Horror screen writing the nature of fear

This is just a great book whether or not your genre is horror.. If you’ve ever wanted to write a horror film, or even if you’rejust a fan of horror films, this book will not disappoint..

— Jule Selbo is an Associate Professor, Screenwriting, in the Radio-TV-FilmDepartment at California State University, Fullerton Professional writing credits

include feature films and television series: Hard Promises, Hunchback of Notre Dame Part Deux, Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Melrose Place,and Maya and Miguel Her recent books include Screenplay: Idea to Successful Script(2007) and the companion volume The Rewrite: First Draft to Marketplace (2008).

This is just a great book whether or not your genre is horror It’s someone speaking —not preaching — from experience about how to write a truly dramatic, original,commercial screenplay which, last time I checked, screenwriting is supposed to be about

— Jeffrey M Freedman, Screenwriter, Vivaldi, Bad Numbers

www.jeffreymfreedman.com/vivaldi.htm

Devin Watson does an excellent job: taking a popular film genre and turning it inside out

to expose all the elements If you’ve ever wanted to write a horror film, or even if you’rejust a fan of horror films, this book will not disappoint

— Matthew Terry, Filmmaker, Screenwriter, Teacher, and Columnist for

www.hollywoodlitsales.com

SCREENWRITING

The Nature of Fear DEVIN WATSON

INTRODUCTION BY SPECIAL EFFECTS ARTIST GENE WITHAM

PREFACE: THE EDUCATION OF THE HORROR SCREENWRITER (AND WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM THIS BOOK)

1 A GUIDED TOUR OF HELL

Before Jigsaw, Leatherface, Freddy, and Jason, there was Dr Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman Early horror film masters such as James Whale and William Castle paved the way for Monsters, Atomic Monsters, and the Monster Next Door Then came Satan, Slashers, and Sequels Galore.

Get a crash course in the history of horror films from the days of

Edison up to the twenty-first century

Learn how trends in society and culture shaped films that, in turn, influenced otherhorror films around the world

2 THE NATURE OF FEAR

Besides death and taxes there are a few other universal things in life Fear is one of those other ones that nobody mentions, like the cousin in prison In order to scare people, you have to know what creates fear

Learn about pacing and how to keep the tension and scares going all the way to theend

We continue with our story by developing the first fifteen pages of the script

5 WRITING EFFECTIVE SCREAMS

Dialogue in any kind of film is worth having Find out how you can make it better and make your characters more believable, even while being chased by an axe-wielding maniac through the woods

He has mastered an art form that is often maligned by people who don’t have theslightest interest in studying the basic points of screenwriting Make no mistake, there is astructure and template that should be learned in order to produce a screenplay that willread well in the mind’s eye.

However, I must admit, most printed matter that delves into this arena is stilted andboring Devin, however, has managed to develop a teaching style that is laid back andrelaxed and anything but pretentious He makes it fun to learn and fun to practice thisenjoyable form He manages to help you get to where you want to go, before you evenrealize you want to be there And with a minimum of hassles I have learned more fromthis man in a short period of time than I had learned in several years of formal collegestudies

Screenwriting is a challenge, as well as an art form This work captures the history ofthe genre and how it has influenced moviemaking throughout the world

The facts are considerable, the history immense, and the learning experience ismagnificent

My hat is off to you, Devin .kudos to you, my Brother

— Gene Witham

2008

Gene Witham is an actor, stuntman, producer, and artist of special make-up effects who

has worked on films such as Baby Blues, Side Sho, The Cursed, Manhunter, Grizzly,and Planet of the Apes.

on the couch in the living room or back in my own bedroom for weeks on end Playingwith other kids was out of the question And so I discov ered books, movies — and myown imagination.

It’s hard to say exactly when I became fascinated with horror stories My brother, whowas twelve years older than I, often showed me scary books and movies from the time I

was very young One of the earliest horror films I saw was Poltergeist, which was released

when I was only four It scared the pants off me — but I loved it

In the beginning, though, I mostly lived in a world of stories I got from printed books,not from the screen Strange as it may sound, many of the ones that frightened me themost were from the Bible Some of these tales I read in children’s versions of Biblestories, each bound in a booklet of about ten or fifteen pages, that my parents bought me.Other stories I heard at the private Christian elementary school I attended I was wide-eyed at the fantastic aspects of some of the Bible stories: Jonah being swallowed by thewhale, Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt I would imagine the particular details of eachtale The destruction of Lot’s wife conjured up not only the strangeness of a human bodyturning into a rigid figure, but also images of Sodom and Gomorrah, of fire and brimstone

I was also taken by the story of Moses and the ten plagues, each of which was worsethan the one before, the last of which was God’s killing the firstborn of the Egyptians,because they had enslaved the Jews, who were saved from this final plague by markingthe doors of their houses with the blood of a lamb Could there be stories with more horrorthan these? The teachers and the principal at my school were dead set against showingviolence on television, yet in class we were reading stories of death and destruction ingraphic detail!

Later I also read some of the apocryphal books of the Bible, which left me full ofquestions about what might have been left out of the official canon of the Bible What else

could have happened?

Like many other kids, I was a voracious reader of mythology, which started when Ifound a copy of Edith Hamilton’s book that belonged to my brother I was intrigued by thepantheon of Greek and Roman gods, and for the first time I understood that there was aworld of ideas and beliefs other than the ones I’d grown up with I was also fascinated by

stories of the battles between Good and Evil, which are at the heart of horror stories andfilms From Roman mythology, I learned about Evil in the form of the Fates and the otherdark obsta cles thrown in the path of man by the ever-interfering gods of Olympus.Sometimes creatures were created by the gods to keep man from getting too close toknowledge, the precious prize, possessed only by the gods To live a good life, or at leastthe way the gods wanted man to live, meant going to the Elysian Fields, and enjoying thewines and fruits of Olympus, while the evildoers who did not follow the way of the godsended up with the god Hades in Tartarus for eternity.

