There’s a lot to like in this little book put out by Writers Digest Books in 1990. Part of the Genre Writing Series, Nolan (writer of the acclaimed Logan’s Run series, amongst other things) brings to the table the concepts of theme, dialogue, setting, mood and imagery in the writing of both short and long form horror tales.
The book is written in a friendly, personable style, full of quotes from the author’s own works and those of other famous tales. One chapter is devoted to opening paragraphs meant to hook readers and keep them from putting a novel down, and Nolan uses four full pages of examples to illustrate his points.
In yet another chapter, Nolan reprints his short story “The Pool,” a tale about a young woman and her new boyfriend who find themselves facing an evil entity that resides underwater. In between paragraphs, Nolan deconstructs the story into its individual points, illustrating what techniques he uses and why they work so well.
At a hundred and forty pages, this is a quick read, though remaining chock full of valuable information and advice that has and will continue to stand the test of time. The basic concepts of polished writing will never change, though the markets and players involved continue to flip and rotate as time moves on. For this reason, the listings of publishers may prove to be useless (especially for the small press magazines, which tend to appear and go under at short intervals over the years), but the essential reading lists and appendix of anthologies are still worth looking into.
How to Write Horror Fiction has sadly been out of print for many years, though there are still used copies to be had at decent prices through Amazon’s affiliate merchants.
4/5
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