Technique Boo-sday #6: The Ghost Story Ingredient List, Pt.1

Tricks, Templates, & Tools

I’m going to leave the intro from TT #1 pinned here for new readers. For today’s new post, scroll down below the photo:

These should be fairly self-explanatory. They’re not formulas or, God knows, rules. They’re exercises to try, and ways of framing, and maybe challenges that will lead you to solutions to the individual problems your writing projects are already plotting to hurl at you. All of these are things I’ve developed (or borrowed and augmented) over the last quarter-century, and that at least some people have found useful.

If you find these helpful, and want to show appreciation or encouragement, please do tell friends, or say so somewhere. And/or click the little purple button below, if you’re able and so inclined. Many thanks.

Technique Boo-sday: The Ghost Story Ingredient List Pt.1

Welcome to our seasonal special edition. Depending on enthusiasm and demonstrated support, who knows, this could be an annual thing.

All month, I’ll be devoting Tuesday posts to laying out the ingredients I always have at the ready when I set out to haunt. Please note that I am using the phrase ingredient list, not recipe. That is, I use most or all of these things every time I construct a spectral tale, and so do the writers of almost every spectral tale I love.

But how much of each? In what combinations or order? I’m afraid I’m going to leave that to you.

Not because I’m being coy.

Not because I’m conscious of the power of this spell (although it is a spell, and it does have power, and let’s be honest, I don’t really know most of you, do I?).

Not because I’m holding out in the hopes that a few more of you will find these posts so helpful that you’ll want to upgrade to a paid subscription (although I’d very much appreciate that).

Nope. I’m not going to tell you the precise proportions or combinations because I can’t. No one can.

Think of this as the Technical Challenge on The Great British Baking Show. You ‘ll find a lot of what you’ll need here. But what you do with it, and how liberally you sprinkle each thing…well, that’s to taste. Use wisely.

Or wildly.

I’ll be offering two new ingredients each week this month. In honor of the season. Here are today’s:

1. Mythbuilding

Why is Hill House scary? Because Shirley Jackson says it is. In the opening paragraph. (“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills…and whatever walked there walked alone”). Then Dr. Montague says it’s the Everest of haunted houses. Then Eleanor says it’s scary. Then Theodora. Then…

Why is the Marsten house in Salem’s Lot scary? Because Ben Meers had a terrifying experience there, sure. Which he resists telling us about, at least at first. Which gives the story and that place even more allure. And power.

Why are the new owners of the Marsten house scary? Because one of them is almost never seen. And the other one seems odd. And so the locals start speculating. Telling stories.

How about Dracula’s castle? The story we first hear isn’t even about the castle itself. It’s about the rote terror of the villagers who live in its shadow.

The point being, we are scared of Hill House and the Marsten house and Dracula and his lair long before we go to or meet them. In some ways, they are scarier before we go to or meet them.

This is a theme I’ll return to through different tunnels and in different words all month, but horror stories are primal. They recall some of the first stories we hear as children, and those are often, weirdly, some of the first stories we love. You don’t need a complete mythology or even a rational reason for readers to be scared. Just tell them they should be.

2. Told Tales

One of the challenges that any story with supernatural elements presents for the author is credibility. I’ve been asked a surprising number of times whether I believe in ghosts or the afterlife or monsters. I’ve seen another round of that question circulating through some other writers’s Twitter feeds just this week.

That question is a red herring, though. A distraction. You don’t have to believe in every monster (or angel, or alien, or phantasmagoric experience, or whatever) you create; you need that creature or experience to feel believable within the world of your story. Which should also feel believable.

A lot of the ingredients on this month-long list will be devoted to helping with the credibility problem. But one really useful method— and it’s a close cousin, obviously, to ingredient #1 above, and works for similar reasons— is to have a person we believe in tell us a story.

Why does this work? Because we love stories. Because we love believing in stories. Because if someone you believe in, for whatever reason, is standing in front of you and saying this happened, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to believe it. At least for the duration of the story.

Take John Carpenter’s original “The Fog”, which opens with one of those primal storytelling moments. Campfire, cold night, light flickering on kids’s faces. John Houseman’s crusty old sailor clapping shut his pocket watch, staring around at the group, and growling, “11:55. Almost midnight. Time enough for one more story. Just to keep us warm…”

That’s a tone-setter, and not a tale likely to establish immediate credibility with adult viewers. But it sure does set the tone. And then, if you notice, every single major character in that movie tells a ghost story, sooner or later. The Jamie Lee Curtis hitchhiking artist, and the much less crusty, much earthier sailor who gives her a lift. The kid who finds the driftwood. Hal Holbrook’s troubled preacher. The weatherman who issues the warning about the incoming mist. Stevie Wayne, “our nightlight,” a single mom and disc-jockey looking down— like the ur-storyteller, or the author—at the fog rolling in, telling the tale of this night even as it happens, because she’s watching it unfold and trying to warn people through the radio.

Create a character we can believe has lived a life. Let them tell about something that happened to him/her/them. It doesn’t even necessarily matter if the story they tell relates directly to the one you’re telling. The words themselves, and the possibilities they set shimmering in the air, are the strands of the web you’ll need to hold readers where you want them. Keep them still.

So go get weaving.

More next week.