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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...

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...
Girl presses her face into mirror

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...

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...

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...

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...

A Tale of Two Halves

Most writing advice would suggest you follow a certain formula, as if the best stories are something you create in the lab. And look,...
A T-rex prepares to attack Sam Neill from film Jurassic Park (1993)

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Scream Writing Questions with Pat Higgins

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...

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...

Scream Writing Questions with Suri Parmar

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...
Michael Myers looks at Bob in kitchen

The Horror of Connotation

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...
Pages of a book burning

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.”...
Vincent Price walks body strewn streets in The Last Man on Earth

I Am Legend from Richard Matheson, to Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Will Smith

Richard Matheson is one of the all-time great writers of horror. From Duel to Stir of Echoes, his stories have repeatedly made the trip...
Gorgeous husky in The Thing

The Dog Kennel from The Thing (1982)

OBEDIENCE TRAINING GONE WRONG It was the summer of 2004. As burgeoning horror fans, my brother and I used our freedom from school and responsibility...
Wendy crying in The Shining kitchen

The Female Gothic: Three Steps To Creating Authentic Women in Horror Literature by Meg...

There is a notion of the kick ass woman. She is strong, perhaps even muscular. She is a natural leader, tough, and quick-thinking. We’ve...
Jaws kid gets eaten by shark

Jaws and the Rare Case Where the Film is Better

The common thinking is that the book is always better than its film adaptation. That’s just…not so. It’s easy to understand why we often...
An American werewolf in londom landscape artwork movie poster

David’s Transformation in An American Werewolf in London (1981)

A HOWLING GOOD TIME When I was in college, rather than saving my money for practical things like groceries or bills, what little I was...
A Nightmare on elm street landscape artwork movie poster

Tina’s Death in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

ANALOG NIGHTMARES The first time I watched Wes Craven’s seminal masterpiece, I was huddled around a 22’’ tube TV sitting on the shaggy carpeted floor...