This Saturday I’m going to be part of a workshop about Spooky Stories at the Wild Goose, which is a great gallery here in Columbus. That night will be the second annual Spooky Story Festival, and I’ll be up first. I can’t wait to hear the ones following me. I'm hoping a get my socks scared clean off. Right now, thinking of the workshop, I’m looking at an old copy of Storytelling World from the Summer/Fall 1999 issue. I like the tips on page 14 for telling scary stories so here they are with my own comments.
1. Know your audience. That is so true. Nothing is worse than scaring a child in a way they cannot handle. For children, I keep in mind that the youngest are the most in need of concrete stories and happy endings. It’s only for those whose understanding of what is real and what is not can the scariest stories be put forward.
2. Develop characters. I think the fun of a spooky tale is in the contrast between what is believable and the world beyond what we know. Having a character that feels real makes it compelling to invest in the story.
3. Be sensual. Every good story relies on describing what is available through the senses. The heart of a scary story is in its realism and in identifying with the perceptions of the characters. How many times has a character compared the presence of evil with a burning smell or the smell of something rotten? What about the filmy look of a ghost or that cold feeling you get when you walk through a spirit?
4. Let feelings show. The article says “Portray the feelings yourself – in your voice, gestures and facial expressions.” Here’s the part I really like… “Help your listeners actually experience the emotions of the story characters. It’s what they long for in scary stories.” It’s true. The fun of listening to scary stories is getting scared and the job of the teller is to bring the listener into the experience. It’s the teller’s tone of voice, facial expressions, body language that are the road map. Here’s the hard part. Once those clues push the listener back to remembering the chair they are sitting in and to wondering what you, the teller, are doing, then that’s too much. How can you tell when enough is enough? That’s the question. Maybe one answer is to do an internal check…does it feel forced? If it feels wrong, then it probably is.
5. Prolong the suspense. This is the part where your brain is wondering if what you think is going to happen actually will. This is the part where every bit of your attention is riveted to knowing the answer because, as humans, we are insatiably curious. The down side of prolonging suspense, as the article mentions, is that the listener will forget what they are waiting for or begin to root for you to just get to the end.
6. Leave a few secrets. The part that makes scary stories so much fun is that maybe they could happen, but it's because we don't know how that makes us shiver. We all have moments in our lives that defy explanation. I’m thinking of a light that has been on my bedroom wall for 50 years wherever I go. At first I was scared of it, but now I hope it is something from beyond this world....some spirit that follows me. One thing for sure, I don’t want to know that the cause is a streetlamp.