Writing Desire and Dread: How to Use Horror to Deepen Emotional Stakes

Here’s a bloodstained revelation: Desire and dread are one and the same. The fear you feel deep within your soul is triggered by the same apparatus that sends our hearts into a tizzy when it comes to falling in love. They operate on similar mechanics in their gestation on the page, equal parts buildup and anticipation, expectation and denied gratification.

(The Appeal of Cosmic Horror.)

Let’s break it down real quick:

Desire is that ever-burning need for another. A craving unlike any other. A sense of yearning is the key. One longs for what they have yet to obtain, just out of reach—for now.

Dread is that deep-rooted fear for what’s to come. The horror on the horizon. This particular type of terror roots itself in our characters’ minds, settling it in their chests. It’s a slow-burn horror that makes a meal out of what has yet to be seen, knowing quite well that our imaginations manifest horrors 10 times worse than what we see with our own eyes.

So. Dread and desire: the things that have yet to be obtained, to arrive. They linger on the horizon, just out of reach of our hearts and minds, but we sense them coming…

How can we paint these particular emotions on the page?

Restraint, I say. Denying quick and easy gratification. Using suspense, the buildup of tension—either romantic or horrific—to ratchet up the romance and horror itself.

Horror and comedy are often considered kindred spirits. The mechanism behind a jump scare and a laugh share intrinsic DNA: the buildup to the punchline, the incremental elevation of suspense before going in for the kill.

Horror and romance share a kinship in execution as well, but there’s a particular type of horror that meshes exceptionally well with love. Dread is the most romantic form of terror because it leans into a character’s consciousness. It is less about the quick gratification of a jump scare and more in tune with desire, yearning for the very thing we wish but cannot have. Again, not yet.

Desire and dread are all about the suspense. The sustained note. A true craftsperson can willfully deny their audience the thing they want in order to give them the thing they need: true horror, true romance. The best way to do that, I find, is through denial and tension.

I had the opportunity to intertwine these two elements for my horrormance novel Devil Inside, which essentially embeds a horror story within the structure of a romance novel and makes a meal out of both desire and dread. The deep-rooted horror of demonic possession and all its nonconsensual ramifications came into play in this book, where we have a man with no soul who ends up falling in love with a demon in need of a host.

There’s a particular type of pleasure waiting at the end of nearly every romance novel—the much lauded Happily Ever After—where readers are promised our characters desires will be met. It’s the journey that makes the difference. You’ve got to withhold. Tease the reader. Deny them the easy gratification. The trick is to delay, delay, delay… Throw obstacles in their way. Insurmountable hurdles that would send 99.9% of us packing, calling it quits.

If our lovers were to reach their happily ever after in a matter of pages, without any hiccups along the way, where would our romance be? We’ve all got to work for it, characters and readers alike, just a little. That way the romance feels earned. Achieved.

In its own grisly way, a horror story tends to have its own sense of gratification.

The truest feat for any writer is to see how long they can deny their audience this sense of release. The longer, the better.  You want to deny the reader what they want to offer up what they need: an egress for escape. Hope keeps them coming back. That sense of survival, no matter the cost, has to burn bright from within. It’s what keeps them alive. A desire to live.

So, what’s the tease in horror? Safety, for starters. Stable ground. A grip on one’s bearings. How can you throw the reader off? If it was immediate gratification, it wouldn’t lead to dread. It would just end up being a cheap scare.

I’m such a sucker for first-person narrative. I feel like this works for strengthening any character’s emotional stakes on the page. When you are locked into your narrator’s perspective, you are able to navigate matters of the heart and horror on the ground floor. You’re in the emotional trenches with your characters, as it were. That’s what makes it truly resonate: a full-on immersion in character perspective.

Think of it like a POV-garrote. Pick a point of view and stick with it, no matter what. The forced perspective of a narrative can be pretty suffocating. Think of Poe in love.

Feel the feels. Feel all the feels. Lean in. Make it a sensory experience.

The myopia of POV is where we truly entrench ourselves in the nitty-gritty of the story, getting down and dirty with our characters. I love this, personally, because it allows me to get messy with my protagonists. They can only see but so much of the world. You’re relegated to what’s in front of them. So let them be wrong. Let them make mistakes.

Let them find a way forward, but fumble. Survival in horror is contingent upon hope, while falling in love is born out of a belief that we-can-make-it-work-no-matter-what. That takes a little trial and error, failing in order to succeed and finally reach the ending of our story. By forcing ourselves into our character’s perspectives, we feel those fumbles first-hand and the tolls they take on their bodies. It’s a verité template to bring our characters closer to the story’s surface, letting our reader feel exactly what they feel nearly in real time.

Dread is in the shadows. The bleak horizon. What our characters can’t comprehend leads to that sense of deep-seated horror. It’s insurmountable, and it lingers.

Desire is right out of reach… but our characters still reach out for it. That’s what makes the difference: They can’t give up. They need this, this love, more than anything else.

Given that these emotions are on the horizon, your characters have to imagine them. What will they be like? What does the alien in Alien look like?

Paint the yearning, the downright need: The smell of their skin, the softness of their hair, the texture of their lips. Desire is the imagination run amok, and writers can really sink their teeth in. I know I sure do.

So. There you go. Desire and dread, horror and romance, sustained tension for an eventual release that’s only made sweeter by the length of the delay.

Give the reader what they want as soon as they want it, and it becomes empty calorie romance. That’s not love, that’s lust. A superficial thrill. You have to deny our characters, keep love out of reach, and in turn deny the reader any easy gratification.

Give them quick and easy horror, and it’s just a jump scare, forgotten as fast as that cat can jump out from the medicine cabinet. It doesn’t linger. It dissipates faster than you can flinch.

To truly achieve dread and desire, you must sustain that high-pitched violin note of suspense. The will-they-won’t-they of it all. Will they actually reach a Happily Ever After?

Will our characters survive? And if so, what will be left of them?

Only time will tell… but boy oh boy, will the ride be worth it.

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