Horror Story Beats

According to John Truby's The Anatomy of Genres, the Horror genre is for stories about facing one's inevitable demise. It is about the most fundamental, universal fact of life: it's opposite, death. It is not about successfully fighting off death, like Action, nor is it about surpassing death and becoming immortal, like Myth.

Horror is the home of characters who have nowhere to go but their doom, and its focus is on what they do in that situation.

The life statement of a Horror story is always something like:

"We are defined by what we do in the face of our inevitable death."

Examples of stories that employ the Horror genre's beats:

• The Others

• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

• A Christmas Carol

• Reaper Man

• I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

• The Masque of the Red Death

• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Spoiler warning for all of the above. Do not click the dropdowns for the beats' examples if you wish to avoid spoilers.

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Horror Story Recipe

Always read the ingredients before cooking any recipe. The best way to describe these ingredients is with its name, a brief description, and up to two examples (see examples by clicking the dropdown arrows).

To write a Horror genre story, you will need:

Ghost: Sins of the Past A horror story must include an event or character from the past who returns to threaten the present. This "ghost" will be used to drive the plot forward and threaten the main character internally and externally. It is often an embodiment of the protagonist's weaknesses and past mistakes.

• Example 1: In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the ghost of the story is his first eight deaths, leaving him with only one life between himself and Death. Death is the ghost that embodies the bill that has come due for his arrogance, and pursues him throughout the story.

• Example 2: In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge has a literal Ghost of Christmas Past, along with other ghosts, which show him the mistakes he's made and the dangers to his "everlasting soul" that have led him to this critical juncture in his life. His greed and misering have jeopardized his joy in this life and his legacy after it. The ghost beat itself is all the terrible things he has done leading up to this point in his life.

Story World: Haunted House and Closed Society You must supply the horror story with a setting. This setting needs to be a place from which there is no escape and which is home to threats to the soul and the body. A place where your ghost from the previous beat is empowered and threatening.

• Example 1: In Reaper Man, Death himself is fired from his duties and sent down to the world of mortals to live out his life and die. To a once-timeless being like him, the mere passage of time is a haunted house, always edging him closer and closer to the end.

• Example 2: In The Others, the home of the Stewarts is a dark, forbidding place which is slipping out of their control as the film progresses. Their home and its other inhabitants force the Stewarts to confront the ghost in the past of their story.

The Monster Attacks The inciting incident of a horror story, which kicks off the plot, is when the ghost makes their first attempt on the hero's life, sanity, or both. The attack fails, but leaves lasting damage and sets the tone for the rest of the story.

• Example 1: Death from Puss in Boots introduces himself and attacks Puss for the first time once Puss loses his eighth life. Puss escapes, and Death begins the chase. His stalking cripples Puss's courage and turns his arrogance into a source of paralyzing shame.

• Example 2: Jacob Marley's startling appearance and severe warning from beyond the grave is when Scrooge's monster (the consequences of his own greed) first attacks. Marley's fate is the result of the same greed Scrooge suffers from. His ghost is a warning example. It frightens Scrooge and promises how the rest of this story will go, with further attacks in the form of the three ghosts of Christmas.

Hero as Victim In Horror, you need a protagonist. This protagonist's job is largely as a victim of the ghost of the story. Their job is to endure and suffer the attacks of the monster, to be worn down over the course of the story. They must be forced to define themselves in the face of their inevitable death. It is a good idea to make the main character sympathetic or powerful in some way, so that they look weaker after taking a lot of punishment.

• Example 1: Puss in Boots is a legendary hero at the start of the story. He is proud, famous, and highly skilled with a blade. All of these are turned against him when Death humiliates him over and over again over in front of other people, by beating him in a duel and exposing him as a scared little kitty.

• Example 2: Death is fired because he cares too much about those he collects. He manipulates fate and exploits loopholes to allow humans more merciful ends. His character is tragic because he, Death Incarnate of all beings, is a sympathetic being, punished for that sympathy.

Weakness-Need 1: Slavery of Mind and the Monster Within The main character of a horror story must have a weakness-need, a character flaw that makes them vulnerable to the ghost and its attacks. Often this takes the form of binary thinking, where the character retreats into a simplistic "this or that" worldview. "Us vs. Them, Me vs. You", etc. This binary thinking turns the protagonist into their own worst enemy.

• Example 1: Grace Stewart from The Others retreats into a binary view of the world, where the only choices are "I am in full control of this house", and "I have no control." When living people, The Others, come into the home without her permission or knowledge, she is horrified and insists to her children and servants that The Others do not exist, because otherwise she foregoes all control.

