Making Monsters Scary

For my current project, I’m thinking a lot about monsters. Scary monsters, rather than Monsters University types. And what I found, to my surprise, is that very few of the monsters I came across in my research into were actually scary to me. Like, they might be scary-adjacent—as in, yeah, I’d run away if I saw one, and they sure sound nasty—but very few were fundamentally scary on that can’t-sleep, just-wet-my-pants, now-I’m-afraid-of-the-dark level.

So I started trying to figure out what does make monsters scary—at least to me (fears are, perhaps even more than most things, intensely personal!). These are the some of the conclusions I came to.

What Seems to Make Monsters Scary (to Me)

1. It’s Mostly Human—Some of the most scary and disconcerting things are those that are human-based—but with a few terrifying differences. Like the pale man from Labyrinth. Or like the facehuggers which look like two, oversized, bony human hands, from Aliens. We identify strongly with (and tend to have positive associations with) human bodies—especially human faces and hands—and so seeing something we identify with made alien and terrifying is almost always scarier than the scary thing on its own (like a lamprey, versus a human with no nose and a lamprey mouth). Likewise, things that are otherwise alien with one strongly human element, like human eyes, can be just as horrific.

2. It’s Simple—Generally speaking, when you first encounter a monster, you don’t want to have to stop and launch into an essay-long description of what it looks like. You want to be able to describe it well in three sentences or less—and one sentence if you really have to. Which means that generally, I want a monster to have one or two focal points. If it has more, I’m too busy trying to put together a mental picture of what the monster looks like (and memorize it, so that when it’s henceforth referred to in the text by its name, I can visualize it) to be properly scared. (Oddly, for me? This is true even of visual art. If I can’t, at a glance, memorize the basics of what a monster looks like? Then it’s not going to be a scary monster for me.)

3. It Must Be Conceptually Unnerving, Scary, Alien—Rats creep a lot of people out, and I don’t know anyone who would stand their ground when a swarm of thousands of wet, bloody, corgi-sized rats are barreling down at them. Same with spiders. However, they are so familiar—in that I’ve dealt with rats and spiders in my everyday life, and it wasn’t that bad—that the mere thought of them simply isn’t that scary. It’s not pleasant, but it doesn’t get under my skin the way the facehuggers from Alien do. As a side note, under the same topic, it doesn’t help if it’s two animals mushed together—it has to feel conceptually unfamiliar, jarring, and novel.

4. It Isn’t Remotely Sexy—You would never, ever even think of sexytimes with something that’s really scary. Like, ever. I know the whole “but you want it, and that’s when it eats you!” thing is supposed to be scary? But for me, it does just the opposite—it makes it less scary. It gives it another level, other than peeling me out of my skin, eating me alive-and-screaming, and wearing my kidney as a hat. And if I can think of it in another context? If I can even think of it in terms of sexytimes? Then I can relate to it, and it could technically be reasoned with, and it’s just not as scary as it could be.

5. It Must Be Visually Scary (and Not Even a Little Cute)—Which means that creature must look fundamentally scary, and not just because of what you know it can do. For example, a bear is scary because of what it can do. If I see a grizzly, I’m not sticking around to see if it feels like peacefully cohabitating or ripping my face off. But, that being said, it’s also—visually—super cute. Hence teddy bears. And so, it’s not a very scary monster inside my head. On the other hand, a close-up of a hydrothermal worm’s face? Freaking terrifying. Even though it’s almost as small as bacterium in real life.

As a side note, this means most very scary monsters don’t have fur. Mammals seem to make a poor base for genuinely scary monsters. Like, every mammal-based monster in D&D? I have probably, at some point, wanted to tame and ride like a pony. And some of the non-furred variety as well. (Dragons? Here’s looking at you.) Probably because they are too familiar. Insects, deep-sea fish, parasites, reptiles, inanimate objects… These things tend to make better nightmare fodder (at least for me!).

Note: This is not to say I hate the mammal-like monsters! They totally have their place, and are usually my absolute favorites (I <3 displacer beasts). I just don’t find them particularly scary.

6. It Must Translate Well In Writing—Some monsters may be absolutely, bladder-emptyingly terrifying in visual mediums, but be totally underwhelming in the written word. It’s so sad! But if something is not easy to describe, or the words or similes you’d use to describe it are less than fearsome, than the whole concept is probably hard to make scary.

7. It Tells a Story—By which I mean that what it does is both visually obvious and terrifying. That way, when thinking about it, I cannot escape thinking about what it does. This is another reason sexy monsters are not scary monsters—because there’s more than one thing to think about, and when given the choice, I know what my subconscious is choosing! (Related: See Bruce R. Cordell’s post on the importance of narrative everywhere.)

8. It Must Feel Real—If you think about it at night, in a dark room? It should give you nightmares. You should half-see it out of the corner of your eye. You should have to remind yourself you dreamed the damn thing up—that it’s not hiding under your bed to stab at your ankles, or on the ceiling to fall onto your face, or under your pillow to slither in your ear or under your skin. That it’s not real. It has to have that visceral, gut punch feeling of reality.