Of course, tales of Good and Evil go back to the beginnings of human-kind, even beforethe Greek and Roman cultures and mythologies, as I learned from further reading Ourearliest stories of fear come down to us in our myths and legends, passed from culture toculture The earliest human writing has been found in Mesopotamia, dating back over fivethousand years, and the story of Gilgamesh is the oldest story of civilized man We alsohave myths of this time about a battle between the forces of Good — described as wingedbeings, the very first references to Angels — and the forces of Evil, called Demons Infact, the Devil or Satan is first described in the stories by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia,

who created a pantheon of gods numbering in the hundreds Gods (referred to as dingir)

such as An, Enlil, Enki, and Inanna were just a few of the myriad omnipotent beings thateither brought light and health, or rained down diseases and terror on the helpless humans.These stories of Demons terrorizing man with temptation and damnation were adopted

by the Hebrews into their Bible during the time of the Babylonian imprisonment Thestory of the Great Flood is also part of these ancient Mesopotamian legends

When I wasn’t reading stories of mythology or religion, I was reading about some ofthe many historical events that further fed people’s views of evil and horror: The barbarianconquest of the Western Roman Empire, the early martyrs of the Christian church, and thechurch battling paganism (or any other belief that wasn’t Christian) As a way for theChristian church to keep control of its converts, church leaders came up with the idea ofturning the people’s former pagan gods into Demons and part of the Devil’s army Thespirits of the forest became the souls of the lost, searching for a body to take over Peoplewho were experts in herbal remedies and healing were cast as witches in league withDemons People were told to be careful of the forest for the darkness is where the Deviland his Demons lived

Before many behaviors were codified into laws, such beliefs made people afraid to docertain things Soon some of these stories, designed to scare the newly minted Christians,took on a life of their own and were passed from village to village Some of them becameold wives’ tales, handed down by word of mouth Others were written down The nightwas not friendly Only those that believed in the power and faith of the church wouldsurvive to see the day Soon, the creatures of the night were given names: werewolves,ogres, vam pires, ghosts Fear of these creatures made people stay in at night for their ownsafety

During the Middle Ages, the Pope called for an army of the faithful to go and saveJerusalem for Christianity from the Moslems Thus we entered into the first of severalCrusades, which lasted for hundreds of years The Islamic leaders decided that the onlysecurity they could have was to counter and attack the Christians’ land of Europe The

One of the Christian Princes who was key in driving the Turks out of Eastern Europewas from a small Slavic country known as Transylvania He killed and then impaled overforty thousand Islamic soldiers Now, impaling is not any fun if you’re still alive whilethey’re doing it, which they were His name was Vlad Dracula and his reputation forhaving a thirst for blood has grown over the centuries through our literature

Inspired by these tales and other like them, I began writing my own stories at an earlyage, though not all of them horror stories The summer I was six, my babysitter gave me apowder blue manual typewriter, and I would type out one- or two-page stories,misspellings and all, that my dad would take to the office and his secretary would post onthe bulletin board there By the time I was twelve, I had started getting more serious aboutwriting

When I was in ninth grade, we read in school about the Spanish Inquisition Witchcraftand non-Christian beliefs were put to the fires of torture in the name of God So-called

“enlightened” minds created mechanical means of torture and slow death Although thewitches and demons they purported to fight were imagined, the man-made horror oftorture was real enough

An even greater real horror arrived in Europe with the fleas and rats from ships thatwent across oceans carrying the Plague, which became known as the Black Death

And around the same time, books came into mass production thanks to the printingpress and with them came the “true accounts” of people who had run directly into thehorrors of the darkness

In the Americas, legends of El Dorado drove men to search and explore unknown lands.But soon other legends and stories arose of unknown creatures that inhabited the inlandforest, creatures that supposedly walked on two legs yet called out with strange never-heard-of animal sounds (In fact, these accounts were describing some Indians, who woreanimal fur both for camouflage and out of the spiritual belief that they became part of theanimal)

During the French and Indian War, a new form of terror was introduced to the frontier

In order for the British to know how many of the French and their Indian allies were beingkilled by the Indians loyal to the British, they started a form of bounty; Indians would taketheir victim’s scalp What worked for the British-allied Indians also worked for theFrench-allied Indians Soon the English colonists warned their children of the night and anew “bogeyman” that awaited them, one who would take their scalps

In early America the influence of African deities also crossed over to the Europeans Anew form of witchcraft and Demons reached the shore with the African slaves that hadbeen torn from their homeland Stories of the “Evil Eye” and the dead walking the landwere told at night to make sure every young boy and girl stayed in their beds and didn’t gowandering off through the house and outdoors

Stories of the Americas would travel through Europe, become twisted, and then be sentback to the Americas to be twisted all over again Thus was the communication of the

trans-Atlantic trade Some ships that left the Americas full of gold and silver were neverheard of again, and were believed to have been devoured by the unknown leviathans of thedeep Some ships that left Europe to start colonies in the Americas never arrived and werebelieved eaten by the same monsters, while others started colonies that were wiped outwithin a year, leaving only mysteries and questions that continued to eat at the psyche ofboth Europeans and their American colonists.

The earliest history of the Western Colonies also brought with it tales of witchcraft.Much like the period of the “red scare” of the 1950s, everybody was seeing witches undertheir beds and hiding in plain sight as their neighbors Trials were held, and many innocentyoung women met their deaths after being accused of consorting with the Devil andconducting witchcraft There was even a manual written about the proper method for

detecting and disposing of a witch: The Malleus Maleficarum1 or Witches Hammer.

One of my teachers told us about the Malleus Maleficarum, but I was frustrated by the

fact that the teacher neither had a copy to show us nor could (would?) tell us where to getone Only when I was in college did I finally see a copy in a library Now, of course, youcan easily find these things online, but when I was younger I had to scrounge forinformation to feed my curiosity about horror

Even when I wasn’t sick as a child, I was left to my own amusements Our family lived

in the middle of nowhere The nearest town was thirty miles away A trip to the library orbookstore was a rare and wondrous event, which I looked forward to eagerly There I

discovered Edgar Allan Poe (when I was nine), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Prometheus Unbound, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (After which I did some research about Vlad

Drakul and saw for the first time that the story was told in different ways.)

Many things I read about as a kid — about the early Christian Church, the so-called

“Dark Ages,” the Crusades — I had no historical context for until I was an adult Buteverything I stumbled upon and read became part of a frightening, yet ever more enticing,body of horror stories

Later I also discovered the early science fiction of Jules Verne (science fiction andfantasy being first cousins of the horror genre) I also became aware of the two pioneering

American writers of horror, H P Lovecraft, author of the Cthulhu Mythos, and August Derleth, who not only published Lovecraft and contributed to his Cthulhu Mythos series,

By then, horror movies, in particular, were the forbidden fruit that I craved They

shocked and scared me, and had a mystical hold on me that to this day has never left.Those of us who are hard-core horror fans can’t get enough of it It’s not just a matter oftaste, but a fascination with evil, horror, destruction, gore, and the rush of feeling fearitself Horror had become my drug of choice

At first I didn’t make the connection between my interest in writing stories (even whenthey were horror stories) and my love of horror films It wasn’t until much later, after I hadseen literally a few thousand movies, that I considered writing my own screenplays.Armed only with my imagination and a few sparse books on the subject, I began my ownquest to learn how to tell a story for the screen.

The first few were, to say the least, absolutely awful Writers may very well be theharshest critics of their own work, but these scripts truly were terrible It tookdetermination, time, and writing quite a number of scripts before I felt even remotelycomfortable with a style that I could call my own

One of my first influences as a horror screenwriter was Stephen King Since I didn’thave an idea of my own voice or how to write, he gave me a starting point I learned that ifyou write naturally, and don’t force it, your own voice eventually will come out

I have been a student of screenwriting for fifteen years It is my belief that you never

fully master an art such as this (I still re-read Stephen King’s The Stand every few years.)

