1st Edition

How To Write A Horror Movie

By Neal Bell Copyright 2020
180 Pages
by Routledge

180 Pages
by Routledge

180 Pages
by Routledge

How to Write a Horror Movie is a close look at an always-popular (but often disrespected) genre. It focuses on the screenplay and acts as a guide to bringing scary ideas to cinematic life using examples from great (and some not-so-great) horror movies. Author Neal Bell examines how the basic tools of the scriptwriter’s trade - including structure, dialogue, humor, mood, characters, and pace –... Read more

Acknowledgments

A note on transctiption of dialogue and screenplay format

Chapter 1:  "Who Goes There?": A Brief Introduction to Horror
Chapter 2:  What Scares You?
Chapter 3:  Basic Horror Movie Structure
Chapter 4:  Building Act One
Chapter 5:  The Changed World of Act Two
Chapter 6:  Ending and Beginning
Chapter 7:  Dialogue
Chapter 8:  Fearful Landscapes
Chapter 9:  Humor in Horror
Chapter 10:  "Beyond This Point Are Monsters" - Digging Up Inspiration
Chapter 11:  Politics and Global Horror
Chapter 12:  "Our name is Legion" - Varieties of Horror
Chapter 13:  "Dead Man's Chest" - The Economics of Horror
Chapter 14:  The Future of Horror

Index

Biography

Neal Bell is a writer and professor of play and screenwriting at Duke University and has received grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Winner of an Obie Award for sustained excellence in playwriting, he’s been a script consultant for HBO, and also received an Edgar Award for Best Mystery Play for Spatter Pattern.

"Here is a book that teaches how to think like a horror writer, that demonstrates how a deep knowledge of the literature can influence a modern script, and that thoughtfully conveys the craft necessary to write the artform."

Terry Curtis Fox, Chair, Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing, NYU Tisch School of the Arts