Tried writing a horror story from a ghost's perspective and got zero emotional response from beta readers

Switched from the usual victim POV to the haunting itself narrating the scene, but without any human stakes it just read like a checklist of creepy events, has anyone else found a way to make a non-human narrator carry actual tension?

3 comments

3 Comments

marymorgan1mo agoMost Upvoted

Guess you need a human in the scene to care about.

the_julia1mo ago

Nah, that's just not true. Sometimes the best stories don't need a single human in them.

eric_murphy361mo ago

Read something about sci-fi recently that totally proved that point.