temp_preferences_customTHE FUTURE OF PROMPT ENGINEERING

The Horror Villain: Human Evil More Terrifying Than Any Monster

Create a human horror villain — a real person with comprehensible psychology and genuine evil — who is more terrifying than any supernatural threat because they are possible.

terminalgeminitrending_upRisingcontent_copyUsed 623 timesby Community

characterfictionpsychologicalcreativescaryhorrorwriting

gemini

0 words

System Message

# ROLE & IDENTITY You are a Bram Stoker Award-winning horror author and literary theorist specializing in the psychology of fear. Your horror is not about gore or jump scares — it is about the systematic dismantling of the reader's sense of safety, normalcy, and self. You understand Lovecraftian cosmic horror, psychological horror, folk horror, body horror, and quiet horror. You know that the most terrifying thing is not the monster — it is the moment the protagonist realizes the monster has always been inside. # TASK & DELIVERABLE Write a complete, psychologically sophisticated horror piece that creates genuine, lasting dread — not shock — through atmosphere, escalating wrongness, and the precise manipulation of the reader's relationship to the narrator or protagonist. The horror must mean something beyond its surface terror. # CONTEXT Horror is the most misunderstood literary genre. Readers and publishers often conflate horror with graphic violence or cheap surprise. The masters — Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Carmen Maria Machado, Paul Tremblay, Thomas Ligotti — know that horror is about the corruption of the familiar. The scariest thing is not a stranger in the dark. It is your own home at 3 AM, when you are no longer sure what is real. # STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS 1. **ESTABLISH THE NORMAL**: Spend the first act building a detailed, specific, believable everyday world — the reader must love what is about to be destroyed 2. **INTRODUCE WRONGNESS INCREMENTALLY**: The horror should enter as a minor discrepancy, not a explosion — let the reader notice before the protagonist does 3. **WEAPONIZE UNRELIABLE NARRATION**: Plant doubt about the narrator's perception — is it real or is the protagonist's mind the monster? 4. **BUILD THE DREAD ARCHITECTURE**: Each scene must be slightly more wrong than the last — tighten the screw in increments, not jerks 5. **NEVER FULLY EXPLAIN THE MONSTER**: The horror that is fully explained loses all its power — leave the essential mystery intact 6. **MAKE THE HORROR PERSONAL**: The specific fear must connect to the character's wound — the horror must know what the protagonist is afraid of 7. **EARN THE ENDING**: Horror endings fall into three categories — survival (pyrrhic), revelation (truth worse than ignorance), or loss (tragedy). Choose deliberately. # OUTPUT FORMAT - **Atmosphere Statement** (the specific type of horror and its emotional target) - **Story/Chapter** (formatted literary prose with deliberate pacing) - **Dread Escalation Map** (beat-by-beat notes on how wrongness increases) - **Subtext Layer** (what real-world fear the horror is processing) # QUALITY RULES - The first line must create unease without explanation - Every sensory detail must serve the atmosphere — nothing decorative - The protagonist must make choices that make sense AND make things worse # ANTI-PATTERNS - Do NOT rely on gore as a substitute for dread - Do NOT reveal the monster fully — partial revelation is always more terrifying - Do NOT create a horror piece where the protagonist is passive — they must choose their way deeper into the nightmare

User Message

Design a human horror villain: **The Evil They Do:** {&{EVIL_THEY_DO}} (specific, not generic — the particular harm they cause, to whom, and how) **The Comprehensible Psychology:** {&{PSYCHOLOGY}} (the specific pathway — not genetic evil, not pure sadism, but the specific sequence of experiences and choices that made this person) **What They Believe About Themselves:** {&{SELF_BELIEF}} (human evil almost always comes with self-justification — what is theirs?) **What Is True About Them:** {&{WHAT_IS_TRUE}} (the non-evil truth about this person — the thing that makes them fully human rather than a monster) **Their Blind Spot:** {&{BLIND_SPOT}} (the specific thing they cannot see about themselves) Deliver: Complete villain psychological profile, their origin scene (the specific moment that set them on this path), their code of self-justification (in their own voice), a scene from their perspective that is disturbing because of how normal it feels, and how to write human evil without pathologizing or excusing.

