Framing Fear — Finding Horror in the Everyday

by Melissa Leanne Owen

As I sit at my desk writing this article, rain hammers against the windowpane. Outside, the wind is picking up. Trees sway, becoming more animated — as though trying to escape from the gathering darkness, chained by their own roots, unable to break free.

That’s where I find my inspiration. In the everyday. I see life as a moving picture, one we can frame in any way we choose.

For instance, I could set that same scene very differently: 

The rain taps softly on the glass, creating nature’s lullaby, prompting me to fetch a blanket and curl up by the fireside with the quiet company of a book and a mug of steaming hot chocolate. 

It’s the exact same moment, with a different frame. It all depends on the tone you wish to create.

When I need inspiration, I use this mindset to keep my imagination alert and my descriptions vivid. I begin to describe ordinary things through the lens of whatever I’m writing, in my case, horror and suspense.

As a horror and suspense writer, my focus often falls on atmosphere, tension, and the uneasy feeling of what might happen next.

Take this simple moment: I’d just let my dog out into the garden. As I opened the door, the wind pushed back against me, and somewhere in the distance, a police siren wailed. Now, let’s reframe that scene, shift the focus, and see how easily unease can creep in.

“I was at my laptop, working on an article, when a faint scratching sounded behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as a shiver rolled down my spine.

I turned to see my dog, Luna, scratching at the back door to be let out. It was a sound I’d heard hundreds of times before, but tonight, it felt different somehow.

Smiling at my own nerves, I stood and opened the door. Immediately, a powerful gust slammed it shut again. The door shuddered, harder this time, as though the storm itself had intent. I forced the door open again and Luna darted out, vanishing into the darkness of the garden. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t see her — only the shimmer of rain on the ground and the faint echo of the siren somewhere far away. Then the air went still.

I stepped outside onto the slick, wet flagstones, drawing a deep breath to steady myself and to shake off the strange feeling that had crept in. The door slammed closed behind me, and I jolted. My house, softly lit from within, suddenly looked uninviting — as though something else had entered… something that didn’t want to leave.”

By reframing simple, everyday moments, we can inject tension, tone, and emotion. Horror doesn’t always emerge from grand gestures — often, it hides in the mundane. 

The magic is in noticing the little things. The way a sound seems slightly off, or how a shadow appears different than it should. When you start paying attention to those little shifts, you begin to see where the story truly lives.

Suspense rarely comes from the event itself; it’s born in that split second before it happens. In the pause of a breath, the quickened heartbeat, the quiet knowing that something isn’t right.

In my latest novel, Crimson Spire, the prologue is a first-person account of a woman going through her routine day, until, on her usual drive to work, she witnesses a suicide.

That opening was inspired by a real experience of mine. One morning, on my drive to work, my tyres crunched over broken tools and debris strewn across the road, snapping me out of autopilot. Up ahead, a man stood on the bridge, motionless against the morning light. When he jumped, the world seemed to slow. My ears muffled. Everything felt distant, paused.

That moment stayed with me for a long time. Writing about it became a way to process what I’d seen, almost therapeutic. It reminded me how much of ourselves slips into our stories, even when we don’t mean it to. The things that stay with us – fear, grief, confusion – eventually find a way out through the words. That’s what makes storytelling so powerful, it helps us make sense of what we’ve lived through and allows others to see themselves experience it too.

There’s a term in psychology called automaticity: when we repeat an action daily, like driving to work, we often enter a trance-like state, until something disrupts it. That disruption, or attentional capture, forces awareness.

Just as that moment on the road jolted me out of autopilot, horror writing does the same. It pulls us, and our readers, out of the familiar and into awareness. It asks us to look again, to notice, to feel.

So, the next time you’re out walking, waiting in a queue, or listening to rain against the window, try shifting your frame. 

What if the silence isn’t empty? What if the flickering light isn’t faulty, but intentional? 

Wherever we are, whatever we’re going through, our lives are full of material waiting to be framed. The trick is to notice the ordinary — and dare to see what might be lurking beneath it. There’s always another story just out of sight, waiting to be written.

—

Melissa Leanne Owen is the author of Crimson Spire, a supernatural thriller exploring how technology can awaken the darkness within — where guilt, desire, and nightmares collide in a haunting tale of identity and consequence. She lives in the United Kingdom and is currently hard at work on her next novel.

THE CRIMSON SPIRE

Jamie Williams thought his demons were confined to his past—until a flicker on his screen cracks reality itself. A voyeur of the dark web, Jamie stumbles into a chilling online realm where messages shock more than just the mind, and cryptic usernames seem to foretell death. As those around him begin to vanish, haunted by their deepest fears, Jamie finds himself tangled in a web of horrific visions, mysterious deaths, and a shadowy cult that reaches decades into his bloodline.

From 1980s beachside rituals to the eerie glow of modern screens, Crimson Spire unravels a terrifying legacy of sacrifice, possession, and identity buried beneath layers of forgotten memory. As malevolent forces cross from myth into flesh, Jamie must uncover the truth about who he is—and what he carries inside—before the final soul is claimed.

A darkly hypnotic tale of inherited evil, shattered identities, and the terrifying price of desire, where reality collides with horror, and where every fear has a face.

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Category: On Writing