3 Books that Teach you How to Write Horror
Article By: Richard Klu
Horror can be a difficult egg to crack. The genre is easy to over do and easy to underdo. You have to have a good balance of showing some things while hiding other to form a horrific mystery.
The Hellbound Heart
This is a great book to learn about gratuitous content. Clive Barker covers topics of such disgust that some of the more graphic scenes in the book are absent in the movie created from it, Hellraiser. He does it tactfully so that the goreyness of the scenes does not turn readers away. The graphic nature is necessary.
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
This collection by Steven King who's where King is strongest. Short stories. Each story is well rounded and flushed out. The stories don't drag on or bore. They provide enough information to horrify you because of the circumstance or by letting your own imagination run wild. What King does best is people. His wild imagination teeters on Weird Fiction at times.
The Haunting of Hill House
Written by Shirley Jackson this book is a great look at tension building in a story. This is a story that makes the readers ask questions and question their assumptions. It's engaging. If you can get your readers guessing what's going to happen while maintaining a cohesive storyline you're going to have a good book that people like to read and talk about.
Richard Klu is a horror writer and author. You can find more by Richard on his blog. Richardklu.wordpress.com