Writing Magazine

Feeding the beast

As a writer – and lover – of horror, I often get questioned where the ideas for these stories come from. In some cases it’s probably a genuine query from people wondering how they could have a go at writing something that bit darker, but in some cases I wonder if there’s a little bit of ‘How could you come up with such ideas?’ buried underneath the ‘Where do you…?’

To me, horror comes absolutely naturally and practically all my ideas are either fully immersed in the field or at least touch on it in some way. But sometimes to those people looking in from the outside horror can have this dangerous edge, although in all of my experiences the folks on the horror scene are among the nicest you could hope to meet.

Ultimately, like all forms and all genres, you have to say that inspiration is simply everywhere – it’s simply a matter of looking for it, and knowing how to adapt it into a horror

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