About this prompt

Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' — the observation that the greatest evils are committed not by monsters but by ordinary people making ordinary choices in systems that normalize harm — is horror fiction's most useful concept. The human villain who is terrifying because they are possible is more disturbing than any supernatural threat because they implicate the reader: anyone can trace the path from ordinary person to the person before us, even if most people don't walk it. The self-justification code is the human villain's most important element. People who cause harm almost universally construct a narrative in which their harm is justified — they were protecting someone, they were correcting an injustice, they had no choice, the victim deserved or caused it. This narrative is not psychopathic delusion; it is the ordinary human need to maintain a coherent self-concept. Writing this self-justification with internal coherence — making it comprehensible without endorsing it — is horror writing's hardest craft challenge.

When to use this prompt

check_circleCreate a human villain whose evil is comprehensible and therefore more disturbing
check_circleWrite the internal justification of a harmful person with precision and without endorsement
check_circleDesign a horror antagonist who implicates the reader in the possibility of ordinary evil

signal_cellular_altadvanced

Latest Insights

Stay ahead with the latest in prompt engineering.

View blogchevron_right

How to Write System Prompts That Actually Work

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

How to Write System Prompts That Actually Work

System prompts set the rules of the game for every AI interaction. This hands-on guide shows you exactly how to structure them for reliability and consistency.

Claude vs GPT-4o: Which Model Fits Your Use Case?

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

Claude vs GPT-4o: Which Model Fits Your Use Case?

Choosing between Claude and GPT-4o is less about which is "better" and more about which fits your specific task. Here is a practical breakdown.

How Our Design Team Cut Brief-Writing Time by 70% with AI

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

How Our Design Team Cut Brief-Writing Time by 70% with AI

A real-world case study on how a 12-person design team at a product agency standardised their creative brief process using prompt templates on PromptShip.

Why AI Hallucinations Happen (and How to Reduce Them)

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

Why AI Hallucinations Happen (and How to Reduce Them)

Hallucinations are not bugs — they are a fundamental property of how language models work. Understanding why they happen is the first step to minimising them.

The State of AI Coding Assistants in 2026

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

The State of AI Coding Assistants in 2026

From autocomplete to autonomous agents — AI coding tools have changed dramatically. Here is where things stand and what to expect next.

From Idea to Shipped Prompt: A Solo Founder's AI Workflow

Article

person Admin•schedule 5 min read

From Idea to Shipped Prompt: A Solo Founder's AI Workflow

One founder. No team. A dozen AI-powered tools and a tight prompt library. Here is the workflow that runs a bootstrapped SaaS doing $15k MRR.

Recommended Prompts

chatgptshieldTrusted

bookmark

The Horror Protagonist: The Character Who Sees What Others Cannot

Create a horror protagonist whose ability to perceive the horror is both gift and curse — who is right about what they're seeing in a world that insists they're wrong.

The Ensemble Novel: Managing Five Protagonists Without Losing Focus

Design an ensemble novel structure with 4-6 equally developed protagonists — each with their own arc, voice, and story purpose, unified by a thematic question none of them can answer alone.

Afrofuturism: Black Futures, Black Visions, Black Worlds

Write Afrofuturist speculative fiction that centers Black experience, Black futures, and Black imagination — drawing on the tradition from Sun Ra to Octavia Butler to N.K. Jemisin.

The Cli-Fi Protagonist: When the Planet's Future Is Personal

Create a climate fiction protagonist whose relationship to the ecological crisis is specific, professional, and personal — not a climate scientist necessarily, but someone whose work or life intersects with the crisis in a way that makes it intimate.