Pinned 6 years 6 months ago onto Writing Guides
If you love to scare your readers and you're writing a thriller, crime novel, a mystery or any other piece of fiction that requires you to write a scary scene, you need to read on. Rayne Hall's eBook Writing Scary Scenes will guide you through the process of creating a fast paced novel.
With stacks of scary books under her belt, and writing Fantasy Fiction along with Horror Fiction, Rayne's author motto is: Dark * Dangerous * Disturbing.
Once you open Rayne's eBook you will quickly learn practical tricks to turn up the suspense in your thriller or horror novel. Rayne teaches you how to make your readers' hearts hammer with suspense, their breaths quicken with excitement, and their skins tingle with goosebumps of delicious fright.
Are Your Frightening Scenes Scary Enough?
With many chapters aimed at scaring your readers, Rayne guides you through the process of writing tight fast paced action scenes that thrill and chill your readers. That's why they're reading your novel after all.
Rayne offers practical suggestions such as ...
- how to structure a scary scene
- increase the suspense
- make the climax more terrifying
- make the reader feel the character's fear
- techniques for manipulating the readers' subconscious
- creating powerful emotional effects
If you have written your book and need help to scary it up, you should use this book to write a new scene, or to add tension and excitement to a new draft. My suggestion would be to read the book and then create your own scene checklist based on the info you have gleaned and learned from Rayne's writing experience. And then keep your checklist handy while writing your scary scenes.
Scary Scene Checklist
I have my own scene checklist which has different aspects of creating each and every scene I write about. I use this as a kick-start and then I come back to it at the end to boot my scenes back into tight and frightening order - I love writing thrillers.
I have now added some of Rayne's advice to my little scene format - escpecially her advice on using Euphonics to find the right words to scare, thrill or horrify your readers. And I have added Rayne's advice on the whimp effect to my scene checklist to ensure my hero does not act like a ... whimp!
You will learn tricks of the trade for your novel's 'black moment' and your ultimate 'climax' scenes. Along with finding out how to describe monsters and villains, writing harrowing captivity sections and breathtaking escapes, there are chapters on instant hooks, how to isolate your hero, how to use senses and ensure your readers feels the same fear as the hero.
You'll also learn which 'flavours of fear' you should inject into your different scenes. The handy thing here is that Rayne gives you 'Drawbacks' in each chapter - so where she tells you how to create all this scary stuff, she also advices when to go easy and why.
This is important in writing scary scenes not only because you don't want to go OTT but you also don't want to put your reader off or have your scenes come across as unbelievable.
It goes without saying that Writing Scary Scenes is the ideal writing guide all genres, especially thriller, horror, paranormal romance and urban fantasy. Of course, if you are writing any other genre and need a little scary injection, read and learn from Rayne's writing experience.
Scare The Pants Off Your Readers
I have to say that I have one BIG grump with Rayne and her book - it simply wasn't enough. I got stuck in and couldn't put it down, I made stacks of notes and scribbled in the margins. I also marked out so many tips in yellow highlight and then, as I motored through the 26 odd chapters, eating it alive, suddenly it ended!
Well, now, that's simply not fair. I wanted it to go on and on. I wanted more. I needed to learn more. I couldn't get enough of learning how to write scary scenes.
I don't just want to read it and retain it, I want it to soak into my skin and ooze out of my fingers when they type up my scary thrilling scenes. I want all this juicy scary stuff to float around me so it can jump off my novel pages and scare the hell out of my readers!
As my own novels will one day thrill and scare my readers, Rayne's Writing Scary Scenes has joined my ranks of FAV writing guides alongside how to create fictional characters, how to create emotions for characters, writing dialogue and slang for novel people and many other precious books I have had the pleasure of reviewing.
It's soooo exciting writing a thriller, especially a suspense conspiracy thriller like The Grotto's Secret, with this kind of scare tactics up one's writing sleeve.
So there you have it Rayne - we want more, we want more, we want more ...
To find out more about Rayne's scary and horrifict fiction, pop over to Amazon Central and see of Rayne's books. Or go straight to buy this scary little ebook!
Paula Wynne
Paula Wynne is the founder of Writing Goals. As well as running Writing Goals and Book Luver, Paula is an author with several published books.
Paula's Writers' Resource Series features the following books: Pimp My Fiction: How to Write a Novel with The Ultimate List of Creative Writing Books to Create A Plot & Build Character; A~Z Writers’ Character Quirks: A~ Z of Behaviours, Foibles, Habits, Mannerisms & Quirks for Writers’ to Create Fictional and 101 Writers’ Scene Settings: Unique Location Ideas & Sensory Details for Writers’ to Create Vivid Scene.
Find out more about the Writers' Resource Series here. If you would like to find out how to write a bestselling novel, download a free copy of Paula's Pimp My Fiction.
You may also want to check out Paula's series Book Marketing for Authors.
Follow Paula on Amazon's Author Central to find out when she publishes more books. Or you can follow Paula on Twitter and Facebook.