If you aren't engaging people with your #horror narratives, then it's time to go BIG: The Monomyth and myth structure. 👁️‍🗨️⚫

Be The Bite Interactive is a horror narrative studio, making mythic tales of terror. I'm consulting on projects to elevate your horror storytelling to be more meaningful & memorable, so sign up for that here: biosite.com/bethebite  

The monomyth and myth structure: Why is this relevant to horror? If you haven't already heard of the monomyth, it's the narrative structure that has been used through the ages and across cultures. Joseph campbell, a mythological scholar identified repeated patterns in stories across the world. The main thing you need to know about the monomyth, is:  

 The main character must fight enemies, move through trials and in doing so reveals the meaning of life. The journey they go on, is to uncover more about themselves and their relationship with god/a higher power. The main character then brings back knowledge/powers from the spiritual source that benefits the many. This isn't just religion, or spiritual stories. 

 This pattern is repeated across human consciousness. Because we seem to crave relationships with each other, and with a meaning of life. When making your narratives, do you ever stop and think. Hang on. Shouldn't this be easy? It doesn't matter if you plan ahead, or make ideas on the fly...using mythic structures makes things easier on the author & the audience. Let me explain. 

These are the main mythic tools I'll talk about: 

-Moral of the story
-Stakes 
-Motfis
-Symbols
-Setting
-Identifyable archetypes 

Integrating these tools, found in myths through the ages ensure that stories become alive and brimming with recognizable triggers. The viewer understands meaning from stories subconsciously. So logic or 'clever writing' is rarely going win your audiences over. The best horror fiction requires these tools to be effective. Even just focusing on one will ensure that your audience resonates with the text. 

But including more of them will ensure you have a memorable and myth-like story. Think frankenstein, where Shelley uses setting of scientific lab to the stories advantage. The plot is weaved around it's moral too, should man toy with life for the sake of science? So is including the monomyth and mythic structures enough? 

Because its 2026, and stories have never been more accessible I would argue that breaking through the noise is becoming increasingly important. And the best way to break through the noise is not what you might think. Breaking the rules. Breaking mythic structures ensures your ideas can speak for themselves. But it takes knowledge and implementation of the mythic structures to break them effectively. If done right, you will successfully subvert expectations and keep your ideas raw. 

I know a lot of creatives need room for their ideas to grow, so boxing them into the monomyth isn't going to gel with you. Lovecraft, the maker of eldritch horror and his own dark mythos breaks the mythic structures. By believing in the ideas and his personal views, Lovecraft did not feature spiritualism, and had a rather bleak outlook for any kind of 'higher power'. Therefore his mythos inverts the monomyth. 

Instead of a main character going through trials, he positions characters investigating an arbitrarily evil force. Cults are formed around the evil force, as the characters believe they are spiritual deities. But they are not. By inverting the monomyth, you can be as imaginative as you like. By knowing the structures, bending them to your will is intentional. 

However the caveat is, you inflict more on your reader. So there is a balance, as making your reader do ALL the hard work, is not an enjoyable experience. Lovecraft still used other mythic ideas with motifs of the unimaginable. But subverting mythological themes, tropes and structures is for sure going to make your work insightful, original and fearsome. I'll be going in depth for these mythic narrative tools soon, stay tuned!