How do you write a horror novel from start to finish? According to SelfPublishingus.com most people never finish writing a book. In fact they claim that only 3/100 people that start reach the end. I don’t know if I trust those statistics, but I do know that for nearly 35 years I was one of the 97%.
It wasn’t until my late 20’s that I picked up writing. I found a copy of J. Michael Straczynski’s: “The Complete Book of Scriptwriting” in a public library. At the time I was a business major in college. I had read Gregory Goodell’s “Independent Feature Film Production.” and thought that was my path.
Goodell peeled back the mystery of film production. I had a knack for recognizing talent, so I felt it was my calling; however film, even digital, is an expensive art form and I had grown up food stamp poor. Here in small town Indiana I didn’t know anyone that knew anything about film production. I took accounting because I figured that if I knew how to work the budgets then I would know how to get the money and that’s all it would take, right? Be kind, I’m sure I’m not the only hick that ever thought that.
However, when I found Straczynski I realized paper and pencil were the least expensive tools in production. I always had a pad of paper and a favorite ink pen. Even if I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer I was always doing it.
I followed his index card method of writing scene summaries one after another then rearranging them into an order that made sense. I typed them up in a Word document following format as best I could and 6 weeks later I had a finished screenplay. It was absolutely horrible and overly autobiographical, but I had finished. It was called “My Worst Year” but now it’s just “My First Screenplay” (or “My Worst Screenplay).
This was what I was passionate about. I had already determined that I was not going to spend my limited time on earth pursuing money (which is the best decision a writer can make – sad emoji) or anything that I didn’t care about. Thankfully, Indiana University had literary pre-requisites for business majors and as I read Straczynski I took a class in Shakespeare.
I loved Shakespeare in high school. It was my only A+ in English. It relit my fire for the art and just like that I changed my major to writing. The professor told me there was a screenwriting class in Indianapolis and the next semester I was there. I wanted to learn how to write better screenplays.
Next week I will tell you how I went from writing screenplays and producing films over 15 years to writing my first novel THE END AS WE KNOW IT. Then I’ll share my process for starting a story, from outline to screenplay, and turning that into a novel. You’ll be able to see how I write a horror novel from start to finish.
Until then, be of service, kill your heroes and eat the rich.