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A review by fallona
On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association by Mort Castle
2.0
As with any book where each chapter has a different author, some chapters are better than others. It's a mix of standard writing advice and genre-specific information, but mostly my conclusion was that I don't like the specific types of horror fiction some of the contributors do. That's fine and normal, and one of the chapters implies I'd prefer British horror over American--and looking at my reading history, maybe I do?
Anyway, most of my quibbles would have to do with specific chapters and not the book as a whole. It was published in 2007, and some of the advice already feels or objectively is outdated--there are workshops talked up that no longer exist, and certainly online publishing in 2023 isn't what it was in 2007. Trends in the genre have also had a lot of time to change.
So mostly... it's fine. It has some good advice, and raises some good points. But mostly I skimmed, and shouldn't have spent as much time with it as I did.
Anyway, most of my quibbles would have to do with specific chapters and not the book as a whole. It was published in 2007, and some of the advice already feels or objectively is outdated--there are workshops talked up that no longer exist, and certainly online publishing in 2023 isn't what it was in 2007. Trends in the genre have also had a lot of time to change.
So mostly... it's fine. It has some good advice, and raises some good points. But mostly I skimmed, and shouldn't have spent as much time with it as I did.