Articles

A bullet might be the fastest way to develop character (or end it). Similarly, dropping a bomb on a city is the most surefire way to change the landscape of a fictional world. But...

I have a confession: I didn’t always get horror. You see, the horror genre and I have a long, sordid relationship. Sure, everything is all wine and roses now, but, like most great romances, it...

In 1990, Keith Hunter Jesperson would turn thirty-five years old. He had recently received two major blows to an already dangerously fragile ego. The first disappointment was getting rejected by the Royal Canadian Mounted...

Hellraiser (1987, covered by Scriptophobic columnist Paul Ferrell here) is an ode to the disgusting. It is a film about the beauty of bodily ooze, and one woman’s, apparently unwavering, attraction to it. The...

I’m not ashamed to admit that as a budding horror fan, my first obsession— my first love— was zombie flicks. George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) ignited a passion within me for...

In his book On Writing, Stephen King discusses his method for discovering the story as he writes it and why he is not a fan of outlining his books. King suggests that he can...

It was July 6th of 1993 when Karla Homolka was convicted on two counts of manslaughter for her involvement in Paul Bernardo’s spree of abduction, rape, torture, and, eventually, three murders. Bernardo himself landed...

Fandom, that is, one’s dedication to a particular topic, study or artistic exploit, is driven and often defined by discovery. Exploration. Finding something new… and taking it with you as your appreciation and understanding...

You can learn a lot writing a book. Learn something about yourself, your understanding of genre, and maybe hopefully how to be a better writer on the next book. I like to think I...

I’m almost done writing Scream Writing: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing the Horror Screenplay and that means I’m beginning to gear up research on my second book, Mindfulness at the Movies: A Cinephile’s Guide...

I grew up on the tale end of the arcade boom, only encountering them in my travels a few times as a youth (aboard a cruise ship or in an out of the way...

The day the Hollywood Video finally opened its doors was a notable one in the small town where I grew up. Over the months leading up to its grand opening, my friends and I had...

SCRIPTOPHOBIC NOTE: We don't normally do spoiler warnings, however The Clovehitch Killer is a recent release, so be warned! The Clovehitch Killer (2018) is a great film. It’s also a frustrating one for those who have...

It was late and it was snowing. I was wrapped in a blanket that smelled sort of funny, you know, a musty sort of smell that led me to believe it had been balled...

I spoke before about how writing fiction can be a lonely task – how sometimes it is necessarily lonely in order to protect the idea you are shaping into a story. But that’s not...

Horror movies are in the middle of a renaissance. Sure, us fans know they have always been valued forms of entertainment, now horror is being taken a little more seriously. But let’s...

“He left me, as a reminder of what happens when hope is lost, when belief is forgotten, and the Christmas spirit dies.” Now, I know what you’re thinking: it’s Christmas and, conceptually speaking, a dead...

During the mid-1980s, serial killers were already a staple of American media— everybody knew the names Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirez and others, while murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer, the as of then...

Writing is a private ordeal. We sit at the computer and will a world into existence with words. It’s a Herculean task. The loneliness which comes with writing isn’t often fun. But some of...

Hello! After a short and much needed hiatus, Everything But Bone is back. Today I’m directing the column in a different direction, writing about a movie I don’t like. And to be honest, I...

I had been hearing about Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) for over a year when it finally hit Netflix in late 2011. I was deeply entrenched in the horror genre then— scouring...

Pat Higgins reached out to me on Twitter while we were looking for new people to talk to. Can't say how glad I am that he did, this week's Scream Writing Questions is a great...

Gathering around the campfire and telling ghost stories is such a powerful image of how we share our mythologies that John Carpenter used it to open The Fog (1980). Often we forget that there...

Creating something, regardless of your canvas of choice, is a frustrating, tumultuous process. The act requires sacrifice, both of self and ideology, resulting in something that goes out into the world and, in turn,...

We’re unsettled by anyone who kills another human being. The idea of taking a person’s life, to the vast majority of us, is morally revolting. Serial killers scare us worse because of the repetitive...