October is upon us, and that can mean only one thing: spooky novels! One of my favorite parts about this time of year is curling up in a comfy chair and reading tales that make my spine tingle and my heart race. From beloved classics (The Turn of the Screw, anyone?) to relatively new entries to the genre (anything from Grady Hendrix is a winner to me), there is just something magical about reading scary stories in the safety and comfort of home.

But reading a great horror novel is quite a different experience from writing one. If you’ve decided that this is something you’d love to tackle (or maybe you’re in the middle of writing one right now), it might be helpful to take a moment to break down what really makes a scary story, well, scary.

Obviously different things will frighten different people—someone who finds the atmospheric dread of House of Leavesterrifying, for example, might not bat an eye at H.P. Lovecraft’s monstrous leviathan, and vice versa. Therefore, it’s less important to focus on what might or might not be commercially successful (you can’t please everyone!) and more important to begin by homing in on what kind of horror novel you’re interested in writing.

When it comes to different types of horror, the choices are seemingly endless. Authors are often most successful by tapping into people’s universal fears, which usually consist of things like death (What comes after?) and the dark (What is in the unknown?).

But don’t hesitate to play around with different themes and tropes. These popularly include

• psychological horror: paranoia, delusions, and more
• body horror: general grotesquery and physical transformation
• survival horror: Who will be the last one standing?
• isolation horror: when characters are cut off from civilization for one reason or another

You also have the more traditional types, like gothic horror (think haunted mansions with a dash of the supernatural), curses, anything haunted, and of course good old-fashioned monsters.

There is truly no limit to what can creep audiences out, so explore what works for you and will most deeply impact your target audience. Who are you writing this horror story for? What do they fear above all? Narrowing down that question will likely help you pick your main theme and all the little horrors that come with it.

A lot of what makes a horror novel good are the same things that make any novel good, but the stakes are always a little bit higher because you’re attempting to make people feel something they usually don’t feel every day. First and foremost, relatable characters will be key. If the audience can’t imagine themselves walking through the graveyard at night, exploring the mansion, or locked in the mental hospital, for example, that sense of fear will never fully develop.

Be sure to build in some sort of emotional stakes for your characters alongside the physical stakes of simply staying alive. The best horror novels often involve both—Eleanor Vance’s battle with supernatural forces in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is intrinsically linked to her battle to escape the emotional ties of her domineering sister, for example—and will resonate that much more deeply with your readers.

Check to make sure your scary events have some sort of relationship (however tenuous) with reality. Now that’s not to say that you can’t involve ghosts or monsters or some such otherworldly creatures. But those supernatural beings should be recognizable in some way to your audience, or at least involve recognizable traits, whether physical or behavioral. You still want even the most outlandish creature to feel immediate and present to incite those latent fears of the unknown.

One good way to do this is by creating a feeling that there is something off about a situation or person. In more psychological and atmospheric horror novels, that sense of wrongness can be small and subtle at first—only growing as the protagonist begins to unwind whatever mysteries lie within. In more monster-themed horror novels, you might want to consider making your creature vaguely human but with subtle changes that, taken altogether, prove ghastly and terrifying to the protagonist (and reader). That nagging feeling of something being off is one that most people have felt at one point or another in their lives, thus making it easier to tap into in a narrative sense.

Lastly, a good horror novel takes advantage of its atmosphere and pacing to build to a crescendo of fear. Whether your setting involves a set of dark woods, a crumbling castle, or a perfectly innocuous neighborhood where no one could ever imagine anything bad happening, it might be useful to think of it as a character of its own.

While you obviously always want to have a well-developed setting no matter what type of writing you’re doing, some may consider it even more crucial in this genre because so much of what scares people involves place and atmosphere. And as hard as it may be, try to take a slow and steady approach toward the thrills and chills. Whether you have one or two main scares or want to hit the adrenaline button every single chapter, buildup is still crucial to achieving that goose bumps–inducing prose.

When in doubt, read and reread some of your personal favorites, and take the time to note how the masters do it. What scares people is largely subjective, but starting with the universal fears that crop up again and again will likely set you in the right direction. Happy writing . . . and happy Halloween!

Andrea Moran lives outside of Nashville with her husband and two kids. She’s a professional copywriter and editor who loves all things books. Find her on LinkedIn.