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...
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...
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...
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...
Scream Writing Questions with Manuel Alejandro Anell
Every Scream Writer we talk to has wonderful advice to share and Manuel Alejandro Anell is no different! Rebelling against what he was taught, exploring the limitless nature of creativity, and letting the characters life...
Finding Inspiration in International Art
We’re always looking for new, amazing art to inspire us. Your favorite author has a new book coming out, that experimental weirdo director you follow is working on their next film, the musician who...
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...
Screenwriters Talk Genre and Share Advice in These Six Video Interviews
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...
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...
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...
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...
The Expectations of Blood and Gore
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...
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...
Scream Writing Questions with Jamie Nash
Reading through this week's questions, I was struck at how much Jamie Nash's answers reminded me of my own thoughts and answers. Scream Writer of Altered (2006), Lovely Molly (2011), the Zombie GoPro segment of V/H/S/2 (2013), Exists (2014),...
In Defiance of Dying Easily: Understanding Violence
Greetings fellow Scream Writers! Way back in June, Kelly Warner wrote about “The Expectations of Blood and Gore” and looked at the different approaches – suggestive, built up, bloodbath – that writers can use...
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...
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...
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...
5 Places to Find Horror Screenplays Online
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...
Seven Ways to Make a Great First Impression
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...
Scream Writing Questions with Chance Shirley
When it comes to horror, it's surprising just how well it meshes with comedy. Perhaps no one knows that better than Chance Shirley, writer/director on For a Few Zombies More (2015) and Hide and Creep (2004).
What...
Using Letterboxd as a Tool for Research, Collaboration and Fun
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...
Restricted Point of View in The Invitation
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,...
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...