Scary shorts and super creeps
Genre fiction has always had a lively and thriving scene of short stories, with much of fantasy and science-fiction’s early growth positively impacted by a popular scene of magazines from the 1930s onwards. For horror short fiction, we have the opportunity to look a little further back, with authors the likes of Le Fanu, MR James, Poe and Lovecraft doing their part to shape the genre from its earliest Gothic guises to the stories we know and love today.
Of course, short stories in any genre require a distinctive approach, something very different to novels, novellas and even flash fiction. And in this piece – the first of three – we’ll be taking a look at how to write great horror tales in the shorter form, before we give science-fiction and fantasy their turn in the limelight.
Get the atmosphere right – and quickly!
Atmosphere has always been pivotal to horror, and in its shorter form you can argue it’s every bit as important as a genre identifier for
