Find a good idea; they are everywhere. Bram Stoker read that some people believed in vampires and wrote "Dracula." Stephen King wondered what would happen if Dracula came to Maine and wrote "'Salem's Lot" to find out. Mary Shelley had a strange dream and created Frankenstein's monster.
Generate an interesting and evocative title. Some writers find that a title helps their idea resonate, even a "working title" that they replace later. A one word title, such as King's "Misery," can carry much weight and a long title, such as John Farris's "All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By," can be an attention-getter.
Create the characters to populate your novel. Horror novelist Tina Jens believes characters come before the plot. She suggests several techniques for creating them. You can pick people from your life, write a character sketch, listing characteristics, education, background, interest, etc. Or you might start a picture file, clipping interesting faces out of newspapers and magazines. Most importantly, you must get to know your characters and trust them.
Generate your novel's plot. Techniques for plotting are as numerous as novelists. Writer Holly Lisle plots with a math formula and a notecard system. Some writers create meticulous outlines, detailing every scene. Writer Lee Masterson points out that the plot begins with a narrative hook that grabs the reader and characters they will care about, has a compelling conflict and sub-plots all leading to a climax and the denouement. Writers such as King don't write extensive plots, but know the highpoints of the story and plot as they go.
Find your writing voice. Horror novelist Joe R. Lansdale urges writers to look to where they live for their voice. Everyone lives in a place with its own culture, traditions and unique people. "Writers ... really don't recognize the gold mine when we're in it," Lansdale says, adding that voice comes from where a writer lives, sees and experiences.
Create the novel's mood. Writer Gregory Nicoll suggests ways to "dim the lights" by using "sinister similes and murderous metaphors." Novelist Yvonne Navarro has a note stuck to her computer: "smell, sight, sound, touch, taste," reminding her to incorporate the five sense in her scenes to create mood and atmosphere. For example, "The gunshot reverberated and I fell to the floor. I remember smelling cordite and blood and when I touched my shirt, my fingers came away wet and sticky. Acrid, bitter bile filled my mouth."
Scare the daylights out of yourself. This author finds his best horror comes when he can scare himself while writing. "If I can reach that transcendent place where my fingers on the keyboard and the symbols on the screen vanish as the story unfolds in my mind like cinema of the grotesque, where the next image bobs to the surface like a bloated corpse on the dark lake or screams at me from the shadows like a howling banshee and my stomach lurches or I groan with disgust, then I know my fiction's working," I wrote.