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Feeling Spooky? How do YA & MG authors go CREEPY?

It’s that time of year again. Goosebumps trickle down your spine, spider webs catch in your hair. Rats go skittering across the floor, ghouls and dark forces lurk evilly in your dreams…. It’s so unnaturally wonderful to be spooked. Murder, mayhem, ghosts, creepy plots; these are the ingredients that brew up spooktacular reads. Especially when youthful minds turn to the changing of the seasons, crackling leaves, ghostly graveyards and all that goes bump in the night. Come October, readers start craving bone-chilling reads like vamps crave blood. But, writing the icky stuff can be daunting, even haunting. So let’s see on how kidlit writers handle the creepy, gory, spine chilling stuff. Let’s hear from some spooky, paranormal, gritty, ghostly, goosebumpy writers…

Time to get into the Spooky Zone.

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Check out this trailer, it’s seriously scaaarrryyy…

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1MTXvy4JIQ

Kit Grindstaff

Setting is one part of building a spooky scene: breathing eerie life into the very surroundings. But however creepy an event is, description is dry without being fed through the character’s reactions; the visceral effect, their thoughts, and whatever action they take. How to find those reactions? As ever, memory and imagination is the writer’s best friend! To create the scenes in THE FLAME IN THE MIST where main character Jemma faces ghosts, ghouls and other ghastlies, I dredged up things that have made my own flesh crawl. A walk through a damp, spooky graveyard…A spider scuttling across my path…a dark night with howling winds….Anything that evoked in me the feeling I wanted to evoke in Jemma, and through her, the reader. Keeping the point of view close was key: seeing through her eyes puts us in her skin. So when, on the eve of her thirteenth birthday, Jemma hears the wind seeming to whisper, “Sweet thirteeeeen….“, hopefully the chills that crawl up her spine will also crawl up the reader’s – along with whatever their own memory banks bring to the spookfest – and propel them with her through the pages as she strives to overcome the darkness in her path.

Cynthia Leitich Smith

I love to put a modern spin on the classics–the quintessential monsters like ghosts, demons, shapeshifters, blood drinkers. Sometimes with humor, seldom with gore. If I have to close my eyes to type it, I know I’m on the right track. If I can’t keep myself up at night, I have no business trying to scare anyone else. I brainstorm lists of monster traits and their modern metaphors and then ask, how can I make it all so much worse?

Claire Mcaterer

There are two kinds of scary: loud scary and quiet scary. To me, quiet is much worse. Yes, it’s scary to get chased through a castle by someone wielding a sword, but at least the adrenaline has somewhere to go. Quiet scary is sneaking around, hoping you won’t be caught; getting up the courage to tiptoe past the snoozing prison guard; venturing down the dark, dark stairs. I try to work with all that coiled-up tension and tease it as long as I can until the tiniest mouse squeak makes you jump in your chair.

Emma Pass

My next book, THE FEARLESS (out 3rd April 2014 in the UK from Corgi/Random House and early 2015 in the US from Delacorte) is set in a near-future, post-apocalyptic UK. The main character, Cass, faces many challenges as she tries to rescue her little brother after he’s kidnapped by the Fearless, people who have been given a drug that turns them into crazed psychopaths. It’s a bleak, lawless world, and the Fearless aren’t the only people Cass needs to watch out for… The creepiest bits of the book are probably the settings – amongst others, a railway station haunted by a madman, a ruined city, a derelict shopping centre… I researched my settings by reading lots of books and blogs about abandoned buildings and places, in particular Hashima Island in Japan, which inspired Hope Island, where Cass and her brother live with a group of people who fled the UK mainland to escape the Fearless when they first invaded. I love to scare myself silly, and writing certain scenes sent shivers down my spine as I imagined myself seeing them through my characters’ eyes.

Elle Cosimano

How do I get into the creepy, spine-tingling zone when I’m writing? I always approach the first draft of a new scene with a strong sense of direction, but when I’m writing a particularly suspenseful one, I try to come to it with as little premeditation as possible. By keeping the scene a little shadowy in my own mind, I’m allowing myself to feel the same sense of dread and discovery my characters feel as new details or reveals unfold. If my own heart isn’t racing when I’ve finished writing that scene, then I know it wasn’t scary enough.

Amy Christine Parker

Creepy scenes are among my most favorite to write. Because much of my creepy stuff is psychological in nature, I prep by reading books on stuff like the psychology of serial killers or cult leaders and watch videos of real life villians—paying attention to body language and speech patterns in particular. I also tend to write those scenes at night when the house is quiet and dark. It helps get me in the mood.

THE MURDER COMPLEX

Lindsay Cummings

I have always loved spooky stuff. I can’t handle it…but I love it! Most of the stuff I write is very action packed and gory…I like to watch action movies, creepy villain scenes, read a creepy thriller, and it gets me excited to write those kinds of scenes. I also LOVE days when it’s cloudy or stormy. That just puts everything right into place!

Cat Winters

When I work on my spookier and grittier scenes, I find it best to set aside time to sit down and write as much of the scene as possible in one sitting. I don’t necessarily have to listen to creepy music beforehand or read anything intense to get into the right mindset. I just need to plant myself down in the chair, envision the setting as if I were there, follow the lead of my characters, and let the story flow.