If you keep your mind open to new ideas about it, you’ll find that there’s no truly correctway to write a script

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM THIS BOOK

And that’s where this book comes in Every bit of information here is based on thedifficult lessons I learned over the last fifteen years It is hard-earned information gleanedfrom books, other screenwrit ers, my own experiences, and from filmmakers I watchedwhile working on set

I don’t want you to take this book as a be-all, end-all, guide either to the art of writing ascreenplay or to writing horror It can serve, however, as a good foundation for you as youbegin or continue your own journey through this fascinating and often challenging field

I do not espouse one particular “method” or “system” for you to achieve success In myopinion, methods and systems only serve to constrain and confine a person who wants towrite, who may not take to them How to find your own way, though, is something thatcan be learned, and this book will help you do just that

Success in this business is based on persistence in the face of overwhelming odds, muchlike the odds the characters in your stories face or will face There are no magicalshortcuts to take you to wealth and fame in this business Do it because you love it;otherwise you’ll be very disappointed

There are really only a few hard and fast rules for writing a screenplay you need to keep

in mind, and we’ll get into all of them Beyond that, though, I don’t believe it’s helpful tohave a lengthy checklist of things you must or must not do If your mind is cluttered withtrying to satisfy that many requirements, you’ll forget you’re writing a story and may end

up writing something that reads more like a manual

During the course of this book, we’re going to write a horror script together I’m notgoing to finish it, though It will be up to you to complete the journey that we will begin

together But this is not just an exercise for you, dear reader This is where the trainingwheels come off and you will be travelling under your own powers.

So let’s start the script in collaboration I’ll help you out along the way, but you’ll have

to put in the work, too, in order to go the distance As a famous professional baseballcoach said: “I can get you to the ball, but then you gotta dance.” And in the end, you’llhave something frightening that you can be proud of

There’s more You’ll have a chance to submit your version of the ending of thisscreenplay to professionals It may be your chance to get discovered

1 You can find a complete copy of the Witches Hammer online at malleusmaleficarum.org

BEFORE JIGSAW, THERE WERE FREDDY KRUEGER AND JASON VOORHEES. Before those twowere slicing and dicing up teenagers, there were Michael Myers and Leatherface Andlong before either of them, there were Dracula, the Wolfman, Doctor Frankenstein, and hismonster And before all of them, there was Nergal, Lord of Death

Horror has, among all of the genres in film and written works, one of the longest, mostdistinguished, and often misunderstood bloodlines in history It is often overlooked bycritics who don’t see anything more than blood and guts on the screen, or a collection ofcheap scares But what is most often missed is its commentary on society and life ingeneral

This genre also has a unique ability to show, in a frank, explicit manner, the ills ofsociety and be a warning to us if we don’t do something about it This is where we can getaway with showing some of the ugliest, most disgusting things We can explore thatshadowy side of human nature that many people would rather have swept under the rug.And people will pay money to see it!

Before films were invented, the horror genre already had a long history in myth,folklore, short stories, novels, dime novels and just about anything else that could bewritten, printed, or told on a dark night in front of a fire But how did anyone ever think of

making a horror movie?

The invention of movies by Thomas Edison was seen at first as just a passing fad,nothing that was going to be of importance After all, pictures and film had been aroundfor a long time Although Edison had figured out a way to make pictures move — and atfirst, it was exciting to see a person walk about, do a dance, flex some muscles — thoseclips became boring really quickly But soon early filmmakers had the idea to make

moving pictures tell a story, and Edison created one of the earliest film stories in The Great Train Robbery (1903), the first Western, shot in New Jersey.

The French fell in love with the invention of the movie camera and almost instantly sawthe potential of the machine mixed with the arts In 1896, the first horror film was shot Itwas only three minutes long but it proved that fear could be contained and retold countless

times The Devil’s Castle scared its audience and gave them a taste of what horror films

The art of film progressed, and along with it, horror films were one of the genres thatprogressed at a good pace

German Expressionism was an important art movement of the early twentieth centurythat had a great influence on all film, but especially on the beginnings of horror.Expressionism was an artistic style that depicted subjective emotions rather than objectivereality — “through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through thevivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic” way using formal elements.1

One of the most memorable and influential films was the 1920 German silent movie

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

From Wikipedia, on The Cabinet of Dr Caligari2—

“The film tells the story of the deranged Dr Caligari and his faithful sleepwalkingCesare and their connection to a string of murders in a German mountain village,Holstenwall Caligari presents one of the earliest examples of a motion picture ‘framestory’ in which the body of the plot is presented as a flashback, as told by Francis

The narrator, Francis, and his friend Alan visit a carnival in the village where they see

Dr Caligari and Cesare, whom the doctor is displaying as an attraction Caligari brags thatCesare can answer any question he is asked When Alan asks Cesare how long he has tolive, Cesare tells Alan that he will die tomorrow at dawn — a prophecy that turns out to befulfilled

Francis, along with his girlfriend Jane, investigates Caligari and Cesare, whicheventually leads to Jane’s kidnapping by Cesare Caligari orders Cesare to kill Jane, butthe hypnotized slave relents after her beauty captivates him He carries Jane out of herhouse, leading the townsfolk on a lengthy chase Francis discovers that ‘Caligari’ isactually the head of the local insane asylum, and with the help of his colleagues discoversthat he is obsessed with the story of a medieval Dr Caligari, who used a somnambulist tomurder people as a traveling act

Max Schreck as Graf Orlok in Nosferatu (1922).

Cesare falls to his death during the pursuit and the townsfolk discover that Caligari hadcreated a dummy of Cesare to distract Francis After being confronted with the deadCesare, Caligari breaks down and reveals his mania and is imprisoned in his asylum.” Thepivotal twist ending reveals that Francis’ flashback is instead his fantasy, and the man heclaims is Caligari is in fact his asylum doctor, who, after this revelation of the source ofhis patient’s delusion, claims to be able to cure him

Soon after Dr Caligari, other great European horror films were released, cementing the structure of the genre In 1921 a Hungarian film called The Death of Dracula, the first

vampire movie, was made, the first of many adaptations of Bram Stoker’s novel

In 1922 Nosferatu was produced from an unauthorized film adaptation of Stoker’s

novel It was shot on location and because of copyright problems, the vampire was namedNosferatu rather than Dracula and the location was changed from Transylvania to Bremen

In 2000, a film called Shadow of the Vampire was made that explored the question of what

would happen if the central character, played by Max Schreck, were a real vampire

Of course, the legend of Faust was brought into play as a movie in 1913 with Student of Prague A student makes a pact with the devil for wealth and women (It sounds like a

pact made every week before final exams at any college or university in the UnitedStates.)

