Now, when I talk about creating a sense of 'dread' in your writing, whether it be drama, thriller, horror, sci-fi, or romance...I'm not always talking about something life threatening or earth shattering every single time. It's not about action. It's not about gore, or heartbreak, or terror. The concept of dread, in my opinion, is much more evident in its subtlety than in its delivery of some major occurrence or surprise twist. The most effective way to use 'dread' in your stories is as a build up to something bigger. And sometimes...it can be used for character development by not having any real payoff at all. It simply gives the illusion of a payoff by tapping into certain triggers that your readers may not even know that they have until you present them to your audience...face to face. Or...errr...screen to eyeballs. Whatever. Hehehe!

It's a technique that I really like to use from time to time. It changes the mood and the tone of a scene into something that's extremely uncomfortable for your protagonist, and ultimately ends up increasing your readers' involvement and investment in the story itself. So, the question for this particular article is...what is a true sense of dread, and how do we best use it to entice our readers to the edge of their seats?

Let's see if I can pull this one off without being too confusing. Hehehe!

For me? I like to think of dread in a way that splits three ways. The typical methods of writing that I'm sure we've all been taught or have experienced somewhere while beginning our own journeys into learning about conflict. What are these three conflicts?

Man vs man.

Man vs society.

Man vs self.

We've all heard that before, right? They're three major conflicts of every story that you've ever read in one way or another. Well, the art of creating dread in your writing rests just on the outskirts of those three well known concepts, and lures people in to eventually get wrecked by whatever surprises you may have for them later. Used correctly...they can be a powerful weapon in your toolbox of personal tricks.

Let's begin with the first one. This is simple enough, right? It's man vs man. Your protagonist is a person with a goal, your antagonist is someone with an opposite goal, or is standing in the way as an obstacle. Now, you may have this conflict play ut in the form of an explosive argument, or a fist fight, or a shoot out...whatever. But the dread exists in the mere threat of having this antagonist be a part of your story. It doesn't have to be an immediate threat, either. Like I said...the feeling of dread can be introduced with the mere presence of a potential threat...and nothing more.

I want to show you guys this scene from "No Country For Old Men" to use as an example. This is one of the most INTENSE scenes in this entire film! And it comes, quite simply, from a feeling of utter dread. To look at it from afar...a man is at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, engaging the clerk in a conversation. He's eating peanuts. He flips a coin. But just listen to the dialogue and study the perfectly delivered performances by both actors. (BRAVO!) Something so simple, so seemingly mundane...can be transformed into something truly terrifying to the point where you may not even notice that you were holding your breath until he takes his hand off of the coin on the counter. Because we, as the audience, know that he is a heartless killer who doesn't give two shits about who he might decide to kill on a whim. We know who he is and we know what he's capable of. This fact puts the store owner in a level of danger that he senses, but isn't fully aware of. We feel for him.

Check this out, and see if you can pick up on how scary this really is...

That is exactly what I'm talking about. No heated language, no raised voices, no weapons...just a very intense conversation between two individuals who are trying to figure one another out in the short time that they're spending together in the same space. This is dread.

It's...the horror movie where you know the monster is lurking in the basement, or the killer is in the woods. It's the love rival that you know is beautiful enough, devious enough, to steal the love interest away from your main character if he really wanted to. Dread lies in the shadows behind every bright light, and can be heard in every shaky voice or hesitation to answer the question of 'where were you last night?'

While writing the story, "Savage Moon"...my protagonist falls in with a really menacing group of potentially bad kids from the area surrounding the campsite. However, it isn't all horror and abuse. Quite the opposite. 'Wesley' gets drawn in with a certain level of kindness and understanding that he's never really experienced before. He's enticed into exploring some of the more taboo parts of himself, and whether he wants to admit it or not...he likes it. However, the feeling of dread doesn't come from the friendship. It doesn't come from some of the darker actions of his group. It comes from brief, but definitive, acts of aggression that are so 'under the radar' that Wesley is encouraged to write them off as not being anything big enough to worry about. But the dread is still there. Always present. Always looming over him. And when he finds out what he's really gotten himself into...he realizes that he's already come too far to take it back. This is created through a feeling of dread in the writing. Cyrus can do with an ominous comment or a particularly wicked tilt of a smile what some stories can't do with chapters worth of outbursts and blatant threats to the protagonist.

If you practice with this...you'll find that it's a highly effective way of engaging your readers indeed.

Number two...man vs society.

I can remember working in the heart of downtown Chicago when 9/11 happened. I'll never forget it. Because the morning that it happened and people were forced to basically evacuate the city and go home, the only thought in my mind was..."Are we going to be hit next?" They didn't tell us anything, because nobody knew anything at the time. This had never really happened before. That has an entire context of dread on its own. But, as an example...let me skip forward a few weeks to a month after that fateful day...

I still don't really know what happened, but I think some kind of phone line had been cut, or there was some weird glitch in the system, and all of downtown Chicago couldn't use any credit or debit card machines. No ATMs, nothing. There were whispers that it was another terrorist attack, but that was mostly just paranoia from being on edge for so long. However, we couldn't ring people up for the products that they wanted to buy because their cards wouldn't work. We tried to write down the numbers and prices to charge them later, but even that was a monumental task in itself. And what was happening was...people had parked in public parking lots and couldn't get their cars out to go home at the end of the day. Nobody was used to carrying cash anymore, so they were unable to get lunch, or buy their morning coffee. After a few long hours of this, people began to throw tantrums. They were rendered completely helpless by the fact that their daily routine had been uprooted by a simple malfunction in the middle of a major metropolitan city...and there was nothing that they could do about it.

