Writing Tips from 31 Horror Authors
There’s more to scaring readers than guts and gore. (But sometimes that’s part of it.)
Writing horror fiction can be a scary proposition—for the author as well as the reader! Whether you’re an author just starting out, or you’re looking to raise your game, below you’ll find advice from a wide variety of authors who write MonsterFic—including horror, paranormal fiction, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, weird fiction, and more. Including tips and advice from Stephen King, Anne Rice, Zoraida Córdova, H.P. Lovecraft, Linda D. Addison, Peter Straub, Faith Hunter, Dean Koontz, Nalini Singh, Clive Barker, Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Ania Ahlborn, Victor LaValle, Poppy Z. Brite, Ray Bradbury, Alma Katsu, Mylo Carbia, and more!
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This article was originally published May 2020.
Ben Aaronovitch | Author Website
“Someone has to read those first three chapters and not think to themselves, ‘Oh my God, my life is over, I want to kill myself out of boredom.’”
“There’s a difference between that first book you’re selling, and what you’re doing when you’re an established author. For a first book, yeah, four or five drafts. Whatever it takes to get it right. Don’t go too mad. If you’ve done more than four drafts, you have to ask, ‘Am I putting off submission?’ You nearly always want to go back and chop at least two thousand words out of the first three chapters because it drags. Make sure you’ve got no spelling mistakes. Someone has to read those first three chapters and not think to themselves, ‘Oh my God, my life is over, I want to kill myself out of boredom.’”
SOURCE: EP22: Ben Aaronovitch and the Great Bollocking… | The Bestseller Experiment
[VIDEO] Forbidden Planet Interview With Ben Aaronovitch
Linda D. Addison | Author Website
“Living is writing.”
“Even when you’re not putting words on paper/computer, you’re writing. Living is writing. Everything we do feeds creativity, even in the most un-obvious ways. Don’t edit while writing first draft, just get it out.”
SOURCE: Linda Addison On Winning A Bram Stoker Award | Horror Addicts
[VIDEO] Interview by Dacre Stoker with Linda Addison, Poet, Author, Finalist HWA 2020 Superior Achievement for Poetry: The Place of Broken Things, co-authored with Alessandro Manzetti
Ania Ahlborn
“Write what you want to read. Read what you want to write. Put questions like ‘will an agent like this?’ and ‘is this marketable?’ out of your head. I asked myself those questions for years, and it was only until I surrendered myself to my own creativity that I found success.”
SOURCE: What’s your advice for aspiring writers? | Goodreads
Margaret Atwood | Author Website
“Pay attention to your posture. ”
“Pay attention to your posture. Keyboarding is hard on the neck and the back. You don’t notice it so much when you’re young, but it will catch up to you. It’s hard to write when you’re in agonizing pain. So—back exercises, get enough exercise, walk around.”
SOURCE: Margaret Atwood’s Top 5 Writing Tips | National Centre for Writing
[VIDEO] Margaret Atwood’s Top 5 Writing Tips
National Centre for Writing interviews Margaret Atwood about how she started writing, why her novels tackle such challenging subjects, and her top 5 tips for new writers.
Clive Barker | Author Website
“Don’t be ashamed of how your imagination works. ”
“The most important responsibility I believe a writer has is to his or her personal truth. Don’t be misled by the best seller lists. Just do what feels true to you. Speak your heart, however strange or revelatory it is. Don’t be ashamed of how your imagination works. What a reader wants to discover in a book is what you hold uniquely in your head.”
SOURCE: On Writing Style | Clive Barker
Robert Bloch
“I urge you with all sincerity to get to work, write a book, write two—three—four books, just as a matter of course. Don’t worry about ‘wasting’ an idea or ‘spoiling’ a plot by going too fast. If you are capable of turning out a masterpiece, you’ll get other and even better ideas in the future. Right now your job is to write, and to write books so that by so doing you’ll gain the experience to write still better books later on.”
SOURCE: Robert Bloch’s Advice to Ray Bradbury: "The Danger Lies in Waiting Too Long" | Unearthly Fiction
Ray Bradbury
“If you can write one short story a week, it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start—at least you’re practicing. At the end of the year you have 52 short stories. And I defy you to write 52 bad ones. It can’t be done. After 30 or 40 weeks, all of a sudden a story will come that is wonderful — just wonderful. That’s what happened to me.”
