How to start a cult in 12 easy steps*

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. At least if you’re a die-hard horror fan (like me). Or if you’re a five year old girl who can - for one night only - accept sweets from strangers and eat her own body weight in sugar (like my daughter).

What’s not to love about Halloween. The restless dead rise from their graves. A veil of dread descends upon the living. There really is something for everyone.

I’m on a couple of seasonally appropriate assignments right now, so the time really is ripe for a horror how-to.

I was listening to a true crime podcast recently and something occurred to me: to write a decent horror script, you have to act alarmingly like a cult leader.

So today we’re channelling the big dogs of the New Religious Movement world to bring you a horror-writing roadmap in twelve simple steps.

Content warning: today’s article contains links to awful men who committed heinous acts - and glib references to their atrocities.

Twelve gurus, twelve lessons. Let’s go.

Believe it or not, cult leaders tend to target smart, inquisitive people.

This personality type is more likely to challenge establishment thinking and “discover” their own truths for themselves. They’re also less likely to consider themselves victims of coercion or manipulation. Perfect fodder for a “high control group”.

As in life, so in art. Make like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and choose a protagonist who thinks for themselves and who makes their own choices. Even better if they have a vocation, or a passion, or a unique skill.

Passive, indecisive, and incurious characters tend to make bad protagonists. A high-agency character is more likely to investigate whatever is befalling them and act on whatever they find - thus pushing themselves into your story without you having to drag them through i.

See: The Wicker Man, Seargent Howie’s intelligence, rigour, and Christian moral fortitude aren’t just quirks; they’re the very reasons he’s summoned to Summerisle.

As Charles Manson may well tell you, these smart and capable followers are nevertheless trying to fill some kind of void within them. If everything in their lives and psyches was peachy keen, they wouldn’t have gone searching for new truths in the first place.

And so it is that your protagonist should be burdened with a false belief, skewed values, a central weakness, or a sense that something just isn’t quite right with them. It’s their unique vulnerability, added to their unique crisis, that will lock them into your story.

See: Midsommar. Reeling from the death of her family and heroically gaslit by her boyfriend and his pals, Florence Pugh’s Dani is not in a great place when she sets off for Scandinavia.

Warren Jeffs might encourage you to identify that key vulnerability, then press down on it as if it were a sore tooth.

Repressed childhood trauma? Grief from the death of a loved one? A latent addiction? A spell in a psychiatric ward?

They think it’s all behind them. You’re going to drag it back into their present and dangle it around in front of their face. All this to destabilise them, lower their resolve, and generally make them feel awful.

Mr Jeffs has it bang-on with this one. It translates perfectly to horror writing. No notes.

See: Don’t Look Now - in which a harrowing tragedy literally haunts Donald Sutherland through the canals and alleyways of Venice.

Joseph Di Mambro might suggest that you construct your own version of what’s really going on, and sell your followers on it with confidence and verve.

In his case: We’re continuing the good work of the Knights Templar. In order to survive the oncoming environmental apocalypse, we must ascend to a new spiritual plane and be reborn on a planet orbiting the star Sirius.

As a horror writer, you too have to convincingly post up a new and captivating diversion from our established world: The little boy can see dead people. There’s a malevolent spirit lurking in the woods. Your adopted daughter is actually a grown woman.

If the viewer buys this, you’ve got them locked in for the long run.

See: It Follows - a truly original horror film with an amazing clarity of premise.

Marshall Applewhite knew a thing or two about setting rules. Y’know, uniforms, buzz cuts, mandatory lectures, castration…

When writing a horror script, rules are every bit as foundational. If you don’t make your rules absolutely clear - You can’t feed these critters after midnight. He can murder you in your dreams, so don’t fall asleep. A stake through the heart is the only way to kill it - you risk confusion and chaos.

See: Talk To Me. A cursed hand needs some table setting. And the Philippou brothers set the table admirably.

Dwight York knew that you don’t give away all the juicy secrets in the introduction seminar. Those valuable insights must be earned, usually over many years and at a cost of thousands of dollars.

The toll is lower for horror viewers. Nevertheless you have to make like the founder of the Nubian Nation, and drip-feed information to your viewer over the duration of the film - giving just enough to keep them interested but largely in the dark. Withhold the full picture until they’ll give anything to know what’s really going on.

