Have you ever thought about Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on our feelings for October? In last October I blogged about Poe’s poem, “The Raven.” My theme for this October’s writing tip is “one’s greatest fear,” and how exploiting it can add tension and suspense to your writing, no matter the genre. A lesser known poem, “Ulalume,” takes Poe’s readers directly to a cemetery—on Halloween. No wonder fear and Poe go hand in hand. 
I’m writing a mystery about a private detective who suffers from PTS disorder and has fallen on hard times. Because he refuses to deal with his troubled emotions, he loses his wife, his job, and his swanky apartment in mid-town Manhattan. He struggles to hold on to his self respect and pull himself out of the gutter. His greatest fear is failure. This is also the theme of the story. I utilize his fear as often as I can, increasing the tension by having him make one bad decision after another, and making his failure seem imminent.
Here are some other examples:
Nevada Barr’s mystery, Burn, is the story about a woman searching for her two young daughters who are missing. Her greatest fear is not finding them.
In A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s title character’s greatest fear is that his best friend will be drafted and sent to Vietnam.
In the short story, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Poe’s main character is about to suffer a horrific death: being sliced in two by a razor-sharp pendulum. Poe masterfully ramps up the fear and tension by describing what the character anticipates and experiences through all five senses.
A good practice is to look for characters’ greatest fears in every book you read. When you write, ask yourself at the start of each chapter, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
My greatest childhood fear on Halloween was someone dropping heavy fruit into my bag, causing it to rip and spill all the candy. Talk about trick or treat!
Ulalume
By Edgar Allan Poe
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Kathleen, We already bought our decorative pumpkins and saw that Clock movie! But, to the point, both fear and release from it are good plot elements in general. In thrillers, the protagonist(s) are often up against tremendous odds, so for writers not to show a wee bit of fear makes the character(s) 2D and wooden. In other fiction genres, the MCs, both protagonists and villains often show fear of failing, being found out, etc. Even sci-fi is made more real by characters’ fears. This probably comes under the general advice for writers: make characters seem real and human. Even though the Clock movie was more a comedy, Jack Black’s character showed real fear in one scene. Fear comes in all shapes and flavors, though, so writers have a lot to choose from. LOL.
r/Steve
Thanks for your comment, Steve, and for mentioning Clock. Jack Black is one of my favorite actors. I’ll have to watch this movie. And how about Hitchcock’s Vertigo? This chilling film was released 60 years ago.
I always thought that movie about the birds was silly. Who would think a bird was scary, right??? I now have 3 parrots. All of them bite, but the smallest one is a Quaker parrot and he is about the size of a cardinal. He is the worst! I can only imagine a ton of him pecking at me…scary!
I think it has something to do with their ability to fly and peck!