SOURCE: Ray Bradbury’s Words of Wisdom — Write Like Hell! | Curiosity Never Killed the Writer
Poppy Z. Brite
“I took a number of writing courses which ranged in value from worse than useless to excellent. The best was a program for teenagers—it was the first time I'd ever been around a big group of smart people my age who didn't think I was strange for wanting to write. I think the greatest benefit of such classes or groups is that they put writers in contact with one another.”
Lauren Beukes
“Finish the damn book. You don’t know what you have until you’ve finished it. You don’t know how to fix it until it’s all down on the page.”
SOURCE: The Writers Write Interview – Lauren Beukes | Writers Write
Ramsey Campbell
“Always have a rough idea of your first paragraph before you sit down to write, and then you won’t be trapped into fearing the blank page. If you must take a day or more out from a story, break off before the end of a scene or a chapter, to give yourself some impetus when you return. Always carry a notebook for ideas, glimpses, overheard dialogue, details of what you’re about to write, developments of work in progress.”
Mylo Carbia
“My best advice is to get a day job that does not drain your mind and allows you both the time and mental juice to write often and write well. Also, it is better to release two amazing books (rather than fifty crappy books) over a lifetime, so take your time and do it right.”
SOURCE: An interview with the best-selling woman in horror, Mylo Carbia | The Horror Zine
Zoraida Córdova | Author Website
“I accept whatever percentage of luck the universe has made me earn.”
“Writing as a career does need luck. Life needs luck. Love needs luck. Luck is that inexplicable force that makes dreams come true. So, yes, I’m lucky but I also work really fecking hard. Not to mention I have an incredible support system of friends, colleagues, and family. When I got the news that my book was being optioned, I didn’t have enough money to pay that month’s rent. So, I accept whatever percentage of luck the universe has made me earn.”
SOURCE: Going on Five Years Now, Actually | The Wanderlands
[VIDEO] No Write Way with Zoraida Cordova
Tananarive Due | Author Website
“I was just going to be me.”
“I’d had it drummed into my head in creative writing workshop courses that one could not expect to be a respected writer when writing commercial or genre books. Legitimacy has always been very important to me. Finally, though, I said, The heck with all of it. I wasn’t going to try to be Toni Morrison or Joyce Carol Oates, I was just going to be me, and I was going to write about the people I know.”
SOURCE: 10 Chilling Writing Tips From Horror Authors | Bustle
Neil Gaiman | Author Website
“Finish what you write.”
“How do you do it? You do it. You write. You finish what you write. On the whole, anything that gets you writing and keeps you writing is a good thing. Anything that stops you writing is a bad thing. ”
SOURCE: Neil Gaiman’s FAQ
[VIDEO] Creative Writing Lessons: Neil Gaiman on writing
This video is a compilation of interview bits where Neil Gaiman elaborates on ideas, writing, publishing and robots. With questions and answers from a number of different interviews, Neil Gaiman talks eloquently and entertainingly on a number of subjects.
MORE WRITING TIPS FROM NEIL GAIMAN
Neil Gaiman: 8 Good Writing Practices (Gotham Writers)
Neil Gaiman on One Tried and True Method for Writing Anything (The Writing Cooperative)
12 Ways Neil Gaiman Can Help You Improve Your Writing Right Now (Standout Books)
Some Writing Advice (Plus a Porridge Recipe!) from Neil Gaiman (Tor.com)
Top 10 Success Tips from Neil Gaiman (Writers In The Storm)
Faith Hunter | Author Website
[VIDEO] Vampire Interviews: Faith Hunter
Interview with best-selling author of vampire fiction, Faith Hunter. A discussion on her take on the meaning of vampires, witches and more!
Shirley Jackson
“Nothing ever gets wasted.”
“One of the nicest things about being a writer is that nothing ever gets wasted. A writer who is serious and economical can store away small fragments of ideas and events and conversations, and even facial expressions and mannerisms, and use them all someday. I believe that a story can be made out of any such small combination of circumstances, set up to best advantage and decorated with some use of the imagination.”
Stephen Graham Jones
“The only question you need to be able to answer about your story is: Why today? Why this day out of your character’s life rather than all the other days? And the answer, it’s always Because this is the day that’s breaking the rhythm, the day that’s an aberrance, the day everything can change, if the character can just walk that tightrope to the last page.”
