 Horror/Scary: August 21, 2019 Issue [#9716] |
This week: The five senses of horror Edited by: Arakun the Scary Raccoon  
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Quote for the week: "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."
~Plato
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Involving the five senses in your description is a great way of drawing a reader into any story. It is especially important in horror because fear is an emotional reaction that is often triggered by things we can sense. We learn to associate situations, people, and places with items we can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch.
While a scream or the sight of blood might evoke fear in many people, your characters don't have to sense something commonly thought of as "bad" or "evil" to become afraid. Depending on your experience, something you sense might evoke a pleasant memory or a more sinister one. For example, the smell of lilac perfume might remind one person of a kindly grandmother while another might remember someone who wore that perfume when beating or mistreating them.
Depending on your story, any one of the following might evoke some kind of reaction in your readers. Try and think of ways that each of them might evoke fear.
Sight
Familiar face
Skull or skeleton
Falling leaves
Snow
Ripe fruit
Total darkness
Blinding light
Blood
Maggots
A snake
Sound
Music
Children laughing
Someone crying or shouting
A crow cawing
A scream
Footsteps
Rushing or dripping water
Smell
Perfume or cologne
Baking bread
Mold
Freshly turned soil
Flowers
Dead fish
Rotting meat
Taste
Sugar
Salt
Rotten food
Dirt
Blood
Birthday cake
Ice cream
Touch
Tree bark
Silk
Hair
Skin
Rock
Fabric
Sight and sound are the most common senses described by many writers, but other senses often precede them in real life. For example, you may smell smoke before you see a fire or feel the breath of the killer on the back of your neck before you see his face.
If you have a scene or situation in your story that seems to be lacking something, read it over and see if you might add information about one or more of the five senses. Imagine yourself as the character, and think of how you would experience it in real life. What sense would come first? Which would be the strongest?
In some stories, lack of input from the senses might be effective as well. If your characters are inside a cave they will be in total darkness. It might be really frightening to place a character in a sensory deprivation chamber where they get no input at all from their senses.
Something to try: Write a scene from a horror story involving input from all five senses.
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