How to Make a Monster Part 1: Starting from Scratch

Monsters. When you create an original setting, you may often need a monster to terrify your characters and our audience. Or a plethora of them to fill out a wider world. It can be perfectly fine to draw something from mythology, traditional monsters, and adjust them for your needs. The multitude of worlds writers have created are filled with ten thousand different interpretations of the classics… the vampires, and the werewolves.

You cna also just make up something weird and made of a multitude of strange parts that no one could ever have thought up before.

But what actually makes a monster? What is the difference between a monster and, say, an animal, or a tormented soul, or just another form of life that we don’t understand? Examining this question, as we are about to do, can do two things for you, my fellow Worldbuilders: it can help you figure out exactly what kind of monster you want to employ to suit your purposes, and as we’ll look at in the future parts of this blog-post series, it can help you develop a brand new, original, terrifying monster that still FEELS like a classic… that still evokes those primordial fears.

An example of a “new” ancient monster comes from the X-Files. An episode called “Squeeze”. You can consider this a spoiler alert. They dealt with a fellow named Eugene Victor Tooms, who had some odd habits. First, he was basically immortal, though he hibernates for 30 year increments in a cocoon made of papier mache and bile-slime, only waking to murder five people and eat their livers. He does this like a serial killer, claiming items as trophies for his kills. Besides that, he has a unique ability to stretch, and reshape his body so that he can squeeze through any crack in a door, or a small ventilation shaft, or even a bathroom water-pipe.

Tooms is almost like a reimagining of a vampire. Immortality, a hunger for human livers instead of blood, turning to putty instead of mist, so still effectively impossible to keep from his victims. I know I am not the only kid my age who found that to be a particularly terrifying episode.

So I want to help you be able to come up with something like that… something that evokes fear as effectively as one of the classics while still being new and original. The method I use for a lot of original content work that needs to work like classical work follows this pattern:

1. Analyze the Classic example.
2. Deconstruct it into various Elements.
3. Highlight some of those Elements.
4. Adjust the Elements in various ways.
5. Reconstruct the new Monster and see how well it comes together.

So today we will analyze and try to answer the question: What makes a monster? I think it is more than just a big horrible thing that is powerful and dangerous. What makes it monstrous is circumstantial, emotional, and based mostly on point of view. Monsters, I think, are embodiments of fear.

So I’ve broken down what I see of the monster archetypes into 4 branches. We should be able to look at any monster under one of these four auspices.

First Branch: Primal Predators

These are probably the most prolific form of Monster. They can be animals, creatures, alien beasts, even forces of nature that are out of our control, placing us as victims, at the mercy of those forces. As Morticia Addams said, “What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” As human beings, with our technology, our skills, our intelligence, we see ourselves as superior to many situations.

But the purpose of the Primal Predator is to humble us. It is the embodiment of fear of the dark, fear of the wild, fear of becoming prey to forces we cannot overcome or understand. Fear of our own human weakness.

Examples:

• Jaws: Just a big old animal in an environment where we are incapable of running away, or often even seeing it coming. It tapped into a very primal fear, such that it has had very unfortunate consequences to mostly harmless shark populations.
• The Xenomorph from Alien: A superior life-form of extreme hostility. It turns every environment it enters into one where we are hunted prey animals. Not only does it tap into fear of being killed, but it also has an element of reproductive fear as well.
• Jason Vorhees: while a supernatural force, it is one that acts in a very simple manner… he hunts people down and kills them in spite of everything they try to stop or escape it.
• The Demogorgon from Stranger Things: An interdimensional scavenger that can pop through dimensional barriers like a frog out of water and drag you back in.

Second Branch: Twisted Reflections

These almost always take the form of alien invaders. They are not human, but the exhibit human-like behaviors in exaggerated and often overwhelming ways, using superior technology and manipulation… strategies that we should be very familiar with.

Their purpose is to reflect our own evils back at us, and to make us the victims of our own society’s negative behaviors as a moral lesson. Twisted Reflections represent the justice we fear we deserve; the karmic answer to our sins. In some examples it is stated very plainly that a technologically superior culture encountering a weaker one will inevitably result in the destruction of the weaker one. “When the Europeans encountered the Indians, it didn’t end well for the Indians…” This in itself is an extremely euro-centric view, with that judgment of superiority based on a successfully implemented genocide, but because it is perceived as true to the western mindset, it remains relevant to the discussion of the kind of monsters a western audience is afraid of.

Another possible moral lesson from Twisted Reflection Monsters is if they represent a later point on our own path, so we should turn back before we become more like them.

