Recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction
In this comprehensive textbook devoted to the craft of writing horror fiction, award-winning author Tim Waggoner draws on thirty years' experience as a writer and teacher. Writing in the Dark offers advice, guidance, and insights on how to compose horror stories and novels that are original, frightening, entertaining, and well-written.
Waggoner covers a wide range of topics, among them why horror matters, building viable monsters, generating ideas and plotlines, how to stylize narratives in compelling ways, the physiology of fear, the art of suspense, avoiding clichés, marketing your horror writing, and much more. Each chapter includes tips from some of the best horror professionals working today, such as Joe Hill, Ellen Datlow, Joe R. Lansdale, Maurice Broaddus, Yvette Tan, Thomas Ligotti, Jonathan Maberry, Edward Lee, and John Shirley. There are also appendices with critical reflections, pointers on the writing process, ideas for characters and story arcs, and material for further research.
Writing in the Dark derives from Waggoner's longtime blog of the same name. Suitable for classroom use, intensive study, and bedside reading, this essential manual will appeal to new authors at the beginning of their career as well as veterans of the horror genre who want to brush up on their technique.
Writing in the Dark: The Workbook has received the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction
Like Tim Waggoner's Bram Stoker Award-winning Writing in the Dark, a manual for how to write horror fiction, this workbook covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from monster, idea, and plotline creation to avoiding clichés and developing the art of suspense. The workbook, however, foregrounds practice over discussion to help writers master these concepts. Both texts stand on their own while working together to provide you with the direction and tools you need to maximize your own authorship.
The wealth of examples, exercises, and tutorials in Writing in the Dark: The Workbook are designed to inspire and stretch the imagination. Waggoner draws from his own experiences in addition to other professional writers, among them Laird Barron, Maurice Broaddus, Nadia Bulkin, Ramsey Campbell, Mort Castle, Tananarive Due, Christopher Golden, Grady Hendrix, Daniel Kraus, Joe R. Lansdale, Elizabeth Massie, Graham Masterton, Seanan McGuire, John Shirley, and many others.
Featuring an introduction by Michael A. Arnzen, Writing in the Dark: The Workbook will resonate with young authors who are just getting started on their careers as well as veterans of the horror genre and craft.
Who says you can't teach creativity?
Ideal for individual or classroom use, ARCHITECTURES OF POSSIBILITY theorizes and questions the often unconscious assumptions behind such traditional writing gestures as temporality, scene, and characterization; offers various suggestions for generating writing that resists, rethinks, and/or expands the very notion of narrativity; visits a number of important concerns/trends/obsessions in current writing (both on the page and off); discusses marketplace (ir)realities; hones critical reading and manuscript editing capabilities; and strengthens problem-solving muscles from brainstorming to literary activism.
Exercises and supplemental reading lists challenge authors to push their work into self-aware and surprising territory. In addition, ARCHITECTURES OF POSSIBILITY features something entirely lacking in most books about creative writing: more than 40 interviews with contemporary innovative authors, editors, and publishers (including Robert Coover, Lydia Davis, Brian Evenson, Shelley Jackson, Ben Marcus, Carole Maso, Scott McCloud, Steve Tomasula, Deb Olin Unferth, Joe Wenderoth, and Lidia Yuknavitch) working in diverse media, providing significant insights into the multifaceted worlds of experimental writers' writing.
Through examples and samples, through exercises designed to pique your brain, even through interviews with authors, this book lays the groundwork for the birth of new ideas. It is a honeycomb filled with thousands of blastocysts from which you--each of you--can nurture and grow new literary children.--Daulton Dickey
Recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction
In this comprehensive textbook devoted to the craft of writing horror fiction, award-winning author Tim Waggoner draws on thirty years' experience as a writer and teacher. Writing in the Dark offers advice, guidance, and insights on how to compose horror stories and novels that are original, frightening, entertaining, and well-written.
Waggoner covers a wide range of topics, among them why horror matters, building viable monsters, generating ideas and plotlines, how to stylize narratives in compelling ways, the physiology of fear, the art of suspense, avoiding clichés, marketing your horror writing, and much more. Each chapter includes tips from some of the best horror professionals working today, such as Joe Hill, Ellen Datlow, Joe R. Lansdale, Maurice Broaddus, Yvette Tan, Thomas Ligotti, Jonathan Maberry, Edward Lee, and John Shirley. There are also appendices with critical reflections, pointers on the writing process, ideas for characters and story arcs, and material for further research.
Writing in the Dark derives from Waggoner's longtime blog of the same name. Suitable for classroom use, intensive study, and bedside reading, this essential manual will appeal to new authors at the beginning of their career as well as veterans of the horror genre who want to brush up on their technique.
In Let Me Tell You a Story, Tim Waggoner continues what he started in the Bram Stoker Award-winning Writing in the Dark (2020) and Writing in the Dark: The Workbook (2022), both of which focus on the art of composing successful horror fiction. This latest guidebook takes a different approach, foregrounding Waggoner's prolific, decades-long career as a professional author. Partly autobiographical, partly tutorial and diagnostic, each chapter features one of Waggoner's stories followed by reflection on the historical context of publication, insightful commentary, and exercises for writers who are just learning their craft and who have already made a name for themselves. As always, Waggoner's experience, wit, and know-how shine through as he discusses and re-evaluates material from 1990 to 2018. Let Me Tell You a Story is a vital contribution to his evolving nonfictional oeuvre.
