Nailing the Nightmare: Writing Horror
Never-ending email chains, maze-like grocery stores, boring meetings and rush-hour traffic...sometimes the best escape from the mundane horrors of our waking lives is to step into a far more terrifying story! In this bundle, both novelists and short story writers will gain expert advice on building a horror setting, creating and maintaining tension, developing characters, and more. Valued at $655.90, this package includes eight OnDemand webinars taught by bestselling horror authors, and two digital editions of Writer's Digest Magazine featuring cover interviews with authors Chuck Wendig and Stephen Graham Jones, all at a discount of 90% off. Save money and craft the nightmare of your dreams today!
Products included in the bundle:
Writer's Digest September/October 2023 Digital Edition - So much about writing and publishing is mysterious. In a way, each new story one starts drafting is a mystery—who are these characters, what do they want, and what will happen to them? Likewise, once the story is revised and polished, how can the writer get the story into the hands of readers? The September/October 2023 issue of Writer’s Digest is all about “Facing the Mysterious,” whether that’s figuring out the plot twist, finding an agent, or talking to the press once the book is published. ($7.99 value)
Writer's Digest March/April 2025 Digital Edition - Sometimes, the most exciting writing is that which confounds expectations. Writing that combines tropes, ideas, or different genres in unexpected ways to create something entirely new. Or novels that mix interactive elements with traditional storytelling to guide, or even misguide, readers (think: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr). In this issue, readers will find articles about writers, stories, and techniques that effectively mash up seemingly disparate genres or elements of storytelling to push the boundaries of writing. ($7.99 value)
The Physiology of Fear - Learn how fear affects the human mind and body – and how to make this work for you in your fiction. Topics covered include: The psychological aspects of fear; The physical aspects of fear; How fear responses affect the human brain and body; and How the effects of fear impact your writing. ($79.99 value)
How to Craft Scares - Are you looking to startle or surprise? Boil unsettling sensations up into visceral feelings of dread? A corrosive brew of both? In this presentation, I’ll talk about the basics of writing scares – pacing, character, location, as well as the challenges (and opportunities) of a hungry readership that has seen it all. I’ll also delve into the hard questions only you can answer* that’ll point you in the direction of the scares only you can write. (*Whether you want to or not is another question.) ($79.99 value)
Finding Hope in Horror - For some people, horror is gory, bleak, and unsettling. And that can certainly be the case, but what about Hopepunk? What about putting some hope in your horror, what might that look like? Is your horror story worth the trip? Does the horror HAVE to win every time? This isn't about writing a happy ending or pulling your punches, this is about fully embracing horror—the bleak, the scary, the unsettling, and the gory—while at the same time finding hope, optimism, and other emotions outside of terror. The last flavor, the last emotion, the last image—it CAN be inspiring, uplifting, and hopeful. ($79.99 value)
What I Wish I'd Known When Starting Out in Horror - One of the most effective (but draining) ways for writers to learn is through making mistakes...lots of mistakes. But what if you could cut down on these "learning moments" by getting some inside information from someone who's already been through that gauntlet. In the horror community’s tradition of paying forward and with the aim of decreasing participants’ learning curves, a veteran horror writer shares what he wishes he’d known when starting his career. ($79.99 value)
Terror vs. Horror - In order to tell a truly haunting and effective horror story you must do many things, but the most crucial is the balance between terror and horror. What does that mean? Horror is a balance between clues, hints, tension, and foreshadowing (terror) paired with the truth, the reveal, the horror come home to roost (horror). We'll talk about this concept in greater detail, along with ways to execute both aspects, to create a thoughtful, layered, intense horror story. ($79.99)
The Power of Setting in Your Novel - Of the three basic elements of a novel—plot, character, and setting—setting is often considered the least important aspect of storytelling—or, on the flip side, setting is elevated to the role of a character in its own right. The truth is plot, character, and setting are (or should be) inextricably intertwined. In “The Power of Setting,” Connie Berry will demonstrate how authors can use setting to immerse readers in the story, drive the plot, amplify character, plant clues and red herrings, create conflict and ramp up tension, reflect themes, reveal backstory, and foreshadow later events. She will also discuss five ways authors get setting wrong—and how to fix them. ($79.99 value)
How to Weld Dread: Hanging and Carrying a Dark Mood From Start to Finish - One way to capture the attention of readers and keep them engaged in a story is to build a sense of dread. In this presentation, Donyae Coles will go over what "dread" is in the sense of story and how to pull it into a story beyond just fear of the "bad guy." Although a horror author, Coles will speak to how dread can be used in other genres of fiction as well to create compelling stories readers love. ($79.99 value)
Writing Neurodivergent Characters in Horror - Neurodiverse or neurodiverse-coded characters, from Hannibal Lecter and Frankenstein’s Monster to Stephen King’s Holly Gibney, have long drawn readers and writers to horror, yet multifaceted and nuanced representation remains elusive. In this OnDemand webinar the instructor discusses the stereotypes and tropes that have come before—everything from hyper-intelligent, emotion-free killing machines to the hyper-fixated, socially awkward investigators who pursue them—as well as the challenges in depicting invisible disorders that express themselves in a myriad of ways. Most importantly, we’ll talk about how to create authentic, neurodiverse characters that aren’t merely a grab bag of their expressed traits and exist on the page with full, lived-in personalities. ($79.99 value)
