Whether it’s the beeping of an alarm clock marking a night over too soon, a school buzzer announcing the start of a test period, or the chime of a grandfather clock in an old house declaring the start of the witching hour, there are lots of ways that time can provoke dread. So, when writers look no further than flashbacks and verb tenses, they miss out on timely tension opportunities.
With a little attention towards the timing of the horrors in your story—pacing as well as narratively—you can save yourself time in revisions, time better spent dreaming up new nightmares to implant in the fertile minds of your young readers.
First, you’ve got to figure out the best times for your horrors to strike. For this, you need to keep two axes (plural of axis, not axe) in mind: the external, physical timeline of pages experienced by the reader between scares, and the in-story time passage experienced by the characters. While it’s great when these two lines meet and overlap (e.g. during a tense scene when the protagonist experiences time in slow motion, with a reader savoring the moment), too much intersection becomes narratively unsustainable easily, or for some audiences unfeasible, because of the need to maintain the suspension of disbelief.
After all, the great joys from horror come from imagining yourself facing the horror, imagining the horror in the real world—rebuilding a shaken suspension of disbelief is a crapshoot at best, as we’re already working against the safety of the book as a fictional construct.
In terms of the story as a construct, the two traps to look out for are audience specific needs and gimmick fatigue. Gimmick fatigue is the result of the same thing happening so much that it becomes hum-drum; who cares that the wall is oozing blood or that the locked door shows signs of a break-in when there is a killer on the loose, if this is the sixth time that either event has happened without any especially dire consequences?
Cliffhanger abuse paired with short chapters is an especially dangerous technique combination, as when not handled tactfully it draws too much attention to itself, and to the mechanics of your story, which kills immersion and frustrates readers. So, plan to leave enough time in between moments of tension for the tension to build, but if you find yourself getting repetitive in a way that doesn’t have any changes or progress, then cut and streamline. Sure, it’s easier said than done, but if you have it in mind while writing, you’ll have an easier time building the plot and less work ahead of you in revisions.
Especially in horror for kids, there are two types of audiences with pacing requirements that also influence plotting—younger audiences and reluctant readers. For these readers, too much time in between scares and they run the risk of feeling like they’re working too hard for not enough pay-off. Horror has a wonderful place in developing literacy by providing high interest incentives and rewards—if your story is served by a faster pace and suits the tastes and needs of these audiences, embrace it.
Take
honest stock of the book you are writing and the audience it is meant for, and make sure you don’t try their patience too much by making them wait too long in between the good stuff. These are the readers who don’t need as much of a cool down period for tension to build anew; their emerging reading skills do that work for you. ...More...