Writing Poetry in the Dark brings together some of the most successful contemporary genre poets to discuss topics related to creating dark and fantastical poetry.
While there are countless books available for the aspiring poet, there is a lack of resources specifically for and on speculative poetry, and with the market thriving, publishers who previously did not put out poetry are now adding it to their catalogs, requesting it for their anthologies, and seeking it for their magazines. Given these factors, it seemed like the perfect time to put together a guide for dark poets that addresses some of the unique challenges they face, such as creating monsters out of white space, writing the hybrid poem, or subverting folklore in the retelling of a classic tale.
Included in Writing Poetry in the Dark are recommendations on how to bring fear to the page, write from the wound, let violence loose, channel the weird, and tackle the dark side of daily life. There are also practical suggestions for exploring different poetic forms and topics ranging from building worlds, writing from different points of view, and exploring gender and sexuality on the page. This book will bring something different to every speculative writer who is interested in exploring poetry with a genre twist, and it is our hope that this book will help poetry itself continue to evolve, grow, and redefine itself in the market for many years to come.
Culture Critiques from the Author of Annihilation
An entertaining, eclectic chronicle of modern fantastical fiction, Monstrous Creatures delivers incisive commentary, reviews, and essays pertaining to permutations of the monstrous, whether it's other people's monsters, personal monsters, or monstrous thoughts. A two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, Jeff VanderMeer is one of speculative fiction's foremost voices. For the past 20 years, he has not only written weird literary fiction translated into 20 languages, but written about it extensively, influencing the way people think about fantasy through reviews in major papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as through interviews, thoughtful essays, blog posts, teaching, and guest-speaking.
Monstrous Creatures, a follow-up to his 2004 nonfiction collection Why Should I Cut Your Throat?, collects all of his major nonfiction from the past five years, including such controversial pieces as The Romantic Underground, The Triumph of the Good, and The Language of Defeat. Interviews with writers like Margo Lanagan and China Mi ville are an added bonus, creating a dialogue with VanderMeer's own interpretations of the monstrous in the fantastical.
Adaptations, reboots and relaunches, Intellectual property (IP), working in a shared universe-all terms you hear about in the writing world but what does it all mean? And more importantly how does somebody break into these hot markets?
Follow the career of an author already accomplished in many genres of fiction as he details step by step, year by year, the exact path he took to work with franchises such as Alien, Conan, Doctor Who, Dragonlance, Grimm, Halloween, Kingsman, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Pearl Trilogy, Resident Evil, Stargate SG-1, Supernatural, Terrifier, Transformers, xXx, and more.
This one-of-a-kind resource provides everything needed on your journey to become a professional author of media tie-ins, including:
Additional resources are included to ensure that no matter what stage of writing career an author has achieved, they can move into IP work with an advantage. Furthermore, for readers interested in different fandoms-or the pop culture influence on fiction in general-this guide peels back the curtain and provides unique insight into the process that brings your favorite media characters to life on the page.
From the creator of the popular, award-winning Writing in the Dark series on the art and business of writing comes this volume for anyone wishing to upgrade their imagination and career.
Adaptations, reboots and relaunches, Intellectual property (IP), working in a shared universe-all terms you hear about in the writing world but what does it all mean? And more importantly, how does somebody break into these hot markets?
Follow the career of an author already accomplished in many genres of fiction as he details step by step, year by year, the exact path he took to work with franchises such as Alien, Conan, Doctor Who, Dragonlance, Grimm, Halloween, Kingsman, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Pearl Trilogy, Resident Evil, Stargate SG-1, Supernatural, Terrifier, Transformers, xXx, and more.
This one-of-a-kind resource provides everything needed on your journey to become a professional author of media tie-ins, including:
Additional resources are included to ensure that no matter what stage of writing career an author has achieved, they can move into IP work with an advantage. Furthermore, for readers interested in different fandoms-or the pop culture influence on fiction in general-this guide peels back the curtain and provides unique insight into the process that brings your favorite media characters to life on the page.
From the creator of the popular, award-winning Writing in the Dark series on the art and business of writing comes Just Add Writer for anyone wishing to upgrade their imagination and career.
That day we topped a hill at noontime and the land fell away in a panorama so I spun on a foot gazing on the fields of blood-red poppies that sloped down to a far-off church shining, as far as the eye could see, blooming in the sun even to the reaches of the ancient church where the Camino winded, and the three of us, mother, father and daughter, embraced on the roadside with heartfelt joy, this after the hard ride. We sipped wine and broke bread in the cloister marked by the cross of St. James and it was good, this life.
Finisterre, recounts a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in north Spain, from Puente la Reina to the ancient cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, said to house the relics of the apostle James-Iago-walked with Christ. And from there the narrative turns toward the bluffs of Finisterre, holy site of initiation, the emotional, spiritual, and physical boundary of the fourth world. Where earth ends, the place is called, and so it does.