The Dark Process: How I write tales that keep you up at night

The Dark Process: How I Write The Tales That Keeps You Up at Night

By Damon Robert Graves

People often ask me how I write the kind of horror that lingers. The kind that makes you check the locks twice before bed. The kind that transforms familiar spaces into something sinister.

The truth? I don't overthink it. I let the darkness lead.

Morning Is When the Monsters Wake

Most writers romanticize the midnight hour—the witching time when creativity supposedly peaks. Not me. I write in the mornings, when the world is just waking up and my mind is still half-submerged in whatever dreams or nightmares carried me through the night.

There's something unsettling about crafting horror while the sun rises. While everyone else is drinking coffee and planning their day, I'm conjuring monsters. I'm killing characters. I'm exploring the worst possibilities the human mind can conceive.

Morning writing keeps me honest. There's no drama, no theatrical darkness to hide behind. Just me, the blank page, and whatever wants to claw its way out.

No Map, No Safety Net

I don't outline.

For some writers, that's terrifying. For me, it's the only way to write authentic horror. When I sit down to write, I know roughly where I'm starting, but I have no idea where the story will take me—or my characters.

This approach mirrors the experience I want to create for readers. Real horror doesn't follow a predictable path. It ambushes you. It takes left turns into darker territory than you imagined possible. When I don't know what's coming next, that uncertainty bleeds into the prose. The dread becomes genuine because I'm discovering it alongside my characters.

Writing The Devil and the Awesome Four trilogy this way meant I was constantly surprising myself. Characters I thought would survive didn't. Plot threads I assumed would resolve twisted into something far more sinister. The story evolved organically into something darker than I initially conceived—and that's exactly how it should be.

The Soundtrack of Nightmares

Heavy metal isn't background noise for me—it's fuel.

When I'm in the creative process, developing story ideas and diving into the darkest corners of my imagination, metal provides the intensity I need. The aggression, the raw energy, the refusal to sanitize or soften—it all feeds directly into the kind of horror I write.

There's a primal quality to heavy metal that matches the visceral nature of dark fiction. It doesn't ask permission. It doesn't apologize. Neither does my writing.

The driving rhythms help me tap into that unfiltered creative space where the best—or worst—ideas emerge. Where the monsters become real. Where the violence feels earned. Where the horror cuts deep because it's not dressed up or made palatable.

Letting Imagination Run Wild

Here's what I've learned: the best horror comes from giving yourself permission to go there. Wherever "there" is.

When you write without an outline, without a safety net, you have to trust your imagination completely. You have to be willing to follow it into uncomfortable territory. To explore the darkness without flinching. To let your characters suffer in ways that feel real and earned, not gratuitous.

This doesn't mean writing without purpose. It means writing without predetermined limits. The story knows where it needs to go. My job is to be brave enough to follow—and skilled enough to make readers want to follow too, even when every instinct tells them to look away.

The Honesty of Horror

Writing dark, gritty new adult horror means refusing to protect readers from the brutal truths of the genre. It means acknowledging that coming of age isn't always triumphant. That survival sometimes costs everything. That monsters—both human and otherwise—are real and relentless.

I write in the morning. I don't outline. I let heavy metal fuel my darkest imaginings. And I trust the process, even when—especially when—it takes me somewhere I didn't expect to go.

Because that's where the real horror lives. In the unknown. In the unplanned. In the spaces where imagination runs wild and no one is truly safe.

That's how you write horror that keeps people up at night. You let it keep you up first.

Damon Robert Graves is the author of The Devil and the Awesome Four trilogy. His new adult action/adventure horror doesn't pull punches. Start with Rise of the Four, available now on Amazon.