When you are writing a monster story, think about what role you want your monster to portray. For example, a monster that is ghoulish may terrify a character who is afraid of death. Your story’s monster should fit the kind of story you want to write.
After you decide what kind of monster to put into your story, now comes the task of describing the monster. This is when the writer’s skill with description is put to the test.
Just how easy is it to describe a monster in fiction? For some writers, not very easy. I have personal experience with this challenge when writing monster fiction. After many years of writing monster fiction, I came up with some tips to make the job easier. Some of these tips have helped in describing monsters in my own fiction, and they can help you describe monsters as well. 
Describing what your monster looks like can make your horror story scarier, your character’s quest more complicated in a fantasy story, and your science fiction story more realistic in how you describe an alien monster. “Surely the most common words of advice given to any fiction author are ‘show, don’t tell.’ But what does that mean, exactly?” writes Philip Athans in his book, Writing Monsters: How to Craft Believably Terrifying Creatures to Enhance Your Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction (Penguin Publishing Group, 2014). “In prose fiction, as opposed to visual media like movies and video games, you have to get much deeper into a monster’s physical description whether or not the physical description aligns with or plays against the creature’s true intent.”
If you have ever struggled with describing a monster in fiction, try these seven tips for your writing.
Learn From the Greats
We could watch movies such as Hellraiser, Frankenstein or IT to see what some classic monsters look like, but it’s the books featuring these monsters we should pay more attention to if we want ideas on how to describe monsters in fiction. Clive Barker, Mary Shelley and Stephen King successfully showed exactly what their monster looked like on the page. Take note of how Barker described his character “The Hell Priest” in The Hellbound Heart, how Shelley described her monster in Frankenstein, and how King described Pennywise in his novel IT to see how they got the job done.
What these writers managed to do was add a bit of the grotesque to their creations. Creatures with an unnatural yellow skin color, scary eyes, and pins lodged into the bones all over a head can indeed incite fear and terror in readers. These terrifying unnatural elements can only add to the scare factor your monster would create.
Study Similar Books
In addition to reading older books to see how writers described their monsters, study some modern titles as well.
Some modern monster fiction to read includes the anthology Monster Monday (Twisted Dreams Press, 2024), and the short story collection, Tell Me How It Ends: A Horror Collection by Desiree Horton (Independently Published, 2025). You can also check out novels such as The Cryptids by Elana Gomel (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2025) and Say Uncle by Ryan C. Bradley (Ghoulish Books, 2025).
Combine Existing or Fabled Creatures
What do you get when you take the feet of a goat, the torso of a shark, and the head of a gorilla? A brand-new monster! You don’t need to slap three different animal body parts together to get your monster, but use animals that work best for you and your story.
Keep in mind that the monster just might have an extra advantage with that certain part of the body. A monster with the tentacles of an octopus can grab eight victims at once, while another monster with an alligator’s long, thick tail can use this to hit its attackers.
Give Your Monster the Scary Stuff
Think about certain descriptives that frighten you. “A towering creature” with “metal jagged teeth” sounds frightening. A monster with “sharp claws” can be threatening as well.
Most monsters can appear scary just from having things which frighten us or pose a threat. Just knowing that a creature could use its fangs to tear into our skin or that a monster would use its burning eyes to possess us into submission would be enough to create a terrifying creature.
Study other monsters and take note of their qualities that make them so monstrous. Some monsters could have supernatural powers, such as the ability to kill us in our dreams, and some monsters may harbor more intelligence than the average human, making it easy for them to figure out how to trap their victims or cut off communication with the outside.
Draw Your Monster
I have often drawn pictures of the monsters that have haunted my nightmares. While my artistic creations may not very skilled, they do provide a good starting point in what a monster could look like in a story.
Putting the picture of the monster you have in your head onto paper could make the job of describing your monster somewhat easier. There’s no guess work as you write what your monster looks like; all you need to do is consult your picture.
Get Ideas from Your Dreams
Speaking of dreams, they are a goldmine for creative and terrifying monsters. Our dreams are one of the best sources for things never seen or imagined before.
Take advantage of this sneak peek at a creature no one else has ever seen and put it into your story. Try to write down what your dream’s monster looked like as soon as you wake up so that you can remember every detail.
Compare Monsters on Screen
Sure, we all know about monsters from the many monster movies out there. From Godzilla to the Swamp Creature, the creatures in the movie Tremors and the nasty little critters in Gremlins, movies have exposed us to countless variations of fictional monsters. Pennywise, who is actually a cannibalistic monster that takes on the guise of a clown, is scary enough as a clown. Many people are already afraid of clowns, thus adding to the horror they experience when Pennywise opens its mouth to reveal those long, razor-sharp teeth.
Now how’s that for changing things up a bit?
Keep this in mind as you watch monster movies featuring typical creatures such as werewolves, swamp beings, and ghouls. How could you take what you see and make it scarier? What qualities could you give your monster that no one would expect?
We can’t get actual descriptions of monsters when we watch them in action in films, but watching these movies can inspire us to create something new. And that’s what you should try to aim for, because that’s exactly what most readers of monster fiction want. Give them something so new, so terrifying, that you just might even surprise yourself in having created it.
Figuring out what kind of monster to include in your story can take some work, and describing your monster might require a bit more concentration. But if you try some of the tips above, they just might make the process somewhat easier so you can get back to writing your story.
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