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Horror Genre Conventions for Interactive Fiction

Craft guidance for writing horror—fear mechanics, atmosphere, threat design, pacing, and content considerations.

Horror Subgenres

Psychological Horror

Core Conventions:

  • Fear comes from within the character's mind
  • Reality becomes uncertain
  • Paranoia, obsession, deteriorating mental state
  • Readers question what's real
  • Minimal or ambiguous supernatural elements
  • The monster may be the protagonist themselves

Techniques:

  • Unreliable narration
  • Gaslighting and manipulation
  • Dreams bleeding into reality
  • Isolation amplifying internal fears

Interactive Fiction Implications:

  • Player choices may be unreliable
  • Multiple "true" interpretations possible
  • Sanity mechanics tracking mental state
  • Same scene plays differently based on psychological state

Supernatural Horror

Core Conventions:

  • Ghosts, demons, curses, hauntings
  • Rules for the supernatural (even if mysterious)
  • Often tied to place, object, or unfinished business
  • Possibility of defeating or appeasing the threat
  • Violation of natural order creates dread

Types:

  • Ghost stories (spirits with unfinished business)
  • Demonic (malevolent entities from elsewhere)
  • Cursed objects (items carrying evil)
  • Haunted places (locations with dark history)

Interactive Fiction Implications:

  • Investigation of supernatural rules
  • Rituals and countermeasures as mechanics
  • Location-based horror with exploration
  • Choices about confronting vs fleeing

Cosmic Horror (Lovecraftian)

Core Conventions:

  • Universe is indifferent or hostile to humanity
  • Knowledge itself is dangerous
  • Entities beyond human comprehension
  • Madness as inevitable consequence of understanding
  • Human insignificance in vast cosmos
  • No true victory possible—only survival or delay

Techniques:

  • Describing the indescribable
  • Forbidden knowledge with costs
  • Scale that dwarfs human concerns
  • Protagonists who wish they didn't know

Interactive Fiction Implications:

  • Knowledge/sanity tradeoffs
  • Investigation that hurts the investigator
  • No "good" endings—only less bad ones
  • Accepting mystery vs pursuing truth

Body Horror

Core Conventions:

  • Violation of physical form
  • Transformation, mutation, infestation
  • Loss of bodily autonomy
  • Visceral, physical disgust
  • Often metaphors for disease, aging, identity

Techniques:

  • Detailed physical description
  • Slow transformation over time
  • Loss of control over one's own body
  • Familiar made grotesque

Interactive Fiction Implications:

  • Transformation mechanics
  • Choices with physical consequences
  • Body as resource or liability
  • Identity questions as body changes

Gothic Horror

Core Conventions:

  • Atmosphere of decay and gloom
  • Ancestral curses and family secrets
  • Crumbling castles, manor houses, isolated settings
  • Romance intertwined with terror
  • The past haunting the present
  • Transgression and punishment

Setting Elements:

  • Fog, shadows, candlelight
  • Old architecture with hidden passages
  • Portraits watching, rooms sealed for generations
  • Graveyards, crypts, cellars

Interactive Fiction Implications:

  • Exploration of layered spaces
  • Uncovering family secrets
  • Past choices affecting present
  • Romance and horror intertwined

Survival Horror

Core Conventions:

  • Resource scarcity creates tension
  • Fight or flight decisions
  • Vulnerable protagonist
  • Safe spaces that may not stay safe
  • Inventory management as gameplay
  • Death as real possibility

Interactive Fiction Implications:

  • Resource tracking (health, items, sanity)
  • Strategic retreat as valid choice
  • Save points and checkpoints
  • Multiple death states with different causes

Fear Mechanics

Dread vs Shock

Dread (Sustained Fear):

  • Building anticipation of something bad
  • Knowing something is coming
  • The walk down the dark hallway
  • More effective for sustained engagement

Shock (Jump Scares):

  • Sudden revelation or attack
  • Immediate startle response
  • Brief but intense
  • Diminishing returns if overused

Balance: Use dread to build tension, shock to release it. Too much shock numbs; too much dread exhausts.

The Unseen vs The Revealed

The Unseen:

  • Imagination fills in worst possibilities
  • Sound, shadow, implication
  • What's behind the door
  • Often more terrifying than revelation

The Revealed:

  • Confirmation of threat
  • Allows direct confrontation
  • Can disappoint if execution weak
  • Necessary eventually for resolution

Technique: Delay revelation as long as tension serves the story. When revealing, show less than expected—leave room for imagination.

The Rule of Less

What you don't show is often scarier than what you show.

  • Sound of footsteps, not the creature making them
  • Blood trail, not the violence that caused it
  • Aftermath, not the event
  • Reaction shots, not the horror itself

Fear Through Identification

Horror works when readers fear FOR the character. Build sympathy first, then threaten what readers care about.

