A Guide to Writing Horror for Middle Grade Readers
Writing and Learning
Horror is a hair-raising experience to both write and read and fortunately for us, the scary season is upon us.
October is the time of year that horror writers sharpen their pencils and skip in and out of the moon’s cascaded shadows. Maybe our best friend will be eaten by a boggart in our story, maybe he won’t. We can lock a group of strangers in a dimly lit cellar. And furry creatures with fangs as long as claws scrape at the staircase leading to their only exit. But don’t worry, we’ll avoid dolls that move on their own when no one is watching, and hope we don’t trip while running from the guy with the chainsaw.
If you’re too scared, turn on the lights. Creatures hate bright lights. Keep some iron in your pocket. Monsters fear the metal. And in case you were wondering, no, we’re not saving the children from scary stuff, we’re cooking them in the filling.
[insert cackling witch laugh]
Before we dive into the in’s and out’s of writing horror for children, let’s take a step back and rediscover some of the basic fundamental aspects of middle grade novels of any genre.
Everyday Middle Grade
Keep it Simple, Silly
Avoid writing a story that is challenging to read. There’s no reason to make kids hate reading with long, run-on sentences that contain hefty clauses and long-winded syllabled words; besides, there’s no need to show off your sesquipedalian skills.
The point here is to make the sentences short and to the point. These are condensed stories in which every word choice is pertinent to the story itself. Try making the syntax more inviting, not challenging, by keeping your chapter length short. A good average page count for this age group is anywhere from six to twelve pages.
Chronological Order
It’s best practice to choose a starting point and tell the story organically and chronologically. When you time jump in middle grade literature, you risk losing the reader because they may feel confused with the story and quit reading. This takes us back up to the point of keeping the writing inviting, not challenging.
If your protagonist is going to share a flashback with the reader, keep the memory to a couple paragraphs or structure the sequences in the form of dialog. Dialog keeps the pace moving and readers reading. When we dawdle on and on about a story from the past, the reader might as well turn off the light and sink their head into a pillow.
Worldbuilding
Creating a world from scratch is one of the most exciting elements of story building. And yes, a writer must create a world the protagonist will live in for the next 200 pages or so. Even in a contemporary story, there is huge cultural, economic, and demographical differences between a setting in Los Angeles, CA in comparison to Milwaukee, WI; insofar as, a protagonist living in Finland will live quite differently from its southern European counterparts in Greece.
Make your world believable by developing rules for your world and its inhabitants. When you divert from your own plan, the reader will lose trust and put down the book. And no one wants a bad review from a ten-year-old.
Character Arc
Stories fall flat and readers disengage when the protagonist is boring or dull. In every story, no matter what age group, the character must change. Whether this takes the form of going from the quiet, shy boy who needs to speak up against his bullies or the obnoxious girl who should reflect on her attitude choices, there must be a change in the protagonist.
Focus on how the character changes internally. Outside forces or situations, beyond the character’s control, help catapult a character out of their comfort zone and into the unknown. This is why the protagonist’s growth is important especially in middle grade. Kids are innocent in the sense that they haven’t experienced the world at large, only the small universe they live in. So, when you show your audience that even the most devious protagonist can change, they can find hope in the unknown.
No Adults Allowed!
This is rule #1 when writing children’s literature. Pre-teens have so much going on in their little brains, that the last thing they need is yet another adult telling them what to do. We’re not just talking about their daily chores here. The basic twelve-year-old protagonist, like the life-size one, focuses on building self-esteem by trying to find their place in the world. They do this through experience, hanging out with their friends, and finding empathy in the characters you create. So, stop telling your young protagonist what to do or else they’ll call you a murderer of love*, run up to their room, and slam the door shut.
Now that we’ve brushed up on our middle grade story building skills, let’s have some frightening fun.
Diving Deeper into Horror for MG
Setting
There are quite a few options of setting your horrifically horror-ish stories in the creepiest places you can imagine. Start by avoiding the street sewers. No one needs a clown with a red balloon clouding their rationale; plus, it’s been done by one of the best horror writers in modern times. Find your own groove.
The first option is having your story take place in an ordinary setting with creepy aspects. Maybe your typical, midwestern middle school sits on the plains of Iowa, for example. And if you’ve been to Iowa, you understand that there’s not much to the region except corn, tractors, and pigs. Though I hear the Buffalo Bill Museum is fascinating. And while corn fields give some people the heebie-jeebies, it’s just a landscape. Our imaginations make it scary. I mean, scarecrows scattered over vast field are harmless…aren’t they?
Another decision you’ll have to make is asking yourself where the story will take place within your geographical choice. And remember, what’s scary to a middle grader isn’t the same kind of scare it takes to freak out an adult.
Here are a few examples…
- The boiler room in the basement of the school
- An empty warehouse.
- A dense forest behind the school’s basketball courts.
- A dimly lit street in the middle of a prominent subdivision, or better yet, a dilapidated house at the end of the block.
