Chalk Scribblers Workshop: The Techniques of Horror

Every genre has its signature techniques and many of those techniques can be applied to other genres. This workshop will be a moderated discussion about the techniques of horror and how we can use them to moderate our writing in other genres.

Our starting point will be two very different short stories by leading horror writers:
· The Road Virus Heads North by Stephen King is a supernatural horror story that was first published in the 999 anthology.
· Cheer by Megan Abbott is a psychological horror story that was first published in a crime/noir themed issue of Storyglossia.

We’ll start by deconstructing the techniques and then move on to talk about how to apply them.

Please read the stories before the workshop.

As this is a horror workshop, both stories have adult themes that are likely to be further explored in the discussion.