Articles

What is reality, anyways? Of all the writing “rules” that the horror genre gets to play around with – see, Break – this is my favorite: Things don’t need to make sense. Now, before you...

And now for something completely different, I’m going to be writing about an animated movie this time: Satoshi Kon’s 1997 masterpiece Perfect Blue. Writing about visual storytelling in animated films is different on a...

In this week’s Serial Killer Celluloid, we’re going to cheat— just a little. Ed Gein isn’t classified as a serial killer. The man was a proper ghoul, having robbed and desecrated graves for some...

Horror, deep in its dark heart, is about forcing characters to confront the unimaginable: the killer with a knife, the book that raises the dead, the alien life-form that shouldn't exist, the haunted house...

Like most kids born in the early to mid-80s, I grew up knowing the name Steven Spielberg. My cousins and I wore out my grandmother’s VHS copy of E.T. (1982) growing up (and not...

So far in The Haunted and the Sick, I have praised multiple films on their ability to portray various illnesses properly and mentioned how they could do better. However, writers can learn by example,...

Kelly Warner, author of the post-apocalyptic kaiju trilogy In the Shadow of Extinction, wrote about how he feels the advice “write what you know” often gets misinterpreted. I believe a similar piece of writing...

Question Scream Writers: What do Shutter Island (2010), Memento (2000), and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) all have in common? Answer: Each of these films make good use of an “Unreliable Narrator.” That is,...

Welcome back to Everything but Bone! This week we are going to be examining one of the most polarizing horror films of 2016, Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon. It’s one of those love it...

Sometimes art imitates life. Other times, life imitates art. Suddenly there’s no line between what is fiction and what constitutes reality. In August of 1990, life and the art of horror collided when five...

While I make it my domain to help screenwriters professionally, both through script consultations and one-on-one mentoring, it is my goal to provide my fellow Scream Writers with as many free tools to advance...

Good fiction and film requires conflict. And usually when we’re talking about genre, that conflict often includes violence and some amount of blood. How you depict gore in your work is all about managing...

Lend me a hand? I came upon the first Evil Dead (1981) while researching influential horror movies online. I had heard the title before and had previously assumed it to be a schlock oddity, something...

With PTSD, the patient lives a lot in their head. After a traumatic event, this illness has over two times the chance of lasting for a lifetime. As a survivor of child abuse myself,...

When it comes to learning screenwriting, it never hurts to actually listen to the screenwriters rather than the directors. Seems logical, but some people get caught up in the auteur theory instead of going...

Welcome back, my Scream Writers. This week’s article was originally going to cover another screenplay—one that I will leave unnamed. However, when I had found myself making up excuses to avoid reading what I...

Hello and welcome back to Everything but Bone. Today we are going back to 1980 with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, a classic film that has recently spawned countless memes and reactions gifs. But I...

The name Aileen Wuornos conjures to most the image of a wild eyed, crazed woman who shouted profanities in court after being condemned to death for the killing of several men in Florida between...

If you're anything like me, you've read enough advice or listened to enough interviews to know that one the best ways to improve as a screenwriter is to read screenplays. It seems to easy...

The most deluded thing a writer can tell a prospective publisher about their recently finished manuscript is that “it gets better as it goes.” That may well be true but if you’re saying that...

As a kid, I was utterly petrified by the mere idea of watching a horror film. My friends would try to get me to watch them during sleepovers or on those rare occasions where...

Ever wonder what happens to those spoiled child stars when they age into adulthood? Surely no one can live off of their fortune earned as a child forever, but what happens when children don’t...

Paul Farrell It was the summer of 1998. I was fourteen, at a sleepover with my closest friends and fighting the group’s movie choice with every fiber of my being. The night had grown dark,...

Welcome to the very first Scream Writing, your one stop shop for advice on writing the horror screenplay. Today we’re going to be talking about 2015’s, filmed in Canada, The Blackcoat’s Daughter (original: February); directed...

This week on Everything But Bone, we are examining a film from the celebrated, and now Oscar winning, Guillermo del Toro. No fishman love making here, this time we are visiting 2015's Crimson Peak....