Class Description
The monster, the ghost, the dark house with a dark past, the unnerving friction of the broken social contract. Horror is a capacious container that holds infinite approaches to exploring our greatest fears, from the mundane and slightly-off-kilter to creeping cosmic dread.
Beneath the familiar stage dressing of the scary story lies a set of strategic methods for dealing head-on with what scares us: something at once intimately personal and deeply, broadly human. Whether you're a seasoned genre writer, or just interested in exploring darker themes in your work, the study of horror has much to teach us about tactics for modulating tension, building dread, and creating atmosphere.
Together, we’ll dissect work from masters of horror through flash fiction, excerpts from novels, and short fiction, and respond to prompts designed to excavate our personal lexicons of fear. You’ll leave with a toolkit for incorporating the strategies of great horror writing into your own work, and resources for further reading and exploration.
Writing Roadmap: We've created a simple, goal-based writing roadmap to help you find the perfect GrubStreet course for your writing needs.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.