The Jewish story of the Golem was also used in early monster movies, such as in The Monster of Fate (1914) and the remake in 1917, The Golem and the Dancer These were

interesting stories of a man-like creature made of clay, bought to life by a secret Hebrewprayer placed into its mouth, based on the idea that God, or rather the secret prayer, can

During the early twenties while Hollywood was still learning how to walk but did nottalk yet, there were some horror films made with the first American horror film star, LonChaney Chaney had been a stage actor known not just for his performances but also forthe transformations of grotesque makeup that he used for his characters He was known as

the “Man of a Thousand Faces.” His 1923 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame was

considered a classic until the Charles Laughton version Chaney’s ultimate performance

was as the disfigured, deranged Erik in The Phantom of the Opera in 1925 It was the

dark, expressionistic tones that helped set the standard for horror films in the ’30s The

Universal had decided to do two films at the same time Sound was getting popular inthe U.S., but most theaters still hadn’t been turned over to sound However in most ofLatin America the theaters were newer and had already been converted, so the studiodecided to shoot the English version during the day and the Spanish version at night tosave money Director George Melford was hired to direct the Spanish version, while TodBrowning did the English version with Lugosi.

Melford realized this was an opportunity for him With his Director of Photography athis side, Melford would watch the dailies shot by the English version unit and try to outdothem with better camera movement, lighting, and so forth To this day many criticsconsider the Spanish version more impressive visually than the English version

He first pursued a career as a newspaper cartoonist, but was drafted for service in WorldWar I During the war Whale earned a commission as Second Lieutenant and was captured

by the Germans While a prisoner of war, he learned to stage plays

After the war he pursued a career in the theater, first as an actor, then as a set designer,and, finally, as a director In 1929, Whale won notice for his direction of the R C Sheriff

play Journey’s End He was promptly imported to Hollywood in 1930 to direct the screen

version Enthralled by Hollywood and the opportunities it represented, he never left

In addition to his horror classics, Whale also directed refined and intelligent films inother genres, usually adaptations from literature or the stage His films are marked by fluidcamera movement, leisurely pace, emphasis on detail, and discriminating restraint Among

his films are the highly regarded Show Boat (1936), perhaps the best version of the musical; a pair of highly sophisticated comedies, Remember Last Night? (1935) and The Great Garrick (1937); and several sharply-crafted melodramas, including Waterloo Bridge (1931) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1939).

Coming on the heels of Show Boat, The Road Back (1937), his film of Erich Remarque’s sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front, was expected to secure his growing

reputation as one of Hollywood’s most important directors

But the Laemmle family, who controlled Universal and previously had given Whalecarte blanche, had lost control of the studio by the time production began When the Nazigovernment objected to the film’s supposedly anti-German elements, the studio’s newowners took Whale off the project, and “comic relief” scenes shot by another directorwere inserted to tone down the elements the Nazis found objectionable The result was acritical and commercial disaster

Whale worked out his Universal contract with second-rate material, eventually walkedoff the set of his last contracted Universal film, and never directed again Wiseinvestments allowed Whale to retire in comfort Relieved of the necessity to earn a living,

he returned to his first love, painting, occasionally directed plays, and often entertainedyoung men at swimming parties

In 1929, Whale and David Lewis, a young story editor and later a producer, began arelationship that lasted more than two decades Although their sexual relationship was anopen secret, they lived rather circumspect lives among the English colony in Hollywood.The sexual component of their relationship ended in the early 1950s, but they remainedfriends until Whale’s death In the early 1950s, Whale began a relationship with PierreFoegel, a Frenchman working as his chauffeur

After a series of strokes left Whale physically and spiritually depleted, he committedsuicide by throwing himself into his swimming pool on May 29, 1957 Because his suicidenote was withheld until after Lewis’s death (and first published in James Curtis’ biography

of the director), Whale’s death was shrouded in mystery for many years His note basicallysaid, “The future is just old age and illness and pain .I must have peace and this is theonly way.”

1945: THE MONSTER IS REBORN

Due to the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent involvement of major producing countries in it, the horror genre was not revisited until the latter half of the1940s The Hollywood filmmaking machine had its hands full with making war picturesand documentaries

film-The late 1940s gave birth to two interesting forces in world history that shaped horrorfilmmaking during its time The latter half of the decade marked the beginning of the ColdWar between two former Allies that had beaten Nazi Germany, and the rise of communism

as the new enemy of the United States

The second happened after an incident in the northwestern U.S., where a veteran pilot,

while flying his private plane, noticed several unfamiliar flying objects in the same skyspace he was in He gave them a name, which has stuck ever since, because it described sowell what he saw The term “flying saucers” entered into our vocabulary and hasn’t leftsince This began a new form of horror film, which fit in perfectly with the Cold Warmentality The thought that some unknown entity was visiting our planet (without ourpermission, no less) and flying around almost unstoppable, even by our superior militarythat had won the war and beaten both the Nazis and the Japanese, was enough to sendpeople for cover.

We had jets We had atomic bombs We were the most powerful nation that had everexisted on the face of Earth since the beginning of time We had broken the sound barrier

in 1947, and now we were on the edge of outer space How could we let unknown beingscome here? What were they planning? It couldn’t be any good if they were sneakingaround without contacting the authorities of our planet Paranoia grabbed the nation.Maybe they weren’t really from another planet but from another country here on Earth.Who would have the technology? This was probably something that only Nazi scientistscould come up with Who had just as many Nazi scientists as we did? The Russians Wasthis the communist plot of world domination that Senator Joe McCarthy was talkingabout?

People were going crazy trying to figure it out Paranoia was running deep in the late

’40s and early ’50s, and Hollywood, as always, was ready to cash in Soon movies

appeared like The Thing from Another World (1951), War Of The Worlds (1953), When Worlds Collide (1951), and the true masterpiece, The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951).

I call that one masterful, not just because it was one of the best of its time but because itwas directed by a master director, the last of his breed, Robert Wise He also directed one

of the best (at least in my opinion) horror films in 1963 called The Haunting Here was

brilliance He took all the things that go bump in the night and put them in a film that had

no special effects of any kind, no blood (not even a drop), yet scared the hell out of you byusing sound and camera angles

Hollywood saw gold in them thar’ UFOs

And it still sees gold in them, as evidenced by Steven Spielberg’s E.T (1982), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and the recent remake of War of the Worlds in 2005.

Maybe the space aliens were thinking of taking over our planet and destroying us, butthankfully we had those atomic weapons If we didn’t take good care of them, they couldturn little garden lizards into gigantic monsters or a normal-sized man into a gargantuan or

We’ve got the military handling it, and they are the best

They would never put thousands of American soldiers at risk out in the middle of thedesert in a foxhole and drop an atomic bomb in order to show off how the military handles

an atomic explosion They even created an atomic cannon so the Army and Marines wouldfeel good at having their hands on nuclear weapons instead of the Air Force and Navyalways handling that stuff The military knew what to do and we trusted them

Mutation? Radiation? What’s that stuff?

