Feel the fear
Helen M Walters explores a short story by Shirley Jackson to look at ways of creating a sense of paranoia in your writing
In this month’s master class we’re going to look at how we build and convey a sense of fear in our stories. We’ll be looking at Paranoia by Shirley Jackson, in which our hero, Mr Halloran Beresford, starts off having a perfectly ordinary day and through a series of events ends up feeling completely paranoid. As always, you will benefit the most from this article if you read the story for yourself: writ.rs/paranoia
Let’s see how Shirley Jackson takes Mr Beresford on a journey from peace of mind to mental anguish. Look at the language in the first paragraph. He is described as pleasantly tired and pleased with both his neat appearance and the fact that he has remembered his wife’s birthday. The language is positive and gentle and gives no clue of what is to come.
The first intimation of negativity comes in the next paragraph. First he reveals that he has anxieties about hailing a taxi and an intense dislike of the subway, which lead to him usually using the bus even though it takes longer. But the first hint of something really worrying is the man in the light hat who he sees frowning at him and considers to be an ‘ugly customer’.
From there, the feeling of being in jeopardy escalates. Note how the writer does this incrementally.