• Example 2: Ebenezer Scrooge's slavery of the mind is to money. He is a miser who feels incredibly threatened by the loss of even a few shekels. Generosity, then, is out of the question, for if he foregoes even a paltry amount of money to someone else, he fears he will lose all of it.

Weakness-Need 2: Shame and Guilt The protagonist of a horror story must also suffer from a second weakness-need, a character flaw that harms their relationships with other characters who could otherwise help them face the ghost. This takes the form of shame and guilt: shame is the character's perception that the other characters rightfully hate them. Guilt is the character's perception that they rightfully hate themselves.

• Example 1: Puss in Boots harbors an enormous amount of shame and guilt for what he did by abandoning Kitty Softpaws on their wedding day. This makes him resent Perrito's attempts to cheer him up early on, and stops him from explaining that Death itself is after him.

• Example 2: Grace Stewart bears a tremendous amount of hate for herself. She runs and hides from what she did to her children and to herself, rejecting all offers for clarity and explanation from the servants who come to help her family.

Desire: Defeat the Monster, Defeat Death In any story, the protagonist's desire is different from their weakness-need at the start. Horror is no different. In Horror, the protagonist's desire that drives them through the story begins as a desire to defeat the ghost. This sets them up for failure, as in a Horror story, the ghost cannot be defeated, only accepted.

• Example 1: At the start of the story, Scrooge seeks to ward off death by acquiring even more wealth. This will never work, as everyone dies in the end, and they cannot take their wealth with them.

• Example 2: Grace Stewart seeks to defeat the "ghosts" entering her house by insisting they do not exist and silencing anyone who disagrees with her. She further insists on her version of the afterlife and what happened to her and her children.

Opponent: The Monster, the "Other" in the Extreme You must split your main character and give them a bad side or tendency, a "monster". This is different from the ghost beat because the ghost is an enemy or event from the past. The weakness-needs are different because they drive the character toward their desire. The monster drives the character away from that desire.

• Example 1: Puss in Boots' monster is his arrogance and pride that cost him his first eight lives. A wise man once said that pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source, and Puss is paralyzed by a need to protect his proud, "never-been-touched-by-a-blade" persona.

• Example 2: Death's care has a dark side: a tendency to make him intensely lonely, which in turn makes him act nihilistic and cold and distant as a self-protection mechanism. This blocks his ability to defeat the ghost of his story.

Ally: The Rational Skeptic To help the audience believe (or suspend their disbelief) of the highly symbolic elements of a horror story (such as the ghost or opponent), your horror story needs a rational skeptic. This can be a scientist character (but doesn't need to be). The important thing is that this beat serves to provide some explanation to the phenomena involved so the audience appreciates their absurdity and scariness.

• Example 1: The housekeeper Mrs. Mills serves to rationalize the mixing of the worlds of life and death. She does not object or fight; her purpose is to accept and deal practically with things as they are. As is often the case with the ally beat, Mrs. Mills shares this role with other characters, the other servants.

• Example 2: Jacob Marley serves to explain the mechanics of the ghosts Scrooge is about to meet and the haunting Scrooge is about to undergo. Marley explains that while it may seem supernatural and absurd, this is a very real warning that Scrooge must take seriously.

Crossing the Barrier to the Forbidden The horror world must have a barrier of some kind that keeps the ghost at bay. As part of your horror story, you must have a beat where this barrier is crossed. The ghost becomes a threat that must be dealt with. Often this is the inciting incident, where the protagonist faces the ghost for the first time because an action of theirs has provoked its slumbering ire.

• Example 1: Puss's eighth death removes the last thing standing between him and the grim reaper. He recklessly crosses a barrier before he needed to, and now has to grapple with the unleashed specter of his rapid onset mortality.

• Example 2: When the clock strikes twelve, the spirits of Christmas are scheduled to arrive. From that point forward, the ghost of the story (Scrooge's greed threatening his soul) is let loose on him and must be confronted before time runs out.

Plan: Reactive Every story's protagonist must have a plan. In a horror story, the protagonist's plan is almost entirely reaction-based, often little more than fleeing. Many times it transitions into a desperate attempt to acquire something that will re-contain the ghost.

• Example 1: Puss's plan is to run and hide from death. At first he does this by assuming a disguise as an old cat at a cat lady's house. Then, he does this by seeking the wishing star to wish for more lives, with Death hot on his trail.

