Journal #23 - Scary Stuff

There are many different things that make a movie or story scary. Personally, I find movies to be more scary than scary stories, but there are a few stories that can scare me. The first, and probably most important, aspect of any scary story or movie is the ability of the reader/watcher to relate to the characters in the story. Many scary movies set the plot up with a person being home alone. There are many times that I am home alone, and it is hard not to think of those types of movies. A very detailed plot that has a lot of room for expansion is also a technique that scary movies use to scare the watcher. If a person watches a movie and later thinks about it, their mind may wonder and they could start thinking that the movie could be true. Another important factor to anything scary is the possibility that it may be real. Stories or movies that could be real are always scarier. An obvious characteristic that I forget to mention is suspense. Suspense is key, especially in poetry. It is much more difficult to create suspense in literature than it is in a movie, but Poe, as an example, was excellent at it. He used great detail to make the reader feel great suspense.