Monster is presented as a screenplay, with handwritten comments, by the main character Steve Harmon. Steve says that he is writing the screenplay to keep his sanity while being held in prison during his trial for murder. "I am so scared. My heart is beating like crazy and I am having breathing trouble," he writes. "The trouble I'm in keeps looking bigger and bigger. I'm overwhelmed by it. It's crushing me." In a story about a young man who gets in deep trouble by being greedy and wanting to look tough, the sheer terror of prison and the prospects for conviction are conveyed in blunt descriptions. Monster, one of the most horrifying novels ever written, is titanic in its sheer terror.