The painful truth: 3 types of suffering for horror-story characters

Authors of certain genres like to joke that they’d hate to be a character in their books.

Those following the advice of Tim Waggoner’s recent book, Writing in the Dark, will especially not want to make cameos in their own works.

Waggoner makes the case that the most effective horror stories include three types of pain: physical, emotional, and spiritual.

Read his advice on depicting each (and appreciate examples of each) in an excerpt from Writing in the Dark that he shared in Writer’s Digest.

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