“We all hear the call of the dark once in a while. A siren song, inviting us to take a ghost ride into nightmare. Who knows where that ride will end?” —Clive Barker, A Human’s Guide to the Nightbreed (Fontana Press, 1990)

Tombstones, skeletons, spiders, webs, and witches are taking over. Halloween is almost here. For some, the holiday is a cornucopia of candy and delights, music, and costumes. For others, it is an exploration of the other side, that thin veil separating life from death.

It’s also the season to get your scare on, whether through film, television, or books. Fans of horror novels know there is nothing more thrilling than curling up with a good scary story, that sense of delicious dread unfurling with each page. Sometimes you want to put the book down, but you can’t walk out of a macabre theater just as the show is getting interesting.

For some authors, this is the perfect time to market their horror books. For others, it’s the time of year to contemplate taking up a pen (or keyboard) and creating their own tale of things that go bump in the night.

But if you’ve never written horror before, what are some things you need to know? Bring your chairs in closer while I tell you a chilling tale of ghosts and ghoulies and terrible fanged things that lurk in the shadows—or at least show you a few tricks for writing one yourself.

Familiarize yourself with the genre

All literary genres have their rules. Some can be broken. Others can be bent. The trick is to know which rules can be violated and which remain sacrosanct—that is, if you want to actually sell your books to your target readers. Find out what is selling and what gets great reviews, and definitely check in with your local bookshop or librarian. Fans of horror are everywhere, and book pros always know what books give the best goose bumps.

Consider how you want to scare people

Whether we admit it or not—or even if it was intentional—many of us have scared someone we care about. Whether it’s sneaking up on someone, jumping out of a doorway, spraying ketchup everywhere and pretending it’s blood, or even accidentally startling someone or coming home late without an explanation, we all have the capacity to be terrifying. For some people, a bit of ooze or a gory limb is delightful. Others may want something a little more intense.

In a Facebook post, bestselling horror author Stephen King discusses the three types of terror. The first and least terrifying is “The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm.”

For a little more creep factor, King suggests “The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm.”

When you really, really want to scare the absolute heck out of someone, King recommends Terror. “[W]hen you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there . . .”

Not every author wants their readers hiding under the bed. And not every author wants their horror novel to elicit chortles of glee from gross and squicky things.

But as far as Stephen King is concerned, there are varying levels of frightening his readers. “I recognize terror as the finest emotion . . . and so I will try to terrorize the reader,” he says in The Art of Writing. “But if I find I cannot terrify him/her, I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.”

Create irresistible characters

One of the most effective techniques for writing horror is to get your readers good and cozy with your main character(s). The more a reader likes and identifies with a reader, the greater empathy you can create. Consider following The Neverending Story’s lesson: ensure your readers have a relationship with your characters, so much so that the character’s experiences become the reader’s. If you can achieve that, you can then lead your character into pretty much any kind of hell, and they will gladly follow.

“There’s no formula,” bestselling author and Goosebumps creator R. L. Stine told Adweek. “I think you have to create a very close point of view. You have to be in the eyes of the narrator. Everything that happens, all the smells, all the sounds; then your reader starts to identify with that character and that’s what makes something really scary.”

Like any good relationship, it takes both time and effort to like someone. Like people, some characters are instantly likeable. Others take time to warm up to. And all of them have their own flaws and secrets . . . which is part of the fun.

Take your time

There are two kinds of relationships that good horror authors create. One is between the reader and the main characters, as we just addressed. The second is between the reader and their new fictional environment. When you bring a reader into your world of horror, you don’t just throw them into some dark, terrifying Giger-esque hellscape and unleash horrors on them. That would be like writing a romance novel where your characters commit to eternal love in the first chapter.

Horror is about the journey, not the destination. Slow down, build your characters, and create the setting. Get readers comfortable in your characters’ world before the horror, and this will allow them to share the experience.

Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist did this beautifully by creating a very relatable suburban family with all their quirks and relationships. It was like stepping into a life that existed beyond the confines of the story, which made the subsequent hauntings so terrifying.

Horror is always most effective when you can take the reader from comfort to terror. And the most effective way is to build that up and not show too much too soon.

Have fun scaring the pants off everyone else

Horror can be a fun genre. There’s endless scope for the imagination, and delving into your characters’ psyches—while also nudging those of your readers—can be a fascinating psychological adventure. No matter how scary or horrifying or just plain gross your story is, readers will notice if you’re having fun . . . especially when you invite them along for the ride.