Oh, it’s how nature goes and creates monsters

It is nature that takes the radiation released by the atomic weapons that have beendropped off in the desert since 1945 and turns nice little picnic-size black ants into giantsthat threaten the Los Angeles sewage system and those nice two little boys who love to

play in the sewers like in Them! (1954) It is nature again that turns a tiny spider into a monster in Tarantula (1955) And it is nature also that turns a full-grown man into a shrinking man for whom everything in our world becomes a danger in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) All we did was just make the bomb We weren’t responsible for the

side effects, as frightening as they were

Hollywood was making this and that gigantic thing or mutating it Whatever breathed orwalked, could be made to mutate Even if it lived in a Black Lagoon, it could still be amutated into a creature that was half man, half fish Just mutate it and put it on the screen

People came to his movies to be scared and no one was ever disappointed At somescreening of his movies, people dressed as nurses were hired to be in the hallway of thetheater in case you fainted from fright Castle even made sure some people would jumpout of their seats: he had electric wires run to random seats Then, at the right dramaticmoment, the spectators in the wired seats were zapped into jumping up, and everyone elsewould follow

Castle’s The House on Haunted Hill (1959) is a classic and has even been remade for

modern audiences Ahead of the crowd, Castle understood marketing and knew how tocapitalize on it With the changes that were going on in the business, Mr Castle wouldbecome a film-maker emulated in the future He was also the basis for the character of

Lawrence Woolsey in Matinee (1993), an homage not only to Mr Castle but also to the

The other major landmark event was the first printing, publishing, and subsequent

obscenity trial for Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in 1961 This particular fight would

In that year Alfred Hitchcock created his film Psycho, which opened the door to this

new monster known to everyone as — man This was the film that introduced the world to

a new horror, the killer next door It was, in reality, the first psychological killer film Thevery term “psycho” called to mind a medical term, and it was haunting, whenever youthought about it A killer who killed because he liked it (or his mother made him do it) andmost frightening of all, he not only liked it, he enjoyed it There have been other films to

follow in Psycho’s footsteps, most of which were merely poor copies There have also been a few excellent examples that came decades later such as Henry: Portrait of a Serial

Killer (1986), American Psycho (2000), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Monster

In real life, it didn’t work that way True, the decompression period from the war zone

to the home front was just hours, compared to that of previous wars, where it had takenweeks, even months, for soldiers to return home from the front Of course, no oneseriously considered holding the Vietnam vets for several months, which would havecaused more harm than good Even so, once back in the U.S., for many vets there was afeeling of failure, of not being wanted by the people that they had dreamed for years ofcoming home to, and other stresses that led to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Naturally, Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon to make films of the Vietnam vet gone

wild, some of which were more action/thriller, like Rolling Thunder (1977) Let’s also bring in the ultimate film of the Vietnam vet gone half-crazed, First Blood (1982), which kicked off the Rambo series George Fernandez even made a film about the subject in

1984, Cease Fire.

Hitchcock had hit on something with Psycho It was so easily accepted, and if he hadn’t been considered a master filmmaker before, he was after Psycho It opened the door for

many more copies to come out of the woodwork Even today we accept the psychopathickiller as a true monster in every sense of the word Why? Because when we see the JeffreyDahmers and the John Wayne Gacys, we realize that even in our seemingly quiet world,monsters do exist, and they can break all the taboos that our society has, from murder tocannibalism

One of the greatest literary and film characters created in recent years was that ofHannibal Lecter We smirk and cheer at the character so brilliantly played by Sir AnthonyHopkins Some audience members have even thought how much fun would it be to inviteHannibal over for dinner, as long as you weren’t the main course or didn’t have your brainfried as an appetizer while you watched

Even before Psycho had opened the gates to the new monster, modern man, the real

world had already seen ample evidence of the inhumanity of modern man, when the Allieshad opened the gates of the Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II We hadbeen forced to ask ourselves how human beings could have committed these horrific acts

to other human beings and still considered themselves civilized

Another factor in the growing number of stories of ordinary humans becoming monsters

is the way media had shrunk the world we lived in There had been acts of cannibalismbefore, but with limited exposure (There was, for example, the famous Albert Fish of the

As our electronic media has grown, television has brought us to the very places where

we could see the killers’ faces when they were being led off for their crimes Hitchcockhad already seen all this, had understood the monster within, and had brought him out forall to observe and in some way shudder at the thought of how we could be so horrible.Recently, reporting the news about Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, a commentatorsaid something that I found very interesting and probably very true in our society: “We areonly three meals away from chaos.”

Think about it You’re hungry right now, you go to the fridge or the store or dial for apizza to be delivered, whatever Now think about this, there is no food in your house, there

is no food in the supermarket, there is no food in the city or the state you live in What doyou do now? If you have a family, what are you going to give your children? How far willyou go to survive?

First you go through all the drawers, you search out whatever and you use it How longbefore the cats and dogs go, then the neighbor’s animals? How soon before you startforaging or hunting? How soon before civilization is just a word you knew from the past?How soon before you’re willing to do anything to survive or to have your family survive?How soon before you’re the one performing barbaric acts just to get by?

In 1962, the world was introduced to the first of a series of films with Mondo Cane

(Italian for “Dog’s World.”) Mondo, as a subgenre, focused primarily on the idea that thefootage was real, showing realistic situations in everyday life in cultures spanning the

globe, hence the term for the genre of mondo, meaning “world.”

When it was released, Mondo Cane caused a stir, both negative and positive It won an

Academy Award for Best Song, as well as the Palme d’Or at Cannes So why is adocumentary in a book about horror? Because it was horror, only it was the real thing.These types of films not only opened the audience’s eyes, it kept them glued open Thedocumentary approach showed sensational, unaltered scenes of real cultures performingacts that were considered bizarre by Western sensibilities, such as devouring live insects orintentionally mutilating the face as a mark of honor

Once that door had been opened to these kinds of subjects, besides depicting ritualistictorture, rites of passage, and other bloodletting, many other filmmakers would jump on the

bandwagon with their own interpretations Russ Meyer’s Mondo Topless (1966) used the

subgenre as a vehicle for his continuing sexploitation cinema while giving audiences apeek into the lives of strippers in 1960s San Francisco

Mondo could be considered the predecessor to modern reality television, only withoutany commercial breaks and censoring The filmmakers of mondo would continue to outdothemselves up to present day, combining as much raw, real footage of accidents, autopsies,and so on with as little staged action as possible Arguably the culmination of mondo

movies would be in the Faces of Death series, which started in 1978 By this point,

however, staged footage was mixed with real footage to heighten the shock to the

audience even more In either case, these types of movies again explored man in hisunadorned psychological state, both as animal and as victim of his own trappings.

later by George Lucas in THX-1138 (1971).