• Example 2: Grace Stewart's plan is to quash and reject any evidence contrary to the "fact" that she and her family are still alive and that they still own this house. She reacts to her daughter's objections, and reacts to the supernatural occurrences, with increasing hostility. This is defensive aggression to a high degree.

Drive: The Monster Attacks Escalate Over the course of the story, you must include escalating attacks from the ghost that keep the pressure on the hero. The hero must never be allowed to rest, unless it is for the purpose of contrasting the intensity of the pressure.

• Example 1: In Death's mortal experience, the ticking of the clocks grows louder. He saves a girl's life at the cost of his own finite time. He sees the machine of the next Death taking shape. The shadow of the next Death looms on the horizon.

• Example 2: Starting with Marley and ending with the Ghost of Christmas Future, Scrooge faces specters that carry less and less friendly messages and warnings. Jacob Marley is his friend pleading for him to see reason. The Ghost of Christmas Future is a grim, quiet figure with an unsympathetic promise of death and ignominy. The Ghost of Christmas Present serves as a cheerful, but urgent message that now is the time to act.

Battle: Safe Haven Include a final battle in your horror story. The final battle of a horror story is best set in a location that is supposed to be a safe haven. A secure place that has been breached, a sacred place that has been desecrated, a boundary that has been violated.

• Example 1: The final battle of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish takes place on the Wishing Star itself. Once activated, the Wishing Star creates a cosmic barrier at its edges. Until the wish is made, nobody gets on or off, and anyone who tries to cross that cosmic barrier is obliterated. This does not stop Death itself from penetrating this containment. In fact, Death further traps Puss by creating a smaller arena of fire so that no one can come to help him. What was supposed to be a reprieve from death is instead Puss's ultimate confrontation with it.

• Example 2: As a wealthy man, Scrooge has never needed to fear the future. He has lived a life of security and comfort. The future is a safe place for him. But when the Ghost of Christmas Future confronts him with the first impending doom he's ever faced, Scrooge is forced out of his complacency at last.

No Self-Revelation In most stories, the main character needs to have a self-revelation where their desire and their weakness-need(s) intersect. This gives them the power to defeat the opponent. In a horror story, however, the opponent cannot be defeated. The point is facing your inevitable death. Therefore, in many horror stories, the self-revelation arrives too late or it never arrives at all, and the hero dies or is doomed to live in terror forever. However, a transcendent horror story twists this beat by making the main character do something extremely difficult: accepting their death. Defeating the ghost by owning it.

• Example 1: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is one of the best examples of twisting this story beat. Instead of defeating the opponent in a contest of arms, Puss does not defeat Death at all. Instead, he accepts his mortality, and relinquishes his pride and hero complex. In accepting his inevitable demise, he gains the ability to truly live for the first time, and the ghost of Death and all Puss's lost lives have no more power over him. He does not gain immortality, far from it. Instead, Puss acquires a far more valuable possession: meaning.

• Example 2: In many horror stories, however (such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Masque of the Red Death, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, etc.), there is no self-revelation that can defeat the opponent. There is only the grim realization that doom is inevitable and fighting is useless. Instead of empowering the protagonist, this drains their life prematurely and enslaves them to the ghost (Mr. Hyde, the Red Death, AM) forever.

The Double Ending: Eternal Recurrence This beat immediately follows the previous one, and is the direct consequence of it. The ghost may have been beaten back for now, but before the story ends, it returns, and this time it's here to stay. The hero is vulnerable, and that is when the ghost emerges and lands its killing/crippling blow.

• Example 1: Even The Last Wish does not avoid this beat. Before Death departs, he turns and asks: "You know we will meet again, right?" To which Puss replies: "Sí, hasta la muerte." Puss has come to terms with death, but while he accepts its eventual return, return it will.

• Example 2: Many horror stories end with a haunting reveal that the opponent has already all but won. The final survivors are infected. The monster is regenerating/stowed away on the escape vessel.

Notes

Remember that most good stories are a mix of the beats from multiple genres. The beats of Horror stories are frequently mixed with those of Myth, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.

Horror vs. Comedy: Horror and Comedy are both about tearing down and threatening your characters. It is merely a difference of degree. Horror is about threatening their lives and purpose, Comedy is about threatening their social lives and self-image. In Horror, characters are killed. In Comedy, they are humiliated.

Horror can have a happy ending. A happy ending in a horror story means a satisfying answer to the grim question posed by the genre. If the protagonist's self-definition in the face of death is one of joy or satisfaction, the ending can be happy. It is when a character succumbs to nihilism or is too paralyzed by fear or dies before they are ready that a horror story ending is not happy.