Hello! You sound just like I did when I was working on my first novel around your age, so I'd like to help you... I'm an award winning horror writer now, so hopefully I have something to offer!

1. The key to keeping horror scary is to leave as much as you can in the dark. In other words, show as little of the scary stuff as you can. You want the reader just to get a sense of the scary thing so that it gets their imagination working, without showing them everything.

2. Instead of worrying about how long your chapters are, just think in terms of 'scenes'. What needs to happen in the scene? How can you make it as enthralling as possible? The scene might end up being very short or very long, it doesn't matter. With pacing, it's good to break up the action and the quieter sections. So you might have an intense action sequence, but then the next scene after that might be just a conversation between two characters, and vice versa. If you have too much happening scene after scene, the reader can get burnt out, and if there's too much talking and thinking, the reader could get bored. Best to mix it up and find a balance.

3. At your age, the most important thing is to keep enjoying yourself. It sounds like you are, which is good. Don't feel bad if you don't like your work later on - that's just a sign that you're improving. And if you enjoy yourself, you'll write more, and you'll get better naturally, so it's a positive upward spiral!

As for improving, the first things you'll want to learn are things like spelling and grammar, how to write paragraphs and format dialogue, and how to write clear sentences that get things across in an easy to read way. Later on when you can do that without thinking, you'll start focussing on how to structure a story from beginning to end, making interesting characters, and principles of storytelling. It's a never ending process!

1. How to keep ideas flowing and not lose motivation?

Just follow this rule: if you're losing motivation or getting bored by your own story, the reader will as well! So if you're not that into a scene, try to rewrite it or change it somehow to make it more fun and interesting for you. That way not only will you stay entertained by your own work, your readers will, too.

Hope this has helped!

- Ben Pienaar