How Do You Write A Horror Book?

Horror stories are some of the most commercially appealing books on the market. The success of authors like Stephen King and Clive Barker speak to the genre's enduring appeal, and fans themselves enjoy trying their hand at writing horror stories of their own. On a deeper level, horror stories reflect the fears and anxieties of the culture that produced them, and can serve as an intriguing bellwether for larger social issues that their overt story lines don't address directly. Writing a horror book of your own is extremely easy. But writing a good horror book? That takes a little more effort. Think about what scares you. Any horror writer worth his salt writes about subject that he himself finds terrifying. If you don't feel the fear yourself, you'll have an extremely hard time conveying it to your readers. At the same time, make sure your fears are shared by at least a certain amount of society, so that they can share it more readily. (A fear of insects, for example, works much ...  more