It scuttled around the shelf like some sort of demented crab. It turned to face me, and revealed a mouth full of sharp razor teeth. . .
* The door slowly creaked open. Light spilled into my dark room. Standing in the doorway was HIM. The evil one. I huddled under my blanket, trying to control my breathing. It was time. HE was coming to get me. I bit my lip. . . "BATHTIME!!!!!"
. . . . yeah. scary as hell, huh?
well - i hope you liked it. . . and learn from my lesson. lolz - have fun!
If you just want to show that a character is scared - habits are a good way of showing someone is scared, and add to character. Nail-biting, fidgiting, breathing patterns, that kind of thing.
If you want the reader to be afraid too - another idea is making it genuine. Watch a really scary movie, then grab a pen and write whatever comes to mind.
If you use the basic 'show-not-tell' rule, that should help you avoid repetitions too.
Hope this helps.
Body language is key to showing someone's frightened. Since I just got finished with my school play, I have thought a lot about how acting relates to writing. A great techinque to capture an emotion is to pretend you feel that way. Then write down what you would naturally do in that mood.
"reading one book is like eating one potato chip."
-diane duane in so you want to be a wizard [url=secondday.proboards.com]best rpg ever[/url]
Ok, this is basically what bookworm said. Body language, also (I'm not sure if this body language) have them really jumpy. Maybe they're hands are a little sweaty. since they've got so much adrenilen in their body, they can probably hear better when they're scared (at least I can). Say they felt they're heart pump a little faster.
Hopefully none of this has been said (because I don't realy pay attention to many replies sometimes.)
Hope this helps.
I realized that I said I'd be gone for only two weeks...but I was gone for much longer.I hope to stay on this time.
these are all kind of scary, creepy words. if used correctly, they can add good color to your scary scene. hope it helped a little.
“We’re still here,” he says, his voice cold, his hands shaking. “We know how to be invisible, how to play dead. But at the end of the day, we are still here.” ~Dax
Teacher: "What do we do with adjectives in Spanish?"
S: "We eat them!"
Scared characters. Hehe, one of the funnest kinds of characters to write, if you ask me. Fear can be a hard thing to write when thought of in terms of words and descriptions; it can be much simpler and more powerful when thought of in terms of characterization.
Often times writers get pulled into the trap of describing a character's fears in a telling sort of way, stepping aside from the character and describing the fear rather than presenting the fear through the character. I'm not saying you're doing this, but often times that's when words become an issue.
As has been said above, body language is a fantastic way to express fear. Basically, elements of characterization can be used to convey a character that is fearful. Dialogue, body language, facial expressions, actons, tone of voice, the impression they give to others. A lot of this has to do with knowing your characters because characters all react differently to fear, but if you show the reader the fear in a character, it reduces word problems and makes it much more believable. For instance, when my main character for my NaNo last November was scared, he would curl up and get very pale and either lash out at the first person he met or speak in short, simple sentences. Aside from his actions, I needed little other description of his fear.
So, characterization is the key to expressing fear. While some narrator elaboration is good, try to let the character's actions and words speak for themselves.
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