Journal #23- Scary Stories

In school every year we watch students present scary stories, and one thing that I noticed most of the students doing while they were presenting was they all tried to create suspense. They all began kind of slow but as the story went on they built up suspense by pausing randomly throughout their story. It seems that everyone who tells a scary story always has a long pause right before they tell the scariest part, and I think that is because they want to create some sort of a suspenseful moment for the audience. Also, it seems that there are quite a few moments of complete silence when someone is telling a scary story because they are trying to create suspense and really get the audience into the story. Personally, when I was little I used to hate scary stories because I thought they were so creepy and spooky, but now I actually enjoy listening to scary stories because I think they are entertaining and its interesting to see how people tell a scary story. Also, sometimes scary stories are accompanied by weird music or creepy sounds which I think can sometimes have a negative affect of the scariness of a story. Sometimes it seems like the music can really add to the suspense but on the other hand sometimes it seems like it can ruin the suspense of a scary story. When people tell scary stories I think they always try to exaggerate everything and make everything thing seem a lot more dramatic than it actually is because it can add to the suspense of the story. One of my favorite parts of listening to a scary story is at the very end when the storyteller pauses and then says the last scary line. I like this part a lot because it can either make or break a story. I think there are a lot of factors that contribute to the scariness of a scary story and I think that in order to effectively tell a good scary story you need to add suspense in all the right places and keep it simple and scary. My life is a scary story because my computer is going to shut down in :50 seconds and its so suspenseful. Suspense is one of the biggest factors in a scary story, but I think a story can be scary without suspense depending on what it is about. For example, I have been told scary that had no suspense but it was still scary simply because it was a true story. Depending on how you tell the story, you can make a story that is not scary at all into a really scary story because of suspense and everything else that attributes to a scary story. I think some people are better at telling scary stories than other people because some people are not good at delivering a story and other people are. Suspense is probably the most important element in telling a good scary story, so I think that should be one of the biggest things a scary story teller focuses on because if you have good suspense you will have a good scary story.