A24 films feel like stories that crawl under your skin and stay there—and that is exactly the energy you can steal for your novel or ebook.  These movies use techniques that work just as well on the page as they do on the screen, and once you start applying them, your fiction will feel deeper, tenser, and far more memorable.

The slow-burn trap

Most writers think tension means constant explosions: cliffhangers every chapter, twists every few pages.  A24 flips that idea and builds dread like a gathering storm, using long stretches of “normal” life poisoned by tiny wrongness.

You can do the same in your book:

• Let ordinary scenes stretch longer than you’re comfortable with, but seed them with unsettling details: a door that’s always slightly open, the family pet that refuses to enter one room, the same stranger glimpsed in different places.  Each detail is harmless alone, but together they train your reader’s subconscious to expect disaster.   
• Instead of rushing to the big reveal in chapter three, treat your reveal like gravity: unseen, but constantly tugging on everything your characters do and notice. 

For a novel example, imagine a cozy small-town mystery where the protagonist keeps finding her smartphone volume turned down, then off, then on again—despite living alone.  Nothing overtly scary happens for 50 pages, but readers feel that itch that something is very, very wrong, and they keep turning pages to scratch it.

Character destruction psychology

A24 doesn’t give characters minor “issues”; it gives them trauma that infects every decision they make.  The key is not just that characters are broken, but that their wound actively makes their current situation worse—and then becomes the engine of their transformation.

To bring this into your book or ebook:

• Skip the generic sad backstory. Instead, give your protagonist a wound that sabotages the main plot: a former whistleblower who now avoids conflict, thrown into a corporate conspiracy; a mother who lost a child and now freezes around kids, forced to protect a neighbor’s family.   
• Let the story push that wound from denial to breakdown to rock bottom, then into acceptance and transformation, so readers feel they’ve watched a full psychological arc, not just a plot. 

On the page, this might look like a romance hero whose controlling tendencies ruin relationship after relationship.  The external conflict—losing the love interest—forces him to confront generational patterns he swore he’d never repeat, turning his flaw into a kind of hard-won superpower: the ability to finally choose vulnerability.

Genre whiplash that works

One reason A24 stories feel so alive is **genre** whiplash: horror that’s also comedy, sci‑fi that’s also intimate family drama, crime that feels like a full-blown anxiety attack.  These sharp tonal shifts hit harder because they mirror how real life actually feels—messy, absurd, heartbreaking, and funny in the same afternoon.

For your novel or novella:

• Let humor bleed into your darkest scenes: a character having a panic attack in line at the DMV, or cracking an awful joke at a funeral because they genuinely don’t know what else to do.   
• Drop moments of beauty into the ugliest situations: a character in the middle of a screaming match noticing dust motes in sunlight, or the smell of rain, and feeling a confusing flicker of peace. 

In a fantasy ebook, a high-stakes battle could be interrupted by something absurdly mundane—two warriors bickering about who forgot the map while dragons roar overhead.  The clash of tones makes the fear sharper and the humanity more believable, instead of flattening everything into one emotion.

Metaphor bombs in prose

A24 stories are rarely “about” what they seem to be about on the surface; the supernatural or heightened elements work as layered metaphors for painful human truths.  That layering is what turns a fun story into one readers think about months later—and argue about in group chats.

To build metaphor bombs into your book:

- Ask, “What is this really about underneath?” A haunted house might be about guilt; a shape‑shifter might be about code-switching; a time loop might be about depression or burnout.   
- Let every fantastic element mirror your character’s psychological state: the house gets more chaotic the more they avoid their past; the monster grows stronger when they lie; the magic misfires whenever they suppress their true feelings.

Picture a YA novel where the “curse” that makes everyone forget the protagonist each morning is actually a metaphor for feeling invisible in their own family.  The fantasy hook works on the surface, but the deeper metaphor is what makes readers message their friends: “You have to read this; it meant something to me.”

The trust technique on the page

The final A24 move might be the most important for book writers: trusting the audience.  These stories assume viewers are detectives, not toddlers, and that same assumption can electrify your prose.

In your manuscript:

• Replace explanations with behavior. Instead of “She had a history of abuse, so she didn’t trust men,” show her subtly adjusting her chair so there’s more distance, keeping her back to the wall, or flinching at specific sounds.   
• Swap “The house felt haunted” for concrete sensory details: the thermostat reading normal while characters can see their breath, or pictures hanging slightly crooked every morning no matter how often they’re straightened. 

Readers love the moment when they realize, “Oh—I get what’s really going on here,” without being spoon-fed.  That moment of earned insight makes them more invested, more emotionally entangled, and far more likely to recommend your book with the words, “You have to pay attention, but it’s so worth it.”

Bringing it all together in your book

When you combine these five techniques—slow-burn tension, destructive-but-transformative character wounds, genre whiplash, metaphor bombs, and deep trust in the reader—you get stories that work on multiple levels at once.  That’s what turns a simple plot into what feels like “elevated” storytelling, the kind of narrative readers want to dissect, reread, and debate.

For your current work-in-progress, pick just one place to apply this:

• Slow down your opening chapter and lace it with subtle wrongness instead of rushing the hook.   
• Deepen your protagonist’s wound so it actively sabotages the plot and fuels their eventual growth.   
• Add a tonal left turn—a genuinely funny beat in a dark moment, or a quiet, lyrical beat in a chaotic one.   
• Introduce a metaphorical layer to your central conflict so the story is “about” more than what happens.   
• Rewrite three explanatory lines as moments of behavior, dialogue, or environmental detail, and let the reader connect the dots. 

These techniques may be showcased in screenplays and films, but they are perfectly built for novels and ebooks, where you control pacing, internal psychology, and thematic depth on an even finer level.  Used deliberately, they help you create not just a story readers enjoy, but an experience that haunts them—in the best way—long after they close the book.