Horror in writing:

At Life the Universe and Everything symposium, there was a panel on how to write horror. It had some good suggestions. Any misinformation is the fault of the note taker.

There are four instincts fight, flight, feed, fornication. Flight fight relates to dread while feed and fornication relate to desire.
Both horror and erotica create an emotional reaction and taps into the Ying and the Yang. They also create a physical reaction. With horror providing adrenaline and erotica providing endorphins.
The gross-out is all the severed head bouncing down the steps. This is where you might lose your lunch. This is known as soft horror.
Horror is defined by the individual prejudices.
Horror can come from an outside entity such as a spider the size of the bear.
Terror is when you might feel the sensation on your neck and can’t see something you can’t name.
Recognize that the setting of the story can also be a character.
Characters the story must be believed it interesting as well as realistic. They must have skin in the game
You don’t need a high body count. Know your audience. They must be able to suspend their belief
The story beginning needs to be believable with an everyday event that people can believe in that then changes and becomes the horror
What’s the worst that can happen?
The stakes that are in threat can be physical, spiritual, financial, professional etc. The story tells the rise and fall of fortune. It provides tension and relief, success and failure, progress and stumbles.
The story is the plot and the character.
In conflict often the bad guy wins.
Suspense, do you want to create suspense?… I’ll tell you later. Suspense is when you may ask 10 questions but only answer six.
Intimacy used in both Horror and erotica the closer you get to the character the better. You want to know the victim. By splitting up a group of characters they each will feel isolated and face their own challenges.
Point of View and tense are plot elements. Past tense tells us that the character survives the event to tell us of it.
Play with timing, for things that happen in a short time… draw them out. slow time. Rader sees as important.
Titillate and foreplay create anticipation. You want the reader To fill in as much details as possible.
Use horror sparingly. “Too much loses the effects. As you fail to describe the monster give them as little until the end. If you want to write something that this gives the author it will scare the audience.