More Horror Writing Prompts: 77 Further Powerful Ideas To Inspire Your Fiction

Writer's Craft #29

by Rayne Hall, Mark Cassell

This book is crammed with fertile seeds for fiction that will thrill, disturb or scare your readers. Each prompt comes with a wealth of suggestions for how you can develop it to suit the kind of story you want to write. Plant those seeds into the rich ground of your own imagination, and watch them grow.

Genres: Writing

122 pages, Paperback

Published May 19, 2018

About the author

Rayne Hall writes fantasy and horror fiction, some of it quirky, most of it dark. She is the author of over sixty books in different genres and under different pen names, published by twelve publishers in six countries, translated into several languages. Her short stories have been published in magazines, e-zines and anthologies.

After living in Germany, China, Mongolia and Nepal, she has settled in a small Victorian seaside town in southern England. Rayne holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Over three decades, she has worked in the publishing industry as a trainee, investigative journalist, feature writer, magazine editor, production editor, page designer, concept editor for non-fiction book series, anthology editor, editorial consultant and more. Outside publishing, she worked as a museum guide, apple
picker, tarot reader, adult education teacher, trade fair hostess, translator and belly dancer.

Currently, Rayne Hall writes fantasy and horror fiction and tries to regain the rights to her out-of-print books so she can republish them as e-books.

Her books on the writing craft (Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, The Word-Loss Diet, Writing Dark Stories, Writing About Villains, Writing Short Stories to Promote Your Novel, Writing About Magic, Twitter for Writers) are bestsellers.


Rayne Hall is the editor of the Ten Tales anthologies:
"Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires"
"Scared: Ten Tales of Horror"
"Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts"
"Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates"
"Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft"
"Spells: Ten Tales of Magic"
"Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies"
"Seers: Ten Tales of Clairvoyance"
"Dragon: Ten Tales of Fiery Beasts"
"Cogwheels: Ten Tales of Steampunk"
with more titles coming soon.


The stories in her Six Scary Tales series and the Thirty Scary Tales collection are subtle horror: suspenseful, creepy atmospheric, unsettling. Although they contain little violence and gore, they may not be suitable for young readers. Many of these stories have been previously published in other books or magazines.

British English: All Rayne Hall's books use British words, spellings, grammar and punctuation. If you're allergic to British English, avoid them. ;-)

Mailing list:
http://eepurl.com/boqJzD

Website: http://sites.google.com/site/raynehal...

YouTube "Ten Random Facts about Rayne Hall" (2 minute video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXR4T...

Contact Rayne Hall on Twitter
@RayneHall follows back writers and readers. http://twitter.com/RayneHall

Reviews

[Roselyn Blonger · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit, I expected more from this book—especially since the author claims to specialize in the genre. But honestly, I found it rather... silly. The images were basic and poor, either bland photos or cliché sketches that felt carelessly thrown in. The prompts themselves were simple and didn’t really spark deep thought or inspire fresh ideas. I wouldn’t recommend it.

[Anna Erishkigal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fun exercise to dip your toe into the horror genre without needing to go full Freddy Kruger. If you've ever written a "horror-able" scene, one of the hardest things is to psych yourself up to torture your imaginary friends. This book of prompts offers a variety of "flavors," ranging from mildly uncomfortable psychological situations (such as what critters might lurk beneath that scary bathroom-hole in a third world country), all the way up into running away, screaming from an avenging demon or giggling hysterically as you splatter blood on the walls.

Many of these prompts come with a picture—some original artwork, others photographs that Rayne took herself (decaying Soviet-style architecture is definitely creepy!). The pictures help, but the prompts without pictures are also interesting.

So far I've skimmed through the entire book and written 12 of the 77 prompts. The prompts are nice because they suggest several ways you might want to approach it—definitely helpful when the "voices" go silent and you don't know what to write (horror scenes are notorious for not being able to get the evil voices whispering when you need to write)—but they aren't so structured that you'll end up substituting Rayne's voice for your own voice.

I can picture re-using many of the prompts, especially the more "ordinary" ones, starring different characters. Recommend!