seedance-horror-suspense

Horror and suspense · Horror suspense short film

Every shot carries its own timecode and shows one visible change on a body. The dread comes from the chain — a look, veins, a bite, the next person — and the ending seals a door without settling anything.

This Skill carries one prompt structure distilled from 27 human-verified Seedance cases on goodcase.ai. It is a sibling of seedance-prompt-library (all templates in one Skill); install this one when you only want this kind of clip. Do not invent structure from general video-generation knowledge: follow the structure below and ground the draft in one anchor case from references/cases.md.

Use when

• Outbreak and possession clips, corridor chases, ritual scenes — anything where the fear comes from a body changing on a clock.
• Chinese: infection outbreak, possession, corridor chase, exorcism ritual, any film that scares people by having one body change second by second.

Workflow

1. Collect inputs. Ask only for what is missing: subject or product, setting, duration, aspect ratio, whether reference images / audio exist, and which language the final prompt should be in.
2. Pick one anchor case. Read references/cases.md, choose the case closest to the request, and name it in the reply. One anchor, never an average of several.
3. Fill the structure block by block. Every block below must be present in the final prompt; an empty block is where prompts go vague.
   1. Header: runtime, the genre named, and the reference lock on whoever turns first
   2. Shot 1 with a timecode: patient zero in an ordinary seat or bunk, already carrying one symptom
   3. Escalation shots, each adding exactly one visible change: veins, milky eyes, a stiff head tilt
   4. The trigger shot: the attack itself, written as slow motion with impact
   5. Transmission: the bitten person runs the same escalation on a shorter clock
   6. Crowd panic and the barricade: the door, the luggage, hands clawing through glass
   7. Closing shot: a sealed door still shuddering, or a wide exterior, with nothing resolved
4. Apply the guidance and check the pitfalls (next two sections) before returning anything.
5. Return the finished prompt as one copy-pasteable block, the anchor case link, and a three-line checklist of what to verify in the generated video.

Guidance (from the cases)

• Give every shot a timecode and exactly one change. The sleeper-train case fits 26 shots into 30 seconds, where Shot 2 is only dark veins emerging beneath the skin and Shot 3 is only Her eyes cloud milky white.
• Lock the face in the very first shot, before anything happens. The sleeper train opens with <<<image_1>>>, face and outfit matching reference; the zombie-train case uses Character A, matching reference face/outfit; the ritual case uses Keep the Word character's face and outfit consistent throughout.
• Pass the infection on and compress the second round. In the zombie-train case the first person takes twelve seconds from symptom to finished turn; the man he bites is done in seven, across Shots 13 to 16.
• Land the scare on somebody else's reaction. The sleeper train cuts to A sleeping passenger stirs as another blood drop lands on his forehead, and the rooftop case has friends fall silent, chairs scrape back.
• Refuse to resolve it. The sleeper train ends on the train running through the night with chaos in the windows; the Korean ritual case ends on One intact talisman emits faint dark smoke.

Pitfalls

• Cramming a whole transformation into one shot. Split it across four or five: eyes cloud, veins branch, body convulses, inhuman scream, head snaps forward.
• Buying the horror with gore volume. The hardest beats in the top cases are a single blood drop landing on a forehead, held as extreme close-up in slow motion.
• Letting the middle collapse into a brawl where nobody can tell who bit whom. Even the chaos shots name a subject and a target, like The infected turns and lunges at nearby passengers.
• Putting the consistency lock at the end with the style notes. By then the face has already drifted; the lock belongs in Shot 1, and the infected version still has to be the same face.

Language

Reply in the user's language. The prompt itself can stay in English when that is what the user's Seedance workflow expects; ask if unclear. The Chinese version of this structure follows.

Chinese: Horror suspense short film

Every shot carries its own time code, and only one visible change happens on the body. What makes it scary is that these changes link one after another: a glance, rising veins, a bite, the next person. The ending closes the door, and nothing is resolved.

Structure:

1. Opening: duration, genre, and locking the reference image of the first person who will change
2. Shot 1 with time code: Patient Zero sits in an ordinary seat or berth, already with one symptom on the body
3. Progressive shots, each adding only one visible change: veins, white eyes, neck twisting stiffly to the side
4. Trigger shot: the attack itself, written as slow motion plus impact
5. Contagion: the bitten person goes through the same progression, with the time compressed shorter
6. Crowd panic and sealing the door: the door, luggage, hands clawing over from behind the glass
7. Closing shot: the sealed door is still shaking, or an external wide shot, with nothing resolved

Key points:

• Give every shot a time code, and put only one change in it. The sleeper train one fits 26 shots into 30 seconds, Shot 2 only has dark veins emerging beneath the skin, Shot 3 only has Her eyes cloud milky white。
• Lock the face down in the first shot; don't wait for something to happen. The sleeper train opening says <<<image_1>>>, face and outfit matching reference; the zombie train one says Character A, matching reference face/outfit; the hanok ritual one says Keep the Word character's face and outfit consistent throughout。
• The infection has to spread onward, and the second round compresses the time shorter. In the zombie train one, the first person took twelve seconds from showing symptoms to finishing the transformation, while the person he bit took only seven seconds, which is Shot 13 to 16.
• Put the horror payoff on other people's reactions. The sleeper train cuts to A sleeping passenger stirs as another blood drop lands on his forehead, and the rooftop one is friends fall silent, chairs scrape back。
• The ending gives no resolution. The sleeper train ends on an exterior of the night train, with chaos still inside the windows; the hanok ritual one ends on One intact talisman emits faint dark smoke。

Common pitfalls:

• Cramming the entire transformation into one shot. Split it into four or five shots: white eyes, veins crawling outward, convulsions, an inhuman screech, head snapping back.
• Buying horror with the amount of blood. The most vicious shots in the high-intensity ones are a drop of blood landing on the forehead, held with an extreme close-up plus slow motion.
• The middle collapses into a chaotic brawl, and you can't tell who bit whom. Even chaotic shots must name the subject and object, like The infected turns and lunges at nearby passengers。
• Put the consistency lock in the style section at the end. Put that far back and the face drifts long before then; the lock sentence must be written in Shot 1, and it still has to be the same face after infection.

Copy-ready lead-in / copy-ready lead-in

For users who would rather paste into a chat model than run this Skill, hand them this line above the structure:

I want a horror-suspense clip. [The setting is an underground car park late at night, a young woman looking for her car.] [The first to turn is the security guard; I am sending you his reference photo.] Using the prompt template below, rewrite it into one ready-to-use Seedance video prompt for me:

I want to make a horror suspense short film, [the scene is a late-night underground parking garage, a girl is looking for her car], [the first one who gets into trouble is the security guard, and I'll send you his reference image]. Please use the prompt template below to help me rewrite it into a Seedance video prompt that can be used directly:

Notes

• references/cases.md is generated from data/ in LearnPrompt/awesome-seedance and refreshed daily; do not hand-edit an installed copy.
• Prompts in the reference file belong to their creators (linked on every card). Transfer the structure; do not present a close copy as original work.
• For the full library across every model, install the goodcase Skill from LearnPrompt/goodcase-lite.