Alma Katsu
“Try to write every day. Take some time to think about what you’ve written, what scene comes next. Make sure you keep reading. Think about what challenges you in your writing and see how other writers handled it. (I had to deal with time jumps in The Taker, and so I studied The Time Traveller’s Wife, for instance.) There are great books on writing; start building your reference shelf. Ursula LeGuin’s Steering the Craft is great for the basics: POV, verb tenses, handling exposition. Eventually, join a writing group to get feedback on your work. Critiquing others’ work is a great way to grow your editorial eye. Remember, this is a craft—no rush, commit to getting better every day.”
Stephen King | Author Website
“A lot of younger writers stumble into [novels] before they’re ready.”
© Shane Leonard
“The novel is a quagmire that a lot of younger writers stumble into before they’re ready to go there. I started with short stories when I was 18, sold my first one when I was about 20 and produced nothing much but–well I wrote a couple of novels but they were not accepted and a lot of them were so bad that I didn’t even bother to revise them, but the short stories were making money and I got very comfortable in that format. And I’ve never wanted to leave it completely behind.”
SOURCE: 50 Pieces of Stephen King’s Greatest Writing Advice | Freewrite
[VIDEO] George R.R. Martin asks Stephen King: “How do you write so FAST?!”
MORE WRITING TIPS FROM STEPHEN KING
Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully—in Ten Minutes by Stephen King (Jerry Jenkins)
Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules For Writers (Barnes & Noble)
Stephen King on how to write (Business Insider)
Stephen King’s Top 13 Writing Tips (The Writing Cooperative)
Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writers (Open Culture)
Dean Koontz | Author Website
“Remember that what technique or attitude works for [one author] might be alien to your creative nature.”
“When reading how-to tips from any writer, always remember that what technique or attitude works for him or her might be so alien to your creative nature that to adopt it unthinkingly will do you no good and might hamstring you.”
SOURCE: Dean Koontz’s Writing Tips (Part One) | Author House
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Victor Lavelle
“I have this trick. Every single book, I pick a specific person that I’m writing the book for. It’s not someone I’m extremely close to and it’s not a stranger. If they’re too close, then we have a private language, shorthand, that will keep another person out of the story. If it’s a stranger, then I won’t sound like myself because we share no intimacy. So, I pick a person who I’m medium-range intimate with, someone I went to college with that I don’t see anymore, but we’re still in touch on Facebook. A kid I grew up with, someone like that. And I specifically say, ‘This book is for Aki. This book is for Cameron. This book is for Genene.’ When I sit down to write, I am thinking of that person. So, there’s a way that I’m making jokes that sound like jokes I would tell to him or her. I’m describing things that would make sense to that friend. I’m using slang or not using slang that would talk to them. If I’ve done a good enough job, then my hope is anyone who picks up the book will, essentially, be sitting in my friend’s chair and that reader will feel like a friend, too.”
SOURCE: The Craft Is All the Same: A Conversation with Victor LaValle | Los Angeles Review of Books
H.P. Lovecraft
“Never be bound by any previous design.”
“Write out the story—rapidly, fluently, and not too critically—following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design.”
[VIDEO] Titan of terror: the dark imagination of H.P. Lovecraft - Silvia Moreno-García | TED-Ed
Dive into the stories of horror savant H.P. Lovecraft, whose fantastical tales, such as “The Call of Cthulhu,” created a new era of Gothic horror. Arcane books of forbidden lore, disturbing secrets in the family bloodline, and terrors so unspeakable the very thought of them might drive you mad. These have become standard elements in modern horror stories. But they were largely popularized by a single author: H.P. Lovecraft, whose name has become synonymous with the terror he inspired. Silvia Moreno-García dissects the “Lovecraftian” legacy. Lesson by Silvia Moreno-García, directed by Globizco Studios.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia | Author Website
“Keep writing.”
“Keep writing since persistence makes the writer, but learn to be critical about your work.”
SOURCE: “Women In Horror Month – Interview with Silvia Moreno-Garcia” | Simon Dewar
[VIDEO] SPOTLIGHT on author Silvia Moreno-Garcia | Intralingo Inc.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a Mexican-Canadian author of six critically-acclaimed novels. Silvia shares her personal challenges in getting her most recent novel published, and offers insight into the larger systemic issues that result in the same old stories being told. “One important thing readers can do is request books that they think might diversify the collection in their library. If it’s not in the collection, nobody can read it.”
Helen Oyeyemi | Author Website
“Prioritize emotional realism.”
