About This Workshop
The Craft of Fear - Writing Horror That Does More Than Just Scare
The best horror writing is about so much more than just monsters and ghouls but rather uses those monsters and ghouls to tell deeper, more layered stories about human relationships, grief, loss, society, politics, identity, and themes beyond the spectral.
In this workshop, you will learn how to write horror that upends, devours, surprises, unsettles, disorients, and titillates the reader. You don't have to consider yourself a genre writer or have any horror experience to benefit from learning how to harness fear and the uncanny in your writing.
Workshop Takeaways
Master Horror Fundamentals: Understand the basics of horror writing and what to expect from this workshop.
Draw Inspiration from Real-Life Strangeness: Learn how to use restraint and ambiguity to enhance your horror writing.
Build a Strong Story Foundation: Develop tight, tense dialogue and craft a compelling narrative structure.
Use Horror for Societal Critique: Explore unconventional tools to write about grief, death, change, loss, regret, and guilt.
Examine the Politics of Monsters: Analyze how monsters can represent societal fears and tensions.
Write Gripping Body Horror: Perfect vivid, visceral descriptions of physical horror, from broken flesh to crushed bones.
Balance Fear and Desire: Explore the blurred lines between fear and attraction in horror writing.
Haunt the Page in Revision: Refine your pacing and make your horror truly unforgettable.
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About The Instructor
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. Her queer horror novelette Helen House (Burrow Press) was named one of the Best LGBTQ Books of 2022 by NBC News. She is the managing editor of both Autostraddle and TriQuarterly. Her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Catapult, The Offing, Joyland, Foglifter, and others. Some of her culture writing can be found in The Cut, The A.V. Club, Vulture, Refinery29, and Vice, and she previously worked as a restaurant reporter for Eater NY. She was a 2023-2024 Tin House Reading Fellow and a 2023 Lambda writer in residence. Her fiction will be featured in the upcoming anthology Be Gay, Do Crimes, out from Dzanc Books in 2025