Imagine if you will, a shoreline that seems to extend out for miles. The sun is setting and you are enjoying a walk along it before you go back to your cabin for dinner to calm your mind of the day’s worries. Nothing but the sound of waves and your own footsteps along the beach can be heard and in the distance, there is some boat on the shore that looks both brown and black. Moving cautiously closer, you notice a coppery scent as you realize that the boat is supposed to be brown. The dark color you assumed was black to your horror was actually drying blood, a lot of it. Almost too much and it seems to make a trail into the dense forest nearby the abandoned boat. You hear a rustling and a low growl coming from behind a nearby tree surrounded by thick foliage as your heart begins to race.
Not a bad start to a story, isn’t it? Sucks you into reading each line even more than you can imagine as a sense of dread of what lies beyond the tree settles in. What will you find there? A werewolf? A bigfoot? Some sort of other monster or maybe even a cannibal? With atmosphere, you can set the stage for the reader, allowing them to feel as the characters feel or maybe feel what they should be feeling. Maybe they think it is nothing, but you know all signs point to bad news. Either way, it brings the reader further into the story, letting them experience it. In this post, we are going to drink in a lot of different atmospheres, much like we just did dread.
The key to inducing atmosphere is first, deciding which feeling to focus on. Do you wish to terrify or horrify? Have things be melancholy or bittersweet? Do you want your audience feeling sick to their stomach or uneasy about what will be happening in this story? Each of these requires a slightly different approach but all of them have one thing in common: descriptions matter. Let me show you some examples and you can guess what type of atmosphere I’m trying to convey:
“The unnerving creaking above Lily’s head caused dust to fall from the ceiling, faintly showing in the glow of her nightlight. She thrust her covers over her head, hoping that whatever was walking up in the empty attic would just go away. Clutching her teddy bear tight, she heard the creaking start to go downstairs. Step by step, she wondered why her parents weren’t waking up? Afraid to cry out for fear of luring the creaking to her, she heard it walk down the hallway, slowly, deliberately. It was hunting, it was coming and like a frightened fawn, all Lily could do was hold still as a statue.”
“Johnny could scarcely breathe when he opened the door. Scents most unholy entered his nose, an odd combination of rot, death, and mold had entered his nostrils along with a scent he didn’t recognize. It was then that he realized what he was looking at. He could not tell what gender it was, he could barely notice it was human in form. Small. Its arms had been gnawed to the point there was only tough sinew and bone clinging to each other, and the same had been done to its legs, more clearly showing teeth marks upon the thigh bones. There was intestines everywhere, they say that you have a huge length of intestine in your body, but it was only then that Johnny believed his biology teachers. Its chest was ripped open like a pair of prying bars had pulled it apart and what remained of her chest cavity was a few torn up bits of organs. Moving closer and covering his nose with the desperation of a fish needing water, he realized that its head was gone, only a stump of neck remained.”
“Everything was still as Benny walked down the narrow streets. He loved the night walks he would take but, something felt off. He questioned why his heart was racing, everything seemed fine. Yet he felt like something was behind him and despite his better judgement, he took a look behind him and sure enough, there was nothing there. Rolling his eyes, he continued walking, looking forward to notice that the street lights around him were starting to dim, then flicker out."
If you guessed terror for the first, nausea for the second and paranoid for the third, congratulations! You officially think in similar veins as I do. If not, that’s okay. The problem with trying to give an atmosphere is that sometimes people will not see it in that light. However, there are ways to avoid this bad translation, namely beta readers. A beta reader is someone who reads your story before you put it up and gives criticism and ideas. The main difference between them and an editor is that an editor is more focused on things like spelling, grammar, and consistency. If you wish to know more about beta readers, I will be covering them at a different date otherwise this post will fall completely off topic.
In any case, the key to getting these to work is to take advantage of all the senses, all the different things you can describe and putting emphasis on what is important to the story. For example, in the terror post, it is in the fact there were many clues that this was a child, one still small enough to wish to call her parents when she heard something above her room. The feeling of fear we have in our beds as children is common enough to invoke that childhood terror of not knowing what made that noise, but knowing if we left to find out, we’d be either a goner or in trouble. Sound was the key of the story, as sound can invoke the fear of not knowing rather easily. You hear something, but you have no idea if it is good or bad. The dust falling from the ceiling, the teddy bear being held close as the covers are over little Lily’s head are all points to make you feel as small as the character does. Use your descriptions to put your audience in your character’s head and let them sit in there for a while. Let them bond with the character, the situation and feel how they feel in this atmosphere.
What is your favorite type of atmosphere to evoke? I personally love the terror of unease and the “mundane” atmosphere where you are given a place that seems perfect, but something feels off. I find those sort of things rather fun to explore because everyone has gotten uneasy for one reason or another in what should be a neutral place. Tell me yours in the comments below and don’t forget to follow me on twitter for updates on new posts and comments about things going on with me.