Revealing the horror

After building up the anticipation, a great reveal is crucial in horror fiction. Alex Davis teaches you how to do it.

Horror stories aren’t built in a day. The history of horror is replete with iconic moments across all its mediums – books, films, TV and even more recently video games and web series. And what many have in common is that they come in the shape of the ‘reveal’ – that moment in the genre where we as readers find out what it is we have been afraid of the whole time, and ideally will be even more afraid of when the author presents it to us. It is the time that the ‘monster’ (in whatever form it takes) goes from being a theoretical or hypothetical presence and is given its own nightmarish presence. The story can of course change very quickly at this point, whatever point of the plot it happens (and we will talk more about that shortly). But of course these moments are not simply pulled out of hats, and are typically given careful forethought by horror creators. And in this piece we’re going to serve up some tricks and techniques that will help you to develop a reveal that stays with your audience.

When to reveal all

One question that is often central to horror is when you decide to reveal your ‘object of fear’, be it human or something distinctly other. There are three schools of thought on this, and each leans into a very different type of horror writing – and as such it is a question to pose to yourself early in the process.

1) Do you want to reveal the ‘other’ early on in the story, maybe before or around halfway? This gives you less time to build tension and atmosphere, but more time to present your ‘monster’ multiple times and have more fun with your characters seeking to escape, trap or destroy the horror they are confronted with. You might consider this common for serial killer or slasher stories, and zombie stories would tend to lean this way as a whole.

2) Do you want to reveal the ‘other’ much later into the story, towards the end or even in the very finale? This can make it harder to keep the reader interested – you’ll have to do more work with atmosphere and mystery and slow burn, subtle moments – but it can give you plenty of time to build the significance and importance of the reveal. You might consider this more typical of things like ghost stories and folk horror, with a steady early pace before a chilling closing.

3) If you’re feeling particularly dangerous, you might wish to have a story where you never bring the monstrous element into the light at all, keeping it hidden away in the background without a reveal at all. I would never be so bold as to say this can’t work, but it certainly requires a careful approach to ensure the reader still enjoys the story and feels satisfied despite never having what they might traditionally expect within the genre. And do be clear with yourself WHY you don’t want to reveal that key element of the tale…

Whatever your approach, it will have not only a big impact on the pace and feel of your story, but the type of reveal that you might have to reach for.

Planting the seeds

Of course it’s pivotal that any horror reveal doesn’t simply come from

nowhere, so as authors we need to be considering the seeds we can plant along the way. The reader may observe them at the time, or they may not, but to me that’s secondary to the work they do in building on the subconscious level. A lot of what scares us in horror is almost subliminal, and we respond to cues whether or not we necessarily recognise their presence on a surface. In fact, it’s probably more important as readers we are able to remember or reread them later after you have given the reveal.

Build-up and anticipation is crucial, so you might want to think about the following:

• Noises and sounds that are out of place. These can be used to presage the main reveal, or subsequent visits from the ‘monster’ later in the story.

• Smells. Horror has often made good use of the olfactory, and it’s well worth thinking about if your monster would come with anything a character could catch as a scent as you go through the tale.

• Visuals. One to go carefully with, as you don’t want to give too much away too early! But you might consider things seen out of the corner of the eye or fleeting glimpses of something unclear. You could even tie this into the next concept of lore with some drawings, artwork or even slightly fuzzy or faded photographs. We want to give a vague visual sense of something horrible before we bring it into stark focus later on.

• Lore. If you can build some sort of mythology about your ‘monster’ before it appears, it primes the reader even better for it. You could break this down into more formal knowledge (books, articles, online videos etc) or informal knowledge (urban legends and rumours). Of course anything spoken by characters, or that protagonists might read on a page, will not match the full impact of seeing the thing in the flesh.

• Atmosphere. While this might not necessarily be specific to what you are revealing, giving some thought to atmosphere in any horror story is pivotal. Where is the story set, what is that place like, what is the weather like, and are there things about it in particular that the characters might find unsettling? Or if the characters don’t, what might the rather more clued-in reader find unsettling?

The big moment

So, at this stage you’ve planned ahead, given some thought to what type of horror story you are writing and also considered exactly what your ‘monster’ is going to be. All that’s left for now is to pull off the white sheet – or to paraphrase Stephen King, to show the reader what has been waiting for them behind the door. And make no mistakes – if this doesn’t land, it will have a negative effect on the story for sure. You’ve probably all seen that horror film that was pretty tense for a while but then blighted by the ‘monster’ clearly being someone in a cheap rubber costume – and we certainly want to avoid the literary equivalent.

• Be patient! Good things take time, and you only get one shot to really make a great impression with this. The first time we encounter the monster should be memorable, hopefully even iconic. Build tension within a scene, build intrigue and get the protagonists of your story feeling anxious before you pull the trigger. The visual and all the other accompanying elements are important, but the anticipation of the big scare is every bit as important.

• Capture the strange. As far as you can, you want your ‘monster’ to be something a little off the familiar. One of the common complaints with horror tropes – the likes of our zombies, vampires and werewolves – is that we’ve seen then so many times they simply cease to become truly scary. Whatever it is you want to reveal, and when, be sure that there is something that stands out and that will be less common in the experience of the reader – some quirk or facet that make it truly uncanny and unfamiliar. After all, it is the idea of the alien and the other that truly frightens us.

• Pay off on what you built. A great reveal isn’t about one moment. It starts way back in the book with all the things we talked about above. It comes not only with the promise of a horrifying instance, but also an awful revelation that something terrible has been lurking throughout the length of the story. The reveal is not only a key moment in the story itself, it’s a perfect encapsulation of the direction the story is heading – not only in terms of what has come before but for its future trajectory. If the reader isn’t scared at that first encounter, the second is not likely to get scarier once they are familiar with it.

• Get the reaction right. In horror we can certainly play with ideas of dramatic irony, and characters being ignorant of things that other characters are aware of. With that said, the reveal is probably not the moment for this sort of thing. When the characters do finally see, hear, smell and feel the presence of your horror component, they should give off an appropriate reaction or you risk the reveal feeling very underwhelming. They could run, be frozen to the spot or instinctively attack the ‘monster’. And how does the cast of characters react among each other if more than one person is present for the reveal?

While the reveal is a pivotal incident in horror in isolation, its effect on the before and after of the story can be what truly makes or breaks the plot. Getting the build-up to it right allows the reveal to hit the reader even harder – and that can mean thinking carefully ahead of starting writing and not being afraid to take your time. It’s also massive for the later story, as if you scare the reader that first time then the residual fear is liable to live throughout the rest of the story. And to make it truly work, do be sure to call upon all the tools in the toolbox – we all have our favourite single moments that have stuck with us forever (I still can’t face a second watch of Ringu twenty years after I first saw it, all because of that reveal) and my final word of advice is to study those instances that have chilled you to the bone and do your best to learn from them.