Zombie movies would continue to be made for the next forty years They could bemade cheaply and had a high return value to them There was something tantalizing in thethought that the dead could rise from their graves and overwhelm the living, causing theend of civilization as we know it

THE 1970S: SATAN, MAN, SOCIETY, AND EXTREMES

In the late sixties and into the 1970s we wanted to calm things down a bit The war inVietnam was escalating out of control, protests and riots were happening in major citycenters In watching film we wanted to go back to something more abstract to help usforget the real horrors beamed into our houses every night on the news

So we went back to a familiar horror: the Devil Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was a film

that showed us Satan is still with us, although now he’s just horny We discovered the lastbook of the Bible dealing with the end of time and the one that was going to bring it, the

Antichrist The Omen (1976) was very successful following this storyline.

There were some biblical scholars at that time that swore the Antichrist was born in

1966 in the Middle East and that the Bible said that the war to end all wars was to beginforty years after the birth of Israel or add forty years to 1947, to get the year 1987, whenArmageddon was to begin (The end of time and a battle with Satan always means goodmoneymaking in Hollywood.)

The Devil continued on his little rampage through the 70s with what is considered by

many to be the scariest film of all time, The Exorcist (1973) Based on a fictionalized

account of true events, this film would set the bar for true fright and horror for many years

to come Reports of people collapsing after viewing the sometimes brutal and realisticallygraphic scenes made the papers When the Reverend Billy Graham reported seeing theDevil in the frames of the film, it only drove more people to see it

David Cronenberg also emerged at this time with the low-budget classic Shivers (1975),

which would depict a theme he would visit over and over: the physical and psychologicalchange of humans into monsters In this particular film, Cronenberg used the idea of beingover-sexualized as a disease that could be caught by parasites and then transferred throughsexual contact with others It was an almost prophetic warning of the coming AIDS crisis.This decade also marked an influx of Italian horror It was a kind of Renaissance forthem, which opened audiences’ eyes and ears to some of the most graphic and intense

horror ever filmed Directors such as Lucio Fulci and Ruggero Deodato gave us Zombie (1980) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980), which, aside from their shocking and realistic

depictions of death and decomposition, also gave us biting commentary on savagery thatexists within our own so-called civilized society

Suspiria (1977), directed by Dario Argento, was another film that exemplified this

Italian Renaissance With slick editing, gripping story, and high film quality, gore neverlooked so good This decade would mark a high-water point for Italian horror filmmakersthat has never been matched since

Horror in the 1970s ended on a high note with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1979).

The adaptation from the Stephen King novel combined both psychological horror withsupernatural elements of psychic powers and ghosts Although well received by audiences,many fans of the novel thought that the adaptation by Kubrick lost some of the scarieraspects of the story

The 1970s were also of note for a major technological innovation: the VCR Both theBetamax and VHS formats, released a few months apart in 1975, ushered in a new way forpeople to watch movies Both battled for supremacy in homes until 1977, when a longer-playing and recording VHS tape and recorder unit finally took hold

The year 1977 was important for another development, both for film in general andespecially for horror: George Atkinson opened the first home video rental store (calledVideo Station) in December of that year The rise of home video was extremely importantfor horror, because many movies that would never have been shown in theaters for onereason or another were finally able to reach a mass audience all over the world Studiossaw this also as a way to keep their movies alive and generating revenue well past theirpreviously short lifespan in theaters

THE 1980S: RISE OF THE SLASHER

If Norman Bates taught us that even the most harmless of people can be cold-bloodedkillers, then Michael Myers was the next refinement of that idea It was only matter oftime until another one rose from the pages to the screen

It only took two years Friday the 13th (1980) launched a long (some would say too

long) killing spree at Camp Crystal Lake, first by the deranged mother Mrs Voorhees,then by her son Jason in the following sequels and crossovers well into the twenty-firstcentury As of this writing, a remake of the first film is in the works

In the 1980s, the only big competitor against Jason for box office money was Freddy

Krueger, starting in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street Both franchises would show their

staying power well into the next two decades, with talk of even more on the way

VHS and home video rentals also exploded in number during the 1980s Americanswere getting their first tastes of horror from other countries, as well as some cult hits fromthe ‘60s and ‘70s, which probably would never have seen the light of day had it not beenfor this revolution Independent filmmakers of the day suddenly had a new, widespreadoutlet for their low-budget creations Now you didn’t necessarily have to aim for thetheater to make your horrific masterpiece break even The direct-to-video age was born

THE 1990S: REMAKES AND REFINEMENTS

The 1990s, in terms of American horror films, saw some new takes on old ideas The great

slasher franchises of the ’80s were drawing to a close Friday the 13th registered its ninth installment in 1993, while Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare bowed out its own series

in 1991 However, both of these giants could not be kept dead for long, with Freddy

returning in 1994’s A New Nightmare and Jason Voorhees in 2001 For the most part, the

field was rife with new blood

The story of the haunted house was given a facelift and put into new territory: outer

space Event Horizon (1997) took the haunted house, turned it into a gothic-styled

spaceship, and put it on the fringes of the solar system In the words of its director, Paul

W S Anderson, the old idea behind the haunted house was that you could always escape.But what if you couldn’t because the nearest habitable place was several billion milesaway?

The contemporary haunted house story was also given new life with a fuller treatment

of The Shining (1997) This version, written by Stephen King himself and broadcast as a

five-hour miniseries, was considered by many to be an extremely faithful adaptation of thebook

In the ’90s, independent film became a more fierce competitor to the big studioprojects, especially in the area of horror With seemingly nonexistent budgets,

March, 1990 Tokyo, Japan It was announced that the police had arrested TsutomuMiyazaki, a quiet, 26-year-old Japanese who came from a middle-class family and worked

in a print shop His crimes: kidnapping, murdering, and dismembering four preschool-agegirls in 1988 and 1989 What made the crimes more horrible to the Japanese people wasthat Miyazaki confessed to cooking the hands of one of his victims and eating them Japanhad entered the ugly world of the serial killer and cannibal

Five years later, in Tokyo, trains were attacked with nerve agents that killed manyinnocent commuters An extreme cult movement was found to be the culprit Soon after,this horror was reflected in the films that came out of Japan

Ju-On (2000) and Ringu (1998) were two films that came out and ran right into

American theaters Actually, only after they were Americanized a bit Don’t they sound

familiar? They both made a lot of money Ringu was remade as The Ring (2002) and Ju-On became The Grudge (2004) Of course, the idea of a restless spirit or spirits had

already been visited earlier by American filmmakers, most recently before these film in

Poltergeist (1982) and The Entity (1981).

