Immersion and Writing Totems

How to write a horror screenplay or any genre

If you want to write horror screenplays, or any genre, you need to learn as much as you can about the genre. All of the major movie genres and the multitude of sub-genres have common tropes, rules, and audience expectations. By watching movies and reading screenplays you can better understand the rules of the genre and how best to subvert them. A writing totem is any item which gets you into the writing mindset. I first heard about writing totems from No Plot, No Problem by Chris Batty when I set out to do my first NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

Watch The Genre

Since I started writing horror screenplays, I watched a lot of horror movies, including horror features and horror shorts. Sometimes I would analyze those films writing a brief description of each scene or writing a note anytime something scary happened. In watching all of these horror movies, I’ve learned what works for me and I think I’ve learned more about the expectations and what works for the horror fan community. Watching hours of horror short films was eye opening. Many of the problems seen in new screenwriters and filmmakers were on display. Unrealistic dialogue, unrealistic character actions, too much dialogue, starting a scene too early, etc. The practical effects of some of these…