  • Establish character's hopes and relationships
  • Show vulnerability
  • Make character's fears relatable
  • Threaten what character loves

Atmosphere and Setting

Creating Dread Through Setting

Isolation:

  • Geographic (remote cabin, island, space station)
  • Social (no one believes protagonist)
  • Communication (phones don't work, no signal)
  • Temporal (night, storm, locked in)

Wrongness:

  • Things slightly off
  • Uncanny valley effects
  • Familiar made strange
  • Rules that don't quite work

Decay:

  • Physical deterioration
  • Abandoned spaces
  • Things falling apart
  • Time's destructive passage

Sensory Horror

Sound:

  • Silence that shouldn't exist
  • Sounds that shouldn't be there
  • Familiar sounds in wrong contexts
  • Things that shouldn't make noise

Smell:

  • Decay, rot, copper of blood
  • Wrong smells (flowers in winter, perfume of the dead)
  • Absence of expected smells

Touch:

  • Temperature (cold spots, unnatural warmth)
  • Texture (wet, sticky, crawling)
  • Air movement (breath on neck)
  • Physical contact from unseen source

Sight:

  • Darkness and what it hides
  • Movement in periphery
  • Things that shouldn't be visible
  • Light behaving wrongly

Safe Spaces

Even horror needs respite. Safe spaces:

  • Allow readers to process
  • Make danger feel dangerous by contrast
  • Can be violated for maximum impact
  • Should feel earned after danger

Threat Design

Human Threats

Advantages:

  • Immediately understandable
  • Relatable motivations
  • No explanation needed
  • Real-world plausibility

Types:

  • Serial killers
  • Cults
  • Corrupt authorities
  • Family members
  • The protagonist themselves

Supernatural Threats

Advantages:

  • Can violate natural law
  • Mystery adds fear
  • Symbolism and metaphor
  • Can be defeated through special means

Requirements:

  • Internal consistency
  • Rules (even if hidden)
  • Weakness or limit
  • Clear enough to fear properly

Cosmic Threats

Advantages:

  • Unlimited scale and power
  • Cannot be understood
  • Victory impossible—only survival
  • Existential dread

Challenges:

  • Hard to depict directly
  • Can feel arbitrary
  • Must maintain stakes despite hopelessness

Ambiguous Threats

Advantages:

  • Imagination fills gaps
  • Multiple interpretations valid
  • Uncertainty is itself frightening
  • Resists easy resolution

Challenges:

  • Can frustrate readers wanting answers
  • Must commit eventually (or commit to ambiguity)

Horror Character Archetypes

The Final Girl/Survivor

The last person standing. Traditionally female, defined by resourcefulness and moral clarity.

Variations:

  • The Competent Survivor — not lucky but skilled. Military training, medical knowledge, or street smarts give them genuine advantages
  • The Compromised Survivor — survives by making terrible choices. Locks doors on others, sacrifices companions, becomes what they feared
  • The Unreliable Survivor — the sole survivor whose account cannot be trusted. Did they escape the monster, or are they the monster?
  • The Reluctant Leader — becomes the group's decision-maker by default when authority figures die first. Every choice costs someone
  • The Repeat Survivor — has survived before. Knows the patterns. Trauma-informed but also trauma-damaged

The Harbinger

The character who warns that something is wrong. Traditionally ignored.

Variations:

  • The Cassandra — correct about everything, believed by no one. Their frustration escalates as evidence mounts
  • The Cryptic Local — warns through riddles, folklore, or hostile refusal to explain. Information is available but encoded in culture outsiders dismiss
  • The Failed Survivor — escaped once, returned to warn others, will not survive the second encounter
  • The Authority Who Knows — a scientist, priest, or official who has evidence but is silenced by institutions protecting their interests

The Monster

The central threat as character rather than obstacle.

Variations:

  • The Tragic Monster — was human once. The horror comes from recognizing what was lost, not what threatens
  • The Intelligent Predator — hunts strategically. Sets traps, exploits psychology, learns from failures. Makes escape a chess game
  • The Incomprehensible — defies understanding. Not evil but alien. Horror comes from the impossibility of negotiation or prediction
  • The Infectious — the monster's greatest weapon is conversion. Allies become threats. Trust becomes impossible
  • The Mirror Monster — reflects or amplifies the characters' own fears, guilt, or desires. Each person faces a personalized horror
  • The Systemic Monster — not a creature but an environment, institution, or social structure. Cannot be killed because it is not alive

The Skeptic

The character who refuses to accept the supernatural explanation.

Variations:

  • The Rational Skeptic — genuinely applies scientific thinking. Their skepticism is reasonable given available evidence, making their eventual conversion (or death) more impactful
  • The Dangerous Denier — refuses to acknowledge the threat even as evidence becomes undeniable. Their denial endangers everyone
  • The Correct Skeptic — the horror has a rational explanation after all. The "monster" is human, and that is worse
  • The Skeptic-Convert — the transformation from disbelief to terror is their entire character arc. Most effective when their conversion comes too late

The Sacrifice

The character whose death serves the group or the narrative.

