How to write a horror screenplay

So what's the point of writing movies that are, at one level, just nasty to watch?

Sure, we like to be scared, but there's more to it than that. Good horror is a well-disguised but efficient initiation mechanism for people becoming adults. Think about this - at what age did you see horror movies the most? Most likely between the ages of 15 and 25. if you are watching horror movies after 25 you are most likely a buff or fan - most people give them up around this time.

Lets look at this another way - a scary story for a toddler is 'mum left the house and is never coming back'. For an adult it's 'You got drunk and killed your partner in a driving accident'. For a teenager it's this; 'You thought you were an adult, but here's something that's going to show you better'.

A horror movie is one in which some kind of a monster preys on victims.

Emotional impact is made through the use of terror, fear and revulsion:

- Terror - what's happening, pure fright
- Fear - the anticipation of what is about to happen
- Revulsion - physical disgust

A horror film is on ggod terms with these emotions, indeed a horror film, to fulfill its' teaching' function (see above) MUST not only show emotion but get the audience to experience them - they must be visceral.

Horror are great fun to write and the perceived wisdom is that a first-time writer is more likely to get a horror film made than anything else. This is because horror movies are cheap to make as they have contained sets and small numbers of actors, and they don't need stars - unless they are trying to cross-over into them mainstream market (like Scream).

Horror movies are strongly conventional and don't rely on sophisticated relationships, making them easier to write. They can also rely on one very simple idea if that idea is done well or in a fresh way (think Blair Witch Project).

Also horror is a truly movie-best format. There are a couple of stage plays that are scary (The Woman in Black is one) but horror is particularly suited to film as it uses the camera to direct attention and atmosphere and music to build tension. To write horror you do need to understand how film works.

There is one striking characteristic about the horror movie - the group character. Think about most horrors and there's a common pattern to the group that starts the movie: There's the sensible one, the sexy one, the brainy one, the traitor, the athletic one. You can probably think of more, but the idea is that this group represents a series of aspects of a single unformed personality. Read through that list again and you'll see what I mean - most teens and young adults are a seething mess of contrary impulses and ideas.

And because the horror movie is about teaching young adults that there's more to the world than what they know as they leave the nest of home, so the 'bad' parts of the psyche are proved useless in the tranistion into the real (adult) world. This is why it's usually the sensible one who survives, it's this part of the gruop character that transfers into the adult world.

This is useful to know when you are writing a horror as in effect you are writing one character with many expressions. Thinking this way you can see that horror characters don't generally have to be well-rounded people, often you only have time to sketch in a character before they are killed off.

First off, the monster is often the star. Think of these movie titles:

Jaws

Alien

Nosferatu

If the monster is not in the title then it's often the setting, emotion or the dilemna that is the title:

Scream

Hostel

Saw

Silence of the lambs

The Shining

Cloverfield

Very rarely indeed is the protagoniost the title of the moive. This gives us an important steer - it's the monster that needs to be the star.

So what is the horror monster? It can take the shape of:

Animal (King King, Jaws, Alien, Godzilla)

Force of nature (The Fog)

Man (The shining, Saw, Hostel)

Supernatural (The Ring, Halloween, Hellraiser)

Usually the monster is an exageration of an existing thing. The Alien is really just a very fast and large insect, Jaws is a big shark with an big appetite. Conversley the exageration may be in number. In 'The Birds' or 'Piranha' the effect comes through multiplication.

This extends into horrors where the monster is man. In Hostel the horror comes from the exageration of the impluse to hurt people for fun.

The key to a good horror is to think of a compelling setting or monster first off. Unless the monster or setting is good you are wasting your time.

To write a good monster you should pick something that is meaningful to you. Your monster should have the ability to scare you, the writer! If you are not going to find it compelling then your audience sure isn't.

And this often means going inside yourself to find something nasty. Possibly one of the best things that horror writers have is the ability to not be squeamish about their own fears and faults. This doesn't mean you have to be tortured and unhappy, but it does mean you have to be honest with yourself and have the courage to reveal something about you. I would say that Stephen King is actually a happy man but he sure knows how to mine his own psyche for scary things.

A good horror usually has some kind of larger societal or thematic element to it:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Fear of communism

Psycho - Anxiety of parenthood (a new thing for the Freudian baby boomers)

Godzilla - Fear of nuclear accident and mutation

Night of the living dead - Zombies as 'straights' out to destroy counter culture

Hostel - Contemplation of torture

This extended societal element is great for writers - it means that you can write something that is strongly bound by conventions and yet talk about wider anxieties.

If you are really fascinated by something it can be used as a setting or theme. Just about anything can be used here, preferably something that has never been used before!

Here are some more offbeat ideas that have made good successful horrors:

Obsessive fiction fans (Misery)

The tooth fairy (Darkness falls)

READ HORROR SCRIPTS. Watching horror movies is no good, you won't understand how they are written. To start with read the script of Seven, then a dozen more (they only take an hour to read). This will do more for you than spending years just watching DVDs!