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I’ve got kaiju on the brain. At the time of this writing, the Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) SDCC trailer is a hot topic online, there’s a new Godzilla anime on Netflix, I got...

To Hell and Back Most of my days in college were a constant struggle between going to class and doing the work I knew I should be doing versus just saying “screw it” and renting...

Unhealthy relationships are not a matter to be taken lightly. Surely enough, everyone has had that one bad breakup or that one ex that they cannot be in the same room with, but what...

This week Scriptophobic was lucky enough to talk to Scum of the Earth Films's Suri Parmar. Apart from tons of hands on and theoretical training in ScreamWriting, Suri has explored storytelling in prose for New Haven...

Welcome back, Scream Writers. Have you ever noticed that some films are set in locations that feel as much, if not more, of a character than the rest of cast? Just think of The...

In today’s Everything But Bone, we are entering bold new territory, writing about a film that’s bad. But why do that, you might say. Because, while the plot, characters, and acting isn’t the best,...

What happens when a person’s psychopathy isn’t exactly definable as typical mental illness? What do we, as a society, do for and with these people? Between healthcare systems and the justice system, we expect...

Here on Scriptophobic, we believe that studying screenplays and discussing the writing process are of vital importance to a Scream Writer's growth. That's why we here at Scriptophobic are proud to bring you a new...

There’s a moment in No Country for Old Men (2007) where Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) checks into a motel while trying to stay one step ahead of the hounds that are nipping at his heels....

Freddy's Big Break Many years passed between my introduction to Freddy Krueger and my subsequent foray into the remainder of the franchise. I was a different horror fan then, no longer the fresh faced teenager...

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,...

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...