Japanese audiences went wild for these films and so did American audiences for theirAmericanized counterparts

Many Japanese film viewers like movies that jump from scene to scene, from here tothere with seemingly no connection, sometimes leaving people wondering what is going

on We Americans at first didn’t know what to make of these films, but we knew onething: these movies scared us And that’s all we needed to know

The Finnish didn’t want to be left out of the movement of thriller films coming over

into our market; one of their films, Insomnia (2002), was also translated and

The old werewolf story was given a new spin with 2000’s Ginger Snaps This modest

independent film told the tale of a young girl turning into a werewolf at the same time shewas beginning to experience womanhood It was a wonderful allegory of two kinds ofchange, in the form of female sexuality as well as in that of a werewolf It has spawnedtwo sequels

Ginger Snaps was a prime example of what the new century would hold While

nowhere near a success at the box office, it found a wide following on DVD Studios andindependent filmmakers alike saw this as a strong medium for output People weren’t

going to the theaters as often anymore; they had theater systems in their own living roomsthat made going to the commercial theater less appealing Rising ticket prices alsocontributed to it The DVD was suddenly a viable means of getting your movie out, nolonger carrying the stigma of being a direct-to-video release.

With the DVD becoming the dominant form of home video distribution, VHS salesdwindled down to nearly zero On December 23, 2008, the last supplier of VHS,Distribution Video Audio Inc., shipped its final load of tapes from its factory and ceasedproduction

The rise of Internet usage is one more source to look out for In the past few years, it hasbecome a great distribution medium for movies, without the need for a DVD player at all,just a computer Netflix, Sony, Tivo, Apple, and Microsoft have all jumped into the gamewith both hardware and software for easily downloading and viewing movies in high-definition right in your home on your computer or television Only time will tell if this is aviable medium for distribution, but it certainly levels the playing field for all the smallerguys out there!

This is just an example of what films have become now: a truly worldwide product Ifthe Japanese can make a better and more horrifying movie than they can in Hollywood,then let them do it We now have a global market and a global production center

With the technology that exists today, the next great horror film might be shot andproduced in a neighbor’s backyard We have entered the age that Francis Ford Coppoladubbed the “democratization of filmmaking.” That’s why you’re here, that’s why you’rereading this book: to learn how to write a horror screenplay

ONE MORE THING

At the end of every chapter, I’ve included a few additional challenges to take on called

“Extra Credit.” If you’re feeling brave enough, try to do them all They are there to helpgive you a jumping-off point to further understand the material presented and to also youhelp you become a better writer

“Pull me under, I’m not afraid.”

— Dream Theater, “Pull Me Under”

HORROR IS TRANSGRESSIVE ART It seeks to show the darker side of human nature in all itsugliness Using the medium of film, we explore themes that are considered off-limits toother genres Our explorations of the dark underbelly of life can give the audience acathartic experience as well as us, the writers

Let’s make a deal I’ll tell you what I know about horror screenwriting, you can learnhow to get your feet wet, and I won’t try to pull the wool over your eyes with big, floweryterms steeped in the academic world I’m a very practical person when it comes to writing.We’re trying to tell stories, not write an instruction manual for a nuclear reactor

What we will be doing during the course of this book is write a horror screenplay Itwill not be a finished script, but rather something that you will complete on your own as achallenge Since we work in a visual medium, and the old line is “show, don’t tell,” that’sexactly what we’ll do But first, there are a few things we need to understand about ourchosen genre

Besides death and taxes there are a few other universal things in life Fear is one ofthose other ones that nobody mentions, like the cousin in prison In order to scare people,you have to know what creates fear

Here’s another universal truth: people pay money to get scared From the haunted housetour to the horror movie, the experience of being scared is what we’re in the business ofselling We can write some of the most gruesome, terrifying scenes that would scare thepants off even ourselves and anyone else, and audience-goers will plop down their hard-earned money to see it in living color on the big screen That’s one of the many things Ilove about horror

Horror movies provide a safe outlet for people to experience being frightened Muchlike the thrill seekers who climb mountains or ride fast roller coasters, the horror movieaudience wants to be scared As screen-writers we can’t let them down

So, what exactly is fear then? If you’re reading this, then you’ve experienced it at least

once in your life From a physiological standpoint, fear is the body’s reaction to threats,whether real or imagined, most typically as part of the “fight or flight” mechanism we allhave Adrenaline is dumped into the bloodstream, the heart beats faster, pupils dilate, andthe senses are heightened.

Fear is a natural reaction to something that scares us; it’s an emotion that drives us tostay alive in horrific situations But that’s only what happens physically The real center offear is in the mind, which is where we as horror screenwriters will concentrate our efforts.Fear has a significant attachment to emotion This attachment can make an ordinary,sedate person perform irrational and often mentally unsound actions Let’s look at some ofthe more common causes of fear here to better understand how we can apply them in ourscripts

THE UNKNOWN

All fears can trace their lineage to a common source: the great unknown Not having a

clear understanding of something can be a great fear inducer In Event Horizon (1997),

throughout the movie the only concrete answer the expert Dr Weir could give to explainthe phenomenon of the ship seeming alive is “I don’t know.” Those three magic words cansend chills down a moviegoer’s spine; they’re right there with the characters, seeingeverything and knowing just as much (or little) as they do It wasn’t until the last moments

of the film that the whole truth was revealed about where the ship’s crew went and whatwas really going on

Now let’s look at a real-life example: the AIDS epidemic

During the early 1980s, the level of scientific knowledge of HIV was not what it istoday Because of this, rumors circulated in public that you could catch HIV through asimple handshake or any other casual contact with an infected individual As ourunderstanding of the virus grew, the government pushed for more public education abouthow one can and cannot catch HIV in order to dispel the misinformation

Unfortunately, many of those rumors ended up causing irrational, fear-induced violenceagainst those infected, or even suspected, of having, HIV The lack of understanding,coupled with public anxiety and unrest over this deadly killer, led many to overreact intheir everyday lives

This fear of the unknown had a great influence on director David Cronenberg’s remake

of The Fly (1986) The general public at the time was still worried about the AIDS

epidemic, and Cronenberg reshaped the story into one of a man transforming under theinfluence of an unknown disease Seth Brundle at one point says, “I seem to be afflicted

by a disease with a purpose, wouldn’t you say?”

Although Cronenberg denied that the film was an allegory about AIDS, the concept ofthe disease at the time and the film’s being linked to HIV/AIDS was foremost in manymoviegoers’ minds and helped drive ticket sales

This was in contrast to the original film’s focus on science gone awry The result was a

PHOBIAS

Phobias are a common group of irrational fears that many people have, such asagoraphobia, a fear of public or unfamiliar places, or acrophobia, a fear of heights Manywriters have combed through this rich tree for inspiration and come up with somepowerful stories One primary reason is that by giving a character a well-known phobia,the audience can better connect with their humanity They can also help give a charactermore depth Many phobias are well documented by professionals, which gives writersready-to-serve material they might need as research

Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor used acrophobia to great success with the Alfred

Hitchcock movie Vertigo (1958) Manipulated by the clever use of point-of-view, the

audience is pulled into the character’s perspective and experiences his private hell, theway he perceives heights

Phobias have also been used in a slightly more lighthearted tone in horror movies

Arachnophobia (1990) played on the very common fear of spiders It gave audiences a

deep and sometimes humorous look into a venomous spider outbreak in a small ruraltown, alternately making people laugh and then cringe behind their seats

