Oh, horror movies. How I adore/hate you. With your sharp-fanged monsters, and your copious amounts of fake blood, and your unnecessary nudity, and your sequels and your sequels to sequels being released so quick that I just can’t keep track which version of Final Destination or Scream we’re up to anymore.

I spent the other evening re-watching a horror film I had first watched in high school, and hated. But I was on one of those Wikipedia sprees where I was reading one entry that linked to another entry that linked to another, and I ended up on the Wiki page for the film. And because I’m a little bit of a masochist, I rented it and watched it. And I still hated it. The acting was terrible, the writing just sucked, and as the credits rolled I was left wondering why I had just wasted two hours of my life that I would never get back. But, being the optimist I am and needing to find the good in everything, I realized: your standard horror movie fare can provide a really good lesson in constructing a compelling story. Even if you don’t write horror.

The whole point of writing a story (besides your own personal satisfaction) is to in some way affect the reader. To get a reaction out of him. So what better genre to learn from than horror, which is decidedly the most baldfaced in its attempts to get a reaction out of the reader. I mean, really, most taglines for horror films are usually some variant of “So scary you’ll wish you were DEAD!” or “You’ll wet your pants!” And for the most part, the films deliver. People get scared. Reaction = caused. Mission = accomplished. So what can the average schmoe learn about fiction from crappy horror movies? Read more »