Not scary enough is, on its face, the single most useless note a horror writer can receive. Tonight I am trying to actually translate it into something I can use.
My editor sent back detailed notes on my latest manuscript today, and buried among several genuinely useful, specific structural suggestions sat one considerably vaguer note that has occupied my entire evening since first reading it, a simple, three-word assessment of my novel’s central antagonist: “not scary enough,” a note that is, on its face, close to the single most useless piece of feedback a horror writer can possibly receive, since it identifies a genuine problem without offering any concrete direction toward actually fixing it.
I called her this evening specifically to push for more detail, genuinely needing to understand what exactly about this particular monster was failing to land the way the rest of the manuscript apparently succeeds, and the conversation that followed was considerably more useful, once we actually got into the specific mechanics, than the original three-word note initially suggested it would be. Her actual concern, once properly unpacked across a genuinely substantive forty-minute call, centered on the monster’s specific motivation, which she felt was rendered too clearly and too comprehensibly on the page, removing exactly the kind of genuine, unresolvable mystery that makes a fictional threat feel truly unsettling rather than simply dangerous.
I think this is a genuinely useful, specific craft principle worth naming directly, one I clearly understood in the abstract but had apparently drifted away from somewhat in this particular manuscript’s specific execution: a monster whose motivations and rules are too clearly, comprehensively explained to the reader tends to become simply an obstacle to be understood and eventually overcome, a genuine narrative threat but not necessarily a genuinely frightening one, while a threat that retains real, deliberate ambiguity about its underlying nature and motivation taps into something considerably deeper and considerably harder to fully rationalize away, the genuine, primal fear of something we cannot fully comprehend or predict.
I went back through my own manuscript tonight with this specific principle freshly in mind, and I can see, rereading several key scenes with my editor’s note actively guiding my attention, exactly where I had, apparently unconsciously, over-explained this particular monster’s specific rules and motivations, likely out of some instinct toward narrative fairness, wanting readers to feel the eventual confrontation was earned and comprehensible rather than arbitrary, an instinct that, in this specific genre, apparently worked directly against the more important goal of preserving genuine, sustained dread.
I think there is a real, delicate balance here that I clearly misjudged somewhat in this draft, between giving a reader enough concrete information to actually follow and invest in the plot, and preserving enough genuine mystery to keep the underlying threat feeling truly, deeply unsettling rather than simply comprehensible and thus, in some sense, already partially defeated by the reader’s own understanding of it.
I am spending tomorrow doing a genuinely significant revision pass specifically aimed at stripping back some of this over-explanation, deliberately restoring ambiguity to several key scenes where I had, in this draft, erred too far toward clarity and comprehensibility at genuine cost to the sustained dread my editor is completely right to have flagged as currently insufficient.
I think tonight’s frustrating, initially unhelpful-seeming three-word note actually pointed toward one of the more genuinely useful craft lessons I have revisited in a while, a reminder that this genre specifically demands a different, more careful calibration between clarity and mystery than most other kinds of fiction require, and that my own instinct toward narrative fairness, generally a genuine strength in my other work, apparently needs real, deliberate restraint when it comes to actually building something meant to genuinely frighten rather than simply threaten.
I emailed my editor a short note tonight, genuinely thanking her for pushing past the initial, admittedly unhelpful three-word version of the feedback and actually walking through the specific mechanics with me properly on the phone. I think a considerable amount of genuinely useful editorial feedback risks getting lost precisely at that first, vague stage, and I am grateful she was willing to spend the additional forty minutes actually translating her instinct into something concrete enough for me to genuinely act on.
I am hoping to have the revised draft back to her within the week, and I suspect this particular lesson, about protecting genuine ambiguity even when narrative fairness instinctively pulls toward more comprehensive explanation, is one I am going to keep actively guarding against in every future manuscript, now that tonight has made the specific failure mode considerably more visible and considerably more nameable than it was before this exact note forced me to actually confront it directly.
I have already started a small, informal checklist for myself, something to actually consult during future drafts specifically at the stage where I am tempted to add one more clarifying detail about a given threat’s motivation or rules, a deliberate pause to ask whether that specific clarity actually serves the reader’s investment in the plot or whether it is quietly, unconsciously undermining the deeper, more primal unease the scene is actually supposed to be building. I think tonight’s frustrating three-word note has earned itself a permanent, considerably more expanded place in how I approach every future manuscript in this genre.
More from this author at Paige Shiver, prat.uk.
