Choosing a Victim: Houses, Feasts, Blobs and Dead Kids
One topic that doesn’t come up often in discussions on writing horror is the importance of the victims themselves. There is plenty of writing on characters, but most of the victims in horror aren’t...
Motivation and Stakes in Jaws, Death Spa, and Blue Monkey
If after the first kill in Jaws, the mayor agreed that there was clearly a shark problem and acted fast to get rid of it, then would there still be a movie? Maybe a...
Character Arcs: Are They Necessary?
If you take any Writing 101 course then you will be familiar with the importance of character arcs to fiction. Prose fiction has always been regarded as having quite a bit of leeway when...
An Interview with Author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Welcome back, Scream Scholars. As a part of our continuing education in horror, it only makes sense to reach out to academics who have spent far more time than us considering the genre. It...
An Interview with Puppets Who Kill’s John Pattison
Do you remember how you discovered your favorite TV show? I do.
https://youtu.be/w7mefwmxkwQ
Friday nights growing up were special. I would go with Dad into town to get groceries, which in and of itself was not...
Scream Writing Fiction: Research Foreign Cities Through YouTube Walks
Sometimes we can discover fantastic resources for writing while just kicking back and relaxing. That's what happened to me when I can up with the idea for this article. I've been going through some...
Scream Writing Questions with David J. Stieve
This Scream Writing Questions post should have been up two years ago but somehow it managed to slip through the cracks of email, a damned shame considering that David J. Stieve wrote one of...
An Interview with Writer/Actor/Podcaster Michael Swaim
One of the best features of Scriptophobic is how it has allowed me to talk to such wonderfully intelligent creative minds, such as Graham Skipper or the Video Palace duders. However, I have not...
Looking for Silver: Keep Digging, Keep Writing
When we begin writing a story, we’re in love with an idea. The idea may be bold, maybe it’s weird, could be it’s a love letter to our favorite thing. Whatever it is, the...
An Interview with Subject #44’s Spencer MacKay
This week I got a chance to sit down with my good friend Spencer MacKay and speak with him about his newest short film, Subject #44 (2019). Subject #44 was made as an entry...
In Defence of Fanfiction
Fanfiction gets a bad wrap. And I get it. It’s full of weird sex, poor spelling, and a fervent love for a fictional universe that most of us probably only have a passing interest...
Using Decay to Develop Your Characters and Worlds
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...
In Defence of Outlines
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...
6 Things I Learned Writing In the Shadow of Extinction
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...
An Interview With Sequence Break’s Writer/Director Graham Skipper
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...
5 Dos and Don’ts You Want From a Writing Support Group
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...
Protecting the “Magic”: The Sanctity of the Idea
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...
An Interview with Video Palace’s Ben Rock and Bob DeRosa
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...
Connecting with Technology
“We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the internet!” – The Social Network (2010)
Something I like thinking about is how many classic film plots might’ve...
Deliberate Practice: A Neuroscience Informed Screenwriting Lesson
This week’s Scream Writing is going to be a little bit different. If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I’m a big fan not just of horror movies and screenwriting but...
Scream Writing Questions with Andrew Bellware
This week Scriptophobic is joined by Andrew Bellware to answer some Scream Writing Questions, explore the art of screenwriting, and dig into the love of sci-fi and genre.
What first got you interested in screenwriting?
I first...
Scream Writing Questions with Adam Marcus
We're talked to a lot of great people on Scream Writing Questions but this is the first time that I've been so excited to talk to someone that I'm at a loss for words. Adam...
Writing Horror with Depth; or, an Argument Against “Blank Isn’t Actually Horror”
Blank isn’t Horror
A recent tweet by Patrick Bromley was infused with palpable sass directed at a review that claim “Hereditary isn’t a horror film. As much as critics would would like to call...
Scream Writing Questions with B. Harrison Smith
Write, write, write. Scream Writer Harrison Smith boils down his advice until there's no fat left on the bone – just like if it were a screenplay! Today, the writer/director joins Scriptophobic to talk about...
It Comes at Night and the Art of Opening Strong
Setting the Stage
A few days ago I finally broke the plastic on my Blu-ray of It Comes at Night (2017) and sat down for blind watch. I had managed to avoid any spoilers or trailers and...