When I think about dread in terms of man vs society...that could mean being a woman during the Salem witch trials, or being Jewish during the Holocaust...but it can also be the simple act of realizing that our entire civilization is basically balancing itself on a single pole in a high wind. How hard would it be for everything we know, everything that we depend on as human beings, to suddenly fall apart and leave us stranded and unable to figure out what to do next? Something as simple as being openly gay and moving to a small town in the Bible belt of America where such a thing is not allowed can be a serious lesson in dread itself. What do you do?

How would you react to suddenly watch society collapse all around you without a moment's notice, forcing you to fight your way out of it when you have never been faced with that kind of problem before? Even then...how would your friends react, individually? Your family? Your classmates? Your best friends? Can you trust them? We may not stop to think about it for more than a few fleeting moments at a time, but if 2020 and the pandemic has taught us anything at all...it's that the rules and civility that we abide by every day can come crashing down around us at any moment. Whether it's a deadly virus, a plane flying into the Twin Towers, or the simple shut down of being able to use a credit card when you go to work on a random Tuesday. And the questions is...then what?

This creates a feeling of dread.

I know that I often use action or horror clips as demonstrations, because these ideas are often exaggerated and easy to absorb, but the effect in your writing is the same. Here is a clip from the Zack Snyder remake of the classic "Dawn Of The Dead" movie. Take a look, and think about what you would do, personally, if you were suddenly thrust into this situation without warning.

In a society full of maniacs who have abandoned all sense of their own humanity...trying to maintain your sanity makes YOU the 'crazy' one!

And that brings us to number three, and what I personally feel is the most frightening concept of the group. And that is man vs self. To me...that is a concept that should chill you to your very bone when you look inward and really put some thought into it.

Every single day...all around the world...people hurt other people. They kill people, dismember the bodies, and bury them in a hole...hoping not to get caught. They cheat on their loved ones, they rob and steal from one another. They set entire houses ablaze, abuse their own children, plot to take over someone else's job, or assault random people in the streets. It happens. But...what is going on in their heads? It CAN'T be the natural order of things...all of this hatred and violence. So what are they thinking? What is that voice inside of their heads telling them to do? How is it persuading them to act this way? And are they aware of the conflict within them? Or does it not seem like a conflict at all? I mean...who can you trust if you can't trust yourself, right?

To use as an example...this is a clip from the streaming miniseries, "Them". Now, I LOVE horror and thriller and stuff, but I actually found this show to be truly unsettling in some parts. Imagine a very old school racist suburban neighborhood, terrorizing a new family that moves in looking for a better life. BUT...this show feels a lot like Stephen King's, "The Shining"...with Pennywise the clown from "IT" thrown in...but in full minstrel show blackface. And it knows the inner workings of the protagonist's mind as well as his whole family. And it pushes him. It pushes, and pushes, and pushes...trying to get him to reach a breaking point. Excellent series, if you haven't seen it. But in this scene, it is a perfect example of creating dread within the 'man vs self' dynamic. Again...it's the lure that makes it work. The enticement. That voice inside your head that whispers (NOT shouts...but whispers)...'Do it. You know you want to. Do it.'

I can't think of anything more frightening than not being able to trust that voice inside of your own mind that has been pretending to have your best interest at heart for your entire life. It's just plain friggin' creepy!

This is a technique that I've used a lot in my "Gone From Daylight" vampire series, where my protagonist has been gifted with an immense amount of power...but there are certain parts of it that he can't tap into without being completely corrupted by them. Parts that feel sooooo GOOD to him when he experiences it for the first time...a previously bullied and abused teen, who now has the ability to crush any and all of his enemies with ease if they dare to approach him. But the thrill of using that power comes at a mental and emotional cost. He begins to hurt people. He begins to scare the ones that he cares about, even when he's trying to protect them. And there is still that whisper in his ear telling him to keep going. Get stronger. More power. MORE! And he has to struggle with himself to keep it from swallowing him whole and forcing him to lose his humanity in the process.

Again...this creates a level of dread in the story. Because the readers have to wonder how long it will be before some imminent threat will apply enough pressure, or get enough leverage, over the main character...before he's forced to tap into the darkest parts of himself to overcome it? Only time will tell.

SO...I hope this article made some sense to you guys. Maybe the examples worked to help demonstrate what I was talking about. And remember that dread exists on the outer rim of the major conflicts of your story. Use it as a form of escalation. Let your readers know that 'danger lurks'...but this isn't the main blitz on your protagonist and his/her journey through the plot. It's an intensely stated 'hint' of what's to come later. It creates menace and an intimidating appeal to your antagonist and the world that they inhabit. These rules can be demonstrated on a much larger scale if you see the need to do so. And they can be demonstrated on a much smaller scale if you see the need to. The goal is to engage your audience and get them all riled up about a major conflict that hasn't even happened yet.

That is the power of dread! Learn it well!

Best of luck to you all! And happy writing!