What’s a good scare without good stakes? How do you balance dread with moments of relief? In “Horror, Humor, and Humanity: Three Keys to Scary Storytelling,” Jeff Deck will show you how to make your horror fiction more compelling and affecting. Too often writers focus solely on the Horror element and neglect to add Humor and Humanity to their story, resulting in a flat tale that forgets to make you care whether the characters are killed by an axe murderer/wolfman/neo-Nazi slugoid. Workshop participants will work on making their characters more relatable and interspersing moments of dark comedy between the frights in order to heighten each instance of tension. This workshop will be include a writing exercise.
WHERE: The workshop will be held at The Ford House on the campus of SNHU (2500 North River Road, Manchester, NH 03106 — Directions and parking info here)
WHEN: Saturday October 20 from 10am-1pm
COST: This workshop is $65 for NHWP members or $80 for nonmembers and is limited to 12 students.
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Jeff Deck is an indie author who lives in Maine with his wife, Jane, and their silly dog, Burleigh. Deck writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, dark fantasy, and other speculative fiction. Deck is the author of the new urban fantasy / mystery novel City of Ports, the supernatural thriller novel The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley, and the sci-fi gaming adventure novel Player Choice. He is also the author, with Benjamin D. Herson, of the nonfiction book The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time (Crown/Random House). Deck is also a fiction ghostwriter and editor who helps other authors tell their stories, and he has contributed content to a couple of video games.
