Writing Work Review: Write Horror Fiction in 5 Simple Steps by Laura Baskes Litwin

Introduction:

This week’s Writing Work Review comes from the Creative Writing in 5 Simple Steps series. Write Horror Fiction in 5 Simple Steps by Laura Baskes Litwin, a freelance writer from the East Coast who has published nine works.

Eight of these nine are biographies and include Fannie Lou Hamer: Fighting for the Right to Vote, Benjamin Banneker: Astronomer and Mathematician, and E. B. White: Beyond Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.

Overview:

This 48-page book proposes to narrow down the craft of horror fiction to only five steps. With its contents page labeling these steps as the chapters of:

• Finding Inspiration
• Planning and Research
• Organization
• Write, Write, Write
• Publishing your work

Other things included are chapter notes, glossary, suggestions for further readings, an addendum, and an index.

Overveiw and Arguments

The first page and a half of this book is a retelling of a story from The Craft of Writing by Stephen King summarizing that inspiration for ideas just come to you, you don’t go looking for them. From there the book goes on to give you one page (plus one paragraph) description of what Horror Fiction is, described mainly as “a good horror story is like a good ride at an amusement park.” (7)

From here pages 8,9,10,11,12, and 13 are all listed suggestions of horror fiction and movies to help you understand the genre through I have to disagree with the addition of Jaws (1975) as being a horror movie.

In the Finding Inspiration chapter, there is a point that I very much disagree with, “The main character needs to triumph over the bad stuff in order for the story to ultimately succeed.” (15) No, they don’t. I know this point is widely debatable, but happily ever after isn’t always in the books for a horror novel. Sometimes the bad things win and that’s ok.

Some popular examples of this are

• American Psycho by Easton Ellis
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott. Fitgerald

Now, these may not all be horror novels, but it shows that a book can become popular, famous, and taught in most high schools without having the coveted happily ever after. As an avid horror reader, I don’t go into a story believing everything is going to work out in the end, I can hope it does, but if it doesn’t I’m still going to enjoy the journey of the story.

The chapter ends with the author encouraging the reader to think about what they are afraid of and find their inspiration from there or try one of the ten writing prompts to help get them started.

From here the reader moves on to the section on How to Horrify where they are once again told to draw their inspiration from what they fear, as long as they have their protagonist triumph and gain control in the end.

Assessment:

While this book was an enjoyably frustrating way to spend an hour or so, at the end of the day, this book will be making its way into a donation pile for my local library as the information in it could have been summarized in one sentence.

‘Write about what scares you and read Stephen King’s On Writing (2000).’

As much as the idea of a simplistic how-to-write horror can encourage the new genre writer there are several resources I would suggest before picking up this book from an online retailer, local library, or used book store.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft Stephen King and On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association are two amazing works, the first of which is mentioned often in this weeks writing work, are two comprehensive and complete guides that will have any writer able to tell a story that will thrill, excite, and scare their readers.

This book is perfect for the recommended age 10–13-year-old middle school/ early high school teen writer learning about the idea of writing horror for the first time, but I can’t recommend it for the serious adult writer looking at publishing in a serious capacity.

If you have or know of a young writer looking to write stories about things that go bump in the night they will find this to be a helpful resource to get them started.

If you believe this book may be helpful to you and you would like to support me you can purchase this book from Amazon here where I will receive a small affiliate payment. I was in no way asked by anyone to review this book and all options are solely my own.

Other works mentioned:

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft Stephen King

On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association

If you’re like me and you do not mind books being purchased second hand I recommend using FindTExbooks.com which compiles a list of where you can find this book used and in what condition it will be. I receive nothing from you using this link, but it will help you find the best price for this book whether new or used. You can find the link for this site below.

https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?author=&title=&lang=en&isbn=9780766038363&new_used=*&destination=us&currency=USD&mode=basic&st=sr&ac=qr

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