In both of these movies, the phobia of the protagonist is a central story element andfocus of the character’s arc In order to complete his arc, the character must overcome, ifonly temporarily, his phobia in order to achieve his desired goals

THE SHADOW SELF

Whether or not we’d like to admit it, there is a darker side to our psyches The pioneeringpsychiatrist Carl Jung referred to this darker side as our “shadow self.”1 This was thought

to be where our more malevolent thoughts came from, bubbled up to the surface, andbecame manifest in our actions

The idea of man as his own worst enemy and a monster under the surface comes from

this idea of the Shadow Self Psycho’s Norman Bates is a classic example from film, while

many real-life serial killers embody this notion of evil and malice lurking just beneath thethin veneer of a charismatic smile Indeed, I’ve see many examples of the Shadow Self as

a thematic element in my scripts after writing them My first produced feature, The Cursed, had protagonists that had to deal with a creature who was once a corrupt man

whose own hatred manifested itself externally, turning him into a monster both inside andout

Don’t be afraid about something dark and ugly slithering to the surface of yourconsciousness and making itself known: That’s often where some good ideas come from

we will People don’t want to find themselves in a situation where their lives could end atany moment

It is compelling for us to see those who die on the screen, because in doing so we dealwith our own mortality It’s another strong reason why audiences are glued to the screens

UNDERSTANDING YOUR OWN FEAR FOR FUN AND PROFIT

To get a better handle on horror you should know your own fears and why you have them.Chances are good that if you have them and can expound upon them in a story, you willalso find many others who share those fears

Try writing down what scares you It may not be something you use in a story, but itwill help you understand what it is about you, the writer and the person, that gives you aunique psychology Let me tell you a little story about one of my own fears

The movie Alien scared the living hell out of me when I was a kid And given its box

office take, not just me but countless others There was something very unsettling,

an egg inside of your chest

You wake up and feel okay, but a bit out of it with a sore throat A few hours later, youstart convulsing and thrashing about as your chest explodes outward, leaving you for dead

as the newly-born creature slides out It used you as nothing more than an incubator while

it grew, then “hatched” out by tearing through your chest And don’t get me started on thefull-grown adult with its razor-sharp tongue breaking through your skull to incapacitateyou so it can grow more of its brood

Later on in my life, after doing some research for my own horror story, I discovered thatthere were real-life counterparts in nature to this creature that were the inspiration for it:the braconid wasp2 and the human botfly.3

Out of the two, it was the botfly that most sent my skin crawling The botfly’s eggs arecarried by a host mosquito in the tropical regions of the world and detach when they come

in contact with warm human skin Body heat also causes the tiny botfly larva to hatch andbegin burrowing into the skin, leaving only a small puncture hole at the surface forbreathing As they feed off the host body, they grow to about the size of an adult humanthumb, with spikes lining their segments to prevent them from being pulled out I readdozens of medical journal reports of botfly larvae being found in unsuspecting victims’backs, arms, breasts, even their scalps all the way down to their brains (Figure 2-1 and 2-

2), wriggling around And this was real!

Figure 2-1: A human botfly larva after removal from a victim Note the rings of black spines to keep it in place.

Can you see what I’m getting at? By knowing what scared me, I was able to connectwith my audience at more visceral level and relay my own horror and fear of something,while at the same time entertaining people.

APPLYING FEAR

So how do we take what we know now about fear and introduce it into our story? Throughtension and suspense As horror screenwriters we have it a little tougher than those whowrite drama or action; we have to establish the tension as early as possible and carry thesuspense as far as possible in the story It requires a little more work, but it’s worth it

So where do we get our ideas? This is one of those things that nobody can really helpyou with as a writer Ideas can come from anywhere at anytime I generally get my ideasfrom observing the world Keeping your eyes and ears open will give you plenty ofinformation to start putting a good story idea together

Sometimes a story comes to us fully formed Those are extremely rare occasions, sodon’t hope to just sit back and let them come to you You’ll have to find your story ideaand put it through its paces to see if it’s workable or not Sorry to dash your hopes, but formost of us it simply doesn’t happen that way

Anyway, we should start thinking of our own story idea I like the concept of globalwarming, or global climate change It’s a topic that can be terrifying for many, since itessentially means the end of life as we know it on Earth However, in a horror setting, weshould concentrate more on the personal level It not only helps us to connect to thecharacters, but it helps our audience to connect to them as well

The first thing then is to sketch out some ideas It doesn’t have to be the full idea; a fewwords or images work for now We want to write a story about global climate change,mankind’s interference, and our own lack of knowledge about nature Keeping thecharacters together helps Putting them into a situation that is seemingly inescapableforces them into the conflict

Here’s what I have so far, then, based on that short brainstorm:

Climate change

Climate change is one of the principal pieces, so we don’t want to get rid of it One ofthe big news pieces I find myself reading over and over has to do with the arctic shelfcollapsing So I immediately also thought cold But hasn’t this been done before? Sure it

has An Antarctic base terrorized by a creature from another world was the basis for The Thing From Another World and its gooey remake The Thing But that doesn’t mean we

can’t be different Let’s turn the idea on its head We’re above the Arctic Circle, not inAntarctica However, that’s not enough of a difference We need to go further

And this is the part of the process that I really like: the “what if “ scenarios By askingthose two simple words, we can imagine where to go with the story at any given point andtry new things on for size like a pair of pants We’re still playing with the story, so it’sokay

What if we told it from the perspective of a rescue or resupply group coming to aremote base? That’s better And through some force of nature the ship carrying the group

to the base gets thrown off course It’s happened before and it happens even to this day.The Aurora Borealis has been known to knock out GPS and satellite communicationduring particularly energetic solar storms, which are two of the mainstays of modernships Even undersea cables have been known to feel the effects That’s not to say theywouldn’t have some other means of communication, but we can deal with that later Rightnow we have a credible mechanism that can take care of easing the isolation of our hardycrew

GRAB IT BY THE THROAT AND DON’T LET GO

We’re almost ready to start spilling guts on the page But first, we should come up with agood opening sequence The first five pages of the script are probably the most importantpart you will ever write The first five pages should set the tone for what’s to come andwhat the audience can expect from the rest of the story We shouldn’t let them down

Since we already have a setting and a rough idea of who our characters are, let’s back

up a bit and give the audience a short explanation of why this rescue team is coming We

can establish that there is a base and that there are problems But we don’t need to delveinto any explanations of how or why the problems exist That’s for us to tease out later.Now let’s write our first five pages:

It’s actually only four pages, not five as previously stated That’s okay These are nothard numbers If you can grab the attention of your audience and hold it within five pages

or less, then you’re doing well

Did it make you want to turn the page to find out what happens next? Were you askingyourself about what was going on, trying to figure it out as you went along? And whatexactly did Johnson find down there in that hole?

At this point we should also talk about “disposable characters,”4 because you just saw