Examples:

• The Martians from The War of the Worlds. These were very much the epitome of Western colonialism being turned against the colonizers. A technologically superior force arrives in big ships with unimaginable weapons that cannot be overcome.
• The Visitors from V, were basically space Nazis. They used similar tactics, and had ultimately fascistic goals and fascistic strategies for systematically manipulating their way into positions of power, then using that power to exterminate those they saw as inferior, once it was too late to oppose them militarily.
• The Locusts from Independence Day. These reflected our consumerist nature. Just as we consume and unsustainably abuse our environment, they have embraced that way of life, going from planet to planet consuming every resource and then just moving on to consume another.
• The Predator from Predator. Not exactly an invasion, but certainly an intruder into our world, representing the big game hunter. The predator is an icon of our bloodlust and hunting for sport reflected back at us. He is also physically and technologically superior leaving us as the prey.
• The Centaur is an interesting non-alien-invader example. They represent the duality of mankind, being both intellectual and bestial. In the tradition, centaurs are scholars and hunters, and rather intelligent, but when they get drunk they turn into brutal animalistic thugs.

Third Branch: Corrupted Humanity

This is probably the most iconic Western form of monster, expressing our personal temptations and evil inclinations. They have human faces some of the time, and the ability to corrupt and turn us to evil.

This monster represents social anxiety, fear of betrayal, fear of personal sins and selfishness causing loved ones to harm one another. The negative emotions we have personally, taking us over and dominating our personality. These are the monsters that hide behind a mask of humanity waiting to strike.

Examples:

• Vampires are probably the best example of the corrupted human to a western audience. The ones we love have died returning to tempt, torment, and corrupt their own loved ones in turn. The deep desire of the protagonist is always to save the loved one, but it is rarely possible.
• Werewolves are based on our fear of our own primal desires. I don’t mean cool werewolves who retain their human personality, I mean the bloodthirsty monsters who feast on human flesh and seem to target especially the loved ones of their human form.
• Wendigo are an algonquin monster, and a personal favorite of mine. They represent fear of desperation; what we’ll do when we have no other option. When hunters wander too far in the cold nights, can’t find their way home and turn to cannibalism to survive, they transform into the wendigo: An emaciated monster that hungers forever for human flesh and is never sated but, highlighting that fear of betrayal and the corruption of the human they once were, they maintain their human voice so that they might find their way home, call out to lure their loved ones into the woods and consume them as well.
• Doppelgangers: Evil versions of ourselves, often prone to hedonism, an evil agenda, and sabotaging the connections we have forged with our loved ones to destroy our own lives and reputations.
• Mr. Hyde: Another excellent epitome of the evil side of human nature taking over. Also central to this fear is the act of trying to repress that dark side, and this losing control when it bursts free.

Fourth Branch: Divine Enforcers

This last group are also found strongly in many traditional folklores. They can sometimes be hard to distinguish from Primal Predators. These are the boogeymen, who punish us for bag behavior, or for transgressing sacred laws or forbidden places. They take a magical form as otherworldly beings, punishers sent by the gods, or those who have themselves been punished and had their humanity stolen, or enforcers of curses. They may take on a scientific form by way of a creation that was never meant to exist… a punishment for “playing god”.

Divine Enforcers represent fear of the divine, fear of the unknown, fear of overstepping our natural boundaries and biting off more than we can chew. Fear of going into old, dark, unwelcoming places.

Examples:

• Bloody Mary: Like many boogeymen, this one is probably most known and feared by children. The idea that simply saying her name three times while looking into a mirror will summon her to come and kill you. Children may know what is supposed to be true, but have not enough to experience to know for SURE what isn’t true.
• Sekhmet, the Lioness Goddess of Egypt was sent by Ra to punish mankind. She reveled in the slaughter so much that she got out of hand so that Ra himself had to step in and save humanity from his own enforcer.
• Godzilla: One of the ultimate punishments for the hubris of messing with nuclear power, indeed himself an almost elemental embodiment of that power.
• The Mummy: Usually the answer to a curse that the victims brought upon themselves out of greed or arrogance. Like most monsters, unstoppable.
• Frankenstein’s Monster: Again, a punishment for meddling with things one should not. Interesting as he also in a way represents parenthood.
• Medusa and The Minotaur: One was punished, one IS the punishment, neither are actually to blame, but both are considered monsters and keepers of sacred spaces where human life is unwelcome.
• Krampus: An enforcer of good behavior.

Conclusion

For the next few weeks I’ll be tackling each one of these branches, deconstructing a few samples, and determining the methods for coming up with that kind of monster.

I’ll also be talking about the kinds of monsters that fit into more than one category.

Are there any important examples you want to talk about or see placed in one of these categories? Any thoughts or ideas? Don’t like the way I’ve used the word “mythology”? I’d love to hear from you, so drop me a comment!

I’ll see you next world!

—Charles