How to Slay Monsters: 6 Tips for Writing a Paranormal Thriller
Author Peyton June shares six tips for writing a paranormal thriller, including what most new authors get wrong about their stories.
When I was 10 years old, I was obsessed with the Ology series. I treated the fictional field guides like religious texts. Monsterology was my favorite. I would stuff this giant beetle-green book in my backpack and show all the kids at recess the totally-real sample of phoenix dust.
I have a bit more range in my reading habits now, but I still can’t help but to include at least one monster in everything I write. Because sometimes it’s the fantastical elements that make a story feel true. We all know this is not a pipe, it’s a representation of a pipe. A ghost is never just a ghost, it’s our nation's sins we’d rather forget. It’s trauma that demands to be addressed.
When I wrote my first book, Bad Creek, I knew I wanted to use my family’s summer tradition to talk about the deadly nature of nostalgia, which meant—of course—there had to be ghosts.
Ground Us in Reality
Successful speculative fiction often borrows from lived experiences to keep the narrative tethered to our world. Make the mundane magical. Let every bad date, frightening news podcast, or bachelorette party mishap become research for your next story.
Add zombies to that nightmarish retail job you had in college. Make your old landlord a witch. My latest book, The Monsters We Made, combines my miserable experience as a closeted teenage influencer living in a small Midwestern town with the 1960s UFO craze and Internet urban legends.
Get personal. Instead of focusing on writing something that will scare general audiences, write something that scares you.
Know Thy Monster
When borrowing existing folklore, it’s helpful to think like an anthropologist. Every creature comes with cultural baggage. Pretending Anne Rice or Stephanie Meyer’s vampires never existed won’t make yours any more original. Familiarize yourself with common tropes and audience expectations. What’s integral to your monster? What’s uncharted territory?
Balance the Known and the Unknown
Too much context can weigh down a story. Too many loose threads can be an unsatisfactory read. Your only job as an author is to answer the questions that are emotionally relevant. The audience doesn’t need to understand the precise scientific explanation for their immortality, but we probably do need to know how the evil (yet frustratingly hunky) lead vamp was fanged up.
Ask yourself: Does the extra lore up the stakes? Add tension? If not, it’s okay for some ambiguity.
Why So Haunted?
New writers tend to start their story at the wrong spot.
And they often center the wrong character.
Why does Dave get bit by a werewolf when his sister’s reaction to lycanthropy would be infinitely more compelling? She has more to lose with the wedding coming up. And she has three cats. How is that going to work?
Paranormal affiliation shouldn’t be your lead’s more interesting quality or their only obstacle. Everyone’s possessed by demons these days. Why is that a unique challenge for your main character, specifically?
Your Outline Is Your Friend, Not Your Mom
I used to think outlines would dull my sparkle. And they did, at first. Sometimes getting characters to different plot points felt like picking up toys in a claw machine. It shouldn’t be that way. You are allowed to adjust your outline as you get to know your characters.
Let’s say you had what you thought was a perfect chapter-by-chapter breakdown, but now that you’re writing the scene where the main character discovers her HOA is indeed run by a cannibal cult, you realize it makes zero sense for her to meet her neighbor for their weekly Hot Girl Walk. Sandra could be one of them! Of course the MC considers this!
But the outline calls for them to meet that evening and Sandra delivers crucial information and if it can’t happen exactly right then, the pacing of the whole book is thrown off.
So, let’s pivot.
What if the MC doesn’t meet at their usual spot, and Sandra shows up at her doorstep, demanding to be let inside. What if, when she realizes she’s not welcome, she breaks in? That’s so Sandra, and it’s juicier than simply meeting at the end of the cul-de-sac, and we didn’t have to sacrifice the MC’s emotional reaction.
The Twist Isn’t Everything
Chances are, there will be readers who hate the twist. There will be readers who saw the twist coming a hundred pages away. The big twist can’t do all the heavy lifting.
The Sixth Sense doesn’t end when baby Haley Joel Osmet tells Bruce Willis he sees dead people. There’s still 40 minutes left in the movie. What comes after the twist can be the juiciest part of a story.
A thriller’s goal isn’t surprising the audience; it’s holding them hostage, forcing them to keep turning the page. A good thriller makes you miss your stop on the train or forget to pick your kids up from soccer practice.
Check out Peyton June's The Monsters We Made here:
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