See: Get Out. The details get stranger and more cryptic until the absolutely deranged revelations feel like a relief from all the mystery.

As Larry Ray knew all too well - if you get inside their sanctuary, they have nowhere to escape to.

Their college dorm. Their home. Their backyard ceramics studio. Their marriage. Insert yourself in the place they feel safest, and turn it into their own personal hell.

See: Poltergeist, or a thousand other haunted house movies.

If Keith Raniere were calling in from his cell in Tucson Penitentiary, he’d no doubt counsel the following:

Now you’re in their safe place, locate the thing they hold most sacred, and corrupt it.

This could be a belief, a child, their favourite doll, the job of a lifetime. Whatever relic from their old life brings them a true sense of comfort and purpose. Find a way to make them fear and revile it more than anything else in the world.

To you, fellow horror writer, I counsel the same.

See: The Exorcist. Little Linda Blair becomes something not even a mother could love.

If David Koresh were to offer up a locker room pep talk, he’d probably tell you to drive a wedge between your new follower and their support network.

After all it’s friends, colleagues, and loved ones that tend to keep people stable and well-adjusted. And that’s the last thing you need.

Same rule applies for the horror screenwriter. You eventually want to get your protagonist alone and out on a limb.

Perhaps its because you’ve brought them to a remote location. Perhaps it’s because that new reality you’ve created for them isn’t going down so easily with others in their life.

However you go about it, keep ostracising them until they’ve lost all perspective and start to disassociate completely. Then exert your power.

See: The Shining - you don’t get more isolated than poor Wendy Torrence in the off-season Overlook Hotel.

Shoko Asahara had a knack for this. He fostered a culture of absolute obedience through violence, systematic oppression, and psychological torture. It didn’t end well.

But if you want your horror script to build to a more successful finale, you have to put your protagonist through the ringer.

Kind of an obvious one - but it’s often the simplest laws we take for granted. Even if your protagonist is capable, brave, and up for the fight - a Van Helsing or an Ellen Ripley - find a way to strike genuine terror into their heart at least once.

If they’re not scared, it’s all the harder for us to be scared.

See: Silence of the Lambs - Clarice Starling is a stellar cop, but when she’s stumbling around Buffalo Bill’s pitch dark basement, she’s absolutely bricking it. As we all would be.

The Reverend Jim Jones knew that there’s only one way to bring proceedings to a close - orchestrate a big finish by announcing the apocalypse.

Set this up nice and early, so everyone knows to expect it, but then surprise them with the exact timing and specific details of their Flavor Aid-induced oblivion.

Likewise, you must you prepare your viewers for the apocalyptic finale coming their way. But keep a few surprises back till the last second.

Start early by implying a confrontation between your protagonist and your source of evil - sometimes called the “obligatory scene”. Your viewer needs to know implicitly that a showdown must take place between good and evil before we can tie things up.

Work backwards from your own special date on the Mayan calendar, and carefully lay the groundwork that will build to that set-piece. Ratchet up the tension gradually, drop hints and lay a scattering of meaningful details. Build a tapestry of significance that will pay off in the climax.

Escalate everything as far as it possibly can go. Crank the stakes and the tension up to breaking point and then snap them in an explosion of terrifying action, in which every promise you made throughout your story will be spectacularly paid-off.

See: The Omen, which both pitches a true battle between good and evil and drops meticulous breadcrumbs on the way - while keeping a nasty shock in the chamber.

Here’s a final insight from David Berg: Once your first compound is running smoothly, it’s time to set up new divisions across the world and delegate through a hierarchy of subordinates. To achieve this, repeatable systems need to be put in place.

So take a leaf from David’s book and plan for expansion. Ensure your source of evil can return. If your protagonist dies at the end, give them a daughter or sister or partner to avenge them.

See: Literally any horror franchise of the last 50 years.

Once your successful horror film prints at the box office, you’ll need to be ready to spawn sequels and spin-offs. And as an Executive Producer and rights-holder, you’ll passively earn income from the labour and exploitation of those you may never even meet. Congratulations. You’re now a fast-rising star in the high control group that is Hollywood.

You don’t have to be a narcissistic megalomaniac ravenously seeking the adoration of the masses to work here…but it helps.

Happy Halloween.

Till next Tuesday, go get after it.

Rob