Customer Reviews

Horror Screenwriting: The Nature of Fear

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a professional I continue to use many resources and script books. Some I've used since i was a beginniner. Others I've found along the way. This book is truly awful. The publisher and author should be embarassed. The largest portion of the book is the author's very bad screenplay. Why reading his medioocre writing is thought to help the rest of us I have no idea. I was particularly disappointed because this publisher can usually be trusted to produce truly useful and quality books. But seriously DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. Unless you really want great advice like, 'Ignore the 3 act structure'!!!

Turn to any page and you'll find information that's appeared in any of dozens of other screenwriting books. This book lacks depth; and what little there is, is well padded with a lot of generalities, filler, and script format pages. My copy weighs in at 167 pages, plus ads; not the 232 pages listed above. The beginning of the book with a history of horror elevated it from one star to two, but after that section it fails in both horror and screenwriting instruction. It has a hefty retail cover price of $24.95, even with Amazon's generous discount it's still overpriced.

I own this book, along with about a hundred other books on screenwriting. I was hoping this book would offer insight and guidance and discussion on screenwriting specific to horror, but I was sorely disappointed. This book offers little beyond a basic guide to screenwriting in general. There are concepts unique to horror screenwriting, and this book does not address them. Save your money.

This book though well written is fairly misleading. Its called Horror Screen Writing: The Nature of Fear but does not really contain any information pretaining to screen writing that is specific to that Genre. What this book does do is give you the typical screen writing 101 run down using examples from a horror screen to back up fundamental points. Its not an advanced or indepth look into writing for the horror genre. It does not even contain any how to's on things that are in horror scripts such how to write a scare, a kill scene, building tention, disposable characters, how to create a villian, nothing. Its an intro screen writing book that has information all general screen writing books have. Not bad for a beginner but for those who want to learn how to write something in the horror genre this book will not be very helpful.

The short hand of it is the author took basic screenwriting ideas that are covered in many other books at greater lengths and infused general and random thoughts on horror so it could be called "Horror Screenwriting". Was hoping for insight, originality and perspective, but all it works out to be is a tool for 14 year olds to go out and make their first zombie movie with their iPhones. Save the cash and watch a horror movie. That's all this guy did.

The bad:

-A major part of the book is the author's rather badly written, clichéd screenplay (except for the first scene which I thought was actually very promising). It reminds of one of those really cheesy B-movies you sometimes come across on one of those small channels around midnight and you get hooked on it for about five minutes, in awe just how bad the writing is (clichéd Characters, awful superfluous dialogue and a preposterous story).
-Not a lot in the book pertains to horror (except the intro that gives a quick review of the horror genre)

The good:

-An OK overview of screenwriting
-An easy read
-I've read a lot of screenwriting books that were worse (some of which I never even finished)

That's pretty much all there's to say about this book.

My preferred screenwriting books: The writer's journey, Psychology for screenwriters, Anatomy of story (John Truby)

I loved this book! Even if you are not a horror movie fan, the first chapter "tour of hell" is very very interesting with facts from how the genre got started and just what does make people jump out of their seats. :)

Whether you are a beginner screenwriter or a seasoned veteran if you plan to write a horror movie this book is for you. First of all Mr. Watson's love of all things horror pour onto to the page making Horror Screenwriting as a book an enjoyable read.

This conversation like tone allows the information to seep into the reader's mind without any effort. After reading the first chapter my understanding of creating a horror story, better yet story telling in general was instantly expanded.

Horror Screenwriting takes you on the journey of creating an actual horror screenplay from idea, concept, characters and logline all the way to if you complete the book your own screenplay.
Again, if you want to write a horror movie start here with this book and you will not be disappointed.

I bought this book to learn more about the art of horror screenwriting. The technique used to spell it all out is awesome! Finally, no more reading long boring manuals. No more trying to find the next big thing to help me catapult my horror stories into a real action script over the top. The single greatest challenge anyone can face is growing and sustaining screenplays that will capture any audience. This book is a comprehensive prescriptive recommendation to start from ground zero and end up with a richly documented, fact-filled, example-loaded, no-nonsense script to become the first choice
provider of writing horror screenplays.

This is a great book for the beginner and anyone that wants to learn to write horror movies. The author covers a bit of history on writing horror, and also gives some small tasks at the end of each chapter. You also get to collaborate on writing a script during the reading of the book, as the script runs through most of the chapters. It's a great fast read and learning tool. So, if you want to learn to write horror movies, this book is for you.