- Abandoned train tracks on the outskirts of town
By taking the time to develop a scary setting, we can perfectly time the dreadful appearance of mummies jumping out from dark corners.
Start Strong
Finding the perfect place to start a horror novel is tricky. You don’t want to freak out the reader too quickly, but you do want to capture their attention within the first sentence.
If we recall from the setting section, I mentioned a dilapidated house at the end of the block. If you know the main focus of your setting takes place in and around that creepy house, then start there. Here’s an example.
- Three-legged Betty lived on the top floor of 507 Hilltop Drive. Terry saw her silhouette behind yellowed curtains and hazy glass every morning on the way to school. That wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was when Terry didn’t see her.
End Strong- with Cliffhangers
Focus on how you end a chapter. If you recall from earlier, you want to keep your sentences short, as well as your chapters. We’ve established that this keeps the reader reading. But there’s another trick. End your chapter with a cliffhanger.
Here are a few examples.
- Chapter Ending:
- Just as Cynthia closed the door, something grabbed her from behind.
- Next chapter:
- Cynthia jumped like an acrobat and spun around to see her mom smiling on the front porch.
- Chapter Ending:
- She stole the jelly-belly box from the counter and ran outside. Lidia dumped a handful of candy in her hand. She was just about to shove the sugary goodness in her mouth when she found a fingertip inside.
- Next chapter:
- Lidia threw the box of candy on the cement. A rubber fingertip bounced out of the box and onto the lawn as she heard Timmy’s familiar laugh from behind a bush.
Monsters are real!
Create a powerful and scary monster, villain, or antagonist. There’s something thrilling with having a strong connection with the bad guy. When we’re young, we’re supposed to do everything adults tell us to do and we needed to do the task with a smile on our face. And somewhere in the back of our disciplined brains, we craved chaos. And rather than start real trouble in school and get suspended, we used characters to fill in the gaps.
My first horror movie was Gremlins, and yes, I’m aware that I’m dating myself here. Back then and still to this day, my favorite character from the movie was actually the antagonist, Stripe.
Born from the back of a water-logged Gizmo, Stripe deemed himself the Gremlin leader with a white mohawk that grew out of lizard-like skin. He had three fingers and a thumb on each hand, with nails that could slice a movie curtain in two with little effort.
Stripe started trouble. He created all the obstacles and diversions that twisted the plot, and caused havoc for the protagonist, all while fulfilling his destiny—leading a world full of Gremlins.
Nothing Gory or Traumatizing.
Middle Graders don’t need absolute fear-factors to love horror. Actually, anything gory is off limits in MG because they’re still trying to make sense of the world around them. As adults, we’ve seen the so-called evils of the world. Heck, just turn on the nightly news. Is this something you want your eleven-year-old to watch?
On the other hand, Gremlins wasn’t a gory movie. Limbs weren’t ripped off. No one had to choose the next victim. There wasn’t a paranormal force that was difficult to fight, or a demon doll that sucked the souls of the living. Instead, the movie had a monster that needed to be defeated and a character that needed to defeat it in order to restore order.
If we focus on 200 pages of the protagonist in a constant state of heightened awareness, fear, and anxiety, we leave the reader with those same emotions. Everyone needs a break. A great way to balance horror in novels, is to separate the scary parts out over the entirety of the book. Write equal parts scary, add in an equal amount of twists (we don’t want to give away the ending), and add in some good old-fashioned humor.
The goal is to keep the scares light by avoiding traumatizing scenes. Kids don’t need to read in-depth passages of violence, blood, and gore. The fun part of horror writing is creating shock and dread in the reader.
Here are examples of creating scary scenes without the gore.
- A mummy wrapped in toilet paper who raises its arms forward and grunts while it attacks. The protagonist realizes that water is the mummy’s worst nightmare
- Avoid: Half-eaten bodies with lots of descriptive adjectives that focus on ripped flesh and a severed, bleeding leg
- A werewolf that tip-toes between trees and carries a red bucket in his front claws and steals candy from kids on Halloween.
- Avoid: Fangs and fur caked with dried blood, who reeks like a garbage disposal, and only eats left legs
No Rest for the Protagonist
We’ve established that antagonists, villains, or monsters of your horror MG novel create havoc. Let’s say the villain creates havoc by hiding cell phones of the local kids. This is a serious issue and someone needs to stop this dreadful monster—and only the protagonists can “kill” it.
Unfortunately for the protagonist, we’ll call her Sally, the monster is always one step ahead. Just when she thinks she’s figured out who is stealing all the cell phones, she falls into an abandoned warehouse and has to use her own wits to get out. For every step forward, poor ol’ Sally takes two steps back until she finally comes face-to-face with the enemy of the cellular world and forms a plan to defeat it.
Happy Ending
I’m not happy about this rule, but it’s an important one. Kids need positive reinforcement and a cynical ending is not advised. Your reader just spent a long time reading your story. You’ve put them through the ringer by taking them on an adventure with lots of highs and lows and whole bunch in-betweens; so, at the end of it all—make it a happy one.
*Dan in Real Life, 2007
-RADolence