“I tend to prioritize emotional realism above the known laws of time and space, and when you do that, it’s inevitable that strange things happen. Which can be quite enjoyable, I think.”
SOURCE: 5 Tips for Writing a Horror Story | She Writes
[VIDEO] Appel Salon | Helen Oyeyemi | March 22, 2019
Anne Rice | Author Website
“Do it your own way.”
“If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Do it your own way.”
SOURCE: On Writing | Official Anne Rice
[VIDEO] Anne Rice talks about writing on Facebook 1/12/17
Nalini Singh | Author Website
“Be ready for the day when the magic happens.”
“My best advice is to write. Just write. Write with all your heart, with everything in you that hungers to tell this story. Finish a short story, a novella, a novel, whatever resonates most with you—but finish it. Then write some more. Exercise those writing muscles until they get itchy if you don’t use them every day. I truly believe that the only way to get better is to practice. And be ready for the day when the magic happens and you get a story that grips you by the throat and refuses to let go.”
SOURCE: Writing 101 with Nalini
[VIDEO] Writing 101 with Nalini Singh: Taking the Plunge into Writing
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[VIDEO] Writing 101 with Nalini Singh: Plotting, Pantsing, & Your own method
R.L. Stine | Author Website
“Be in the eyes of the narrator.”
“You have to create a very close point of view. You have to be in the eyes of the narrator. Everything that happens, all the smells, all the sounds; then your reader starts to identify with that character and that’s what makes something really scary.”
SOURCE: R.L. Stine: ‘Everything That Ever Happened To Me Was an Accident’ | GalleyCat
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Peter Straub | Author Website
“I don’t believe in writer’s block.”
“The worst thing you can do is lose yourself in the maze of how you happen to be echoing another writer’s situations or stances or prose. People find themselves rewriting the same fifty pages over and over, forever. The cure, to the extent that a cure exists, is to move forward, to keep writing and trust that in time what you are writing will feel like fresh experience, your own reality, not a meditation on another writer. I guess I don’t really believe in writer’s block. Sometimes you must wait for things to fall into place within yourself, but that is another matter. At those times, you are still working, although no one believes it. At the beginning of a book, I am very much feeling my way forward, paying attention to the feeling tone of the words as they appear on the page while still in a state of creative uncertainty as to pretty much everything that is to follow.”
SOURCE: Advice to a Young Writer | PeterStraub.net
[VIDEO] Roundtable Discussion: Stephen King, Peter Straub, Emma Straub, and Owen King
St. Francis College and BookCourt welcomed Master of Horror Stephen King for a roundtable discussion in the College’s Founders Hall on April 21, 2015. Joining the author was his son Owen King as well as Peter Straub and Peter’s daughter Emma Straub.
Kamaya Tarpley
“Write what makes YOU happy.”
“The best advice I could ever give would be to write what makes you happy. Even in a perfect world, you will never please everyone. Readers will know if you’re unhappy with your work. Even if the appeal is to a smaller crowd, you and that small crowd can be happy together.”
SOURCE: Authors Interviews
[VIDEO] No Black Fantasy Authors Allowed!
Following some unfortunate incidents at a book convention, Tarpley shared her thoughts. “We all need to expand our minds. I don’t believe I have to make brown characters stereotypical and I don't believe I have to hide them either. I’m a proud Black woman, a proud fantasy author, and proudly open to making my characters limitless regardless of how I color them.”
Kurt Vonnegut
[VIDEO] Shape of Stories: Kurt Vonnegut Lecture | The Case College Scholars Program
Chuck Wendig | Author Website
“Dissect ghost stories and urban legends.”
“Every story is, in its tiny way, a horror story. Horror is about fear and tragedy, and whether or not one is capable of overcoming those things. It’s not all about severed heads or blood-glutton vampires. It’s an existential thing, a tragic thing, and somewhere in every story this dark heart beats. You want to see the simplest heart of horror, you could do worse than by dissecting ghost stories and urban legends: two types of tale we tell even as young deviants and miscreants. They contain many of the elements that make horror what it is: subversion, admonition, fear of the unknown.”
SOURCE: 25 Things You Should Know About Writing Horror | Terrible Minds
Horror and comedy both make us jump—which is why these elements work together so well together. Looking at books from authors like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Tanya Huff, Kelley Armstrong, John Scalzi, Diana Rowland, and Kevin J. Anderson, plus many authors you should meet.