Variations:

  • The Voluntary Sacrifice — chooses death knowingly to save others. Heroic but raises questions about whether the math was right
  • The Unknowing Sacrifice — dies serving someone else's plan. The horror is in the audience knowing before the character does
  • The Wasted Sacrifice — dies heroically for nothing. The group is not saved; the gesture was meaningless. Most devastating variation

For Interactive Fiction:

  • Horror archetypes gain power when the player occupies them. Being the Final Girl means every choice is survival-weighted
  • Let players identify the Harbinger's warnings as genuine or paranoid — reward attentive players who listen
  • The Skeptic role works well for player characters: the player's own disbelief mirrors the character's

Pacing for Horror

The Tension Curve

Horror needs rhythm: build tension, partial release, build higher, release.

Pattern:

  1. Establish normalcy
  2. First hint of wrongness
  3. Investigation/escalation
  4. False resolution
  5. Major revelation/confrontation
  6. Climax
  7. Resolution (often ambiguous)

Quiet Moments

Essential for horror to work:

  • Allow processing of fear
  • Make loud moments louder by contrast
  • Develop character under pressure
  • Build toward next scare

Don't: Make every scene maximally scary. Readers become numb.

Escalation

Each encounter should raise stakes:

  • First: hints and suggestions
  • Second: direct evidence
  • Third: close call
  • Fourth: real consequences
  • Climax: full confrontation

Release and Rebuild

After major scares:

  • Allow brief safety
  • Characters process what happened
  • Then: new threat or escalation
  • Safety itself becomes uncertain

Content Considerations

Content Warnings

Horror often contains disturbing material. Best practices:

Be Specific:

  • "Contains graphic violence" not just "mature content"
  • "Includes depictions of self-harm"
  • "Contains body horror and gore"

Be Upfront:

  • Before reader commits significant time
  • At beginning, not buried in menus

Non-Spoilery:

  • Warn about presence, not details
  • "Contains major character death" not "Character X dies"

What Requires Warning

Common triggers to consider:

  • Graphic violence and gore
  • Sexual violence
  • Self-harm and suicide
  • Child endangerment
  • Animal harm
  • Specific phobias (spiders, needles, etc.)
  • Psychological abuse
  • Body horror

Responsible Horror

Horror can explore dark themes responsibly:

  • Purpose beyond shock
  • Not gratuitous—serves story
  • Consequences shown
  • Not exploitative of real trauma
  • Offers something beyond nihilism

Interactive Horror Considerations

Player Vulnerability

Horror works when players feel vulnerable:

  • Limited resources
  • Imperfect information
  • Consequences for failure
  • Inability to save everyone
  • Time pressure

Choice Under Fear

Horror choices should feel pressured:

  • Not enough time to think
  • No clearly good options
  • Information incomplete
  • Consequences unclear

Agency and Helplessness

Balance needed:

  • Too much agency removes fear
  • Too little frustrates players
  • Sweet spot: agency that doesn't guarantee safety

Death States

In horror IF:

  • Death should feel possible
  • But not cheap or random
  • Warn through atmosphere
  • Give players chance to avoid
  • Make deaths meaningful, not frustrating

Branching in Horror

Considerations:

  • Multiple endings (survival, death, corruption)
  • Choices affecting who survives
  • Investigation depth affecting understanding
  • Moral choices about sacrifice
  • Knowledge that comes at cost

Sanity/Corruption Mechanics

Common in horror IF:

  • Track mental state
  • Choices affect corruption
  • Sanity affects perception
  • Low sanity changes available options
  • Multiple "failure" states beyond death

Common Mistakes

Jump Scare Dependency

Over-relying on sudden scares. Diminishing returns make each scare less effective.

Fix: Build sustained dread. Use shock sparingly for release.

Explaining Too Much

Horror often diminishes when fully explained. Mystery feeds fear.

Fix: Leave some questions unanswered. Imply rather than state.

Invincible Protagonist

If protagonist never truly threatened, tension evaporates.

Fix: Show real consequences. Kill supporting characters. Injure protagonist.

Gratuitous Content

Violence and horror without purpose numbs rather than frightens.

Fix: Every disturbing element should serve the story.

Predictable Patterns

If readers know when scares come, anticipation replaces fear.

Fix: Vary timing. Subvert expected patterns.

Tone Whiplash

Mixing horror with incompatible tones (broad comedy, romance) can undermine both.

Fix: Maintain tonal consistency. Comic relief should be brief and nervous.

Quick Reference

Element Guideline
Dread vs shock Build dread, use shock sparingly
Revelation Delay showing monster; less is more
Atmosphere Isolation, wrongness, decay
Pacing Tension curve with rest points
Threats Consistent rules even if hidden
Vulnerability Players should feel genuinely threatened
Content Specific warnings, purposeful darkness
Ambiguity Leave room for imagination
Death Possible but not cheap

See Also