How to Tell Scary Stories

Choose a protagonist who resembles your audience — someone their age, belongs to the same group, or shares one of their names. Manufacture a spooky or evil villain, alien, or monster who has flaws that the hero can exploit to defeat them.

Try a modern twist on a classic scary storyline. Use basements instead of caves or limos instead of horses and carriages. Select eerie details that convey the smell, taste, touch, sound, and vision of the story.

Maintain a theme of good triumphing over evil and insert lessons throughout about universal values of kindness if you’re telling your story to kids. The hero’s success should come from virtue or strength.

Keep the story short, well paced, and dramatic. Tell the story in a whisper, and raise the volume and intensity of your voice as the situation dictates. Act out character parts using different voices.

Involve your audience by asking what they suppose happens next and change direction to insert surprising and frightening reversals.

Listen in the days after to what they recall of the scary story, which reveals what was effective and what has to be cut, sped up, replaced, or refined. If done right, they will want to hear it over again, and again.