Writing for Black Library – Alec Worley Talks Pitching Warhammer Horror

Welcome to this instalment of Writing for Black Library, in which the fantastic Alec Worley offers some amazing advice, ideas and suggestions for writing and pitching Warhammer Horror stories. The 2020 Black Library Open Submissions window is opening in October (for just two weeks) and this time around it’s focusing specifically on Warhammer Horror. I thought it might be interesting to ask Alec about not just writing horror stories but also the difficult job of pitching them to editors, so this interview covers quite a wide range of topics which I hope will be of use to anyone planning on submitting a story. There’s really no better time to tap into the considerable experience of an industry pro like Alec!

For Warhammer Horror Alec has written two fantastic audio dramas – Perdition’s Flame and The Watcher in the Rain – as well as the novella The Nothings from the short story anthology Maledictions. That’s not to mention loads more great Warhammer 40,000 short stories and audio dramas for Black Library, and a whole host of comics, stories and novels spanning all manner of settings and IPs from Judge Dredd to Star Wars. You can check out Alec’s full bibliography over on his website.

If you haven’t already, make sure you check out the submission guidelines over on the Warhammer Community website. With that done, let’s get straight to the interview.

What makes a great horror short story?

Hey, there, guys! What makes a great horror tale? Same things that make up any great story: vivid setting, relatable characters with a clear objective, a clear obstacle to that objective and something meaningful at stake should they stuff it up. Of course, horror emphasises certain other elements as well:

Suspense
This is key, putting characters in peril and keeping them there for as long as you can. There’s a brilliant YouTube essay on this, which takes the opening scene of Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds as an example: Inglorious Basterds: The Elements of Suspense by Lessons From The Screenplay.

Isolation
Give your characters nowhere to run, no sense of escape or safe haven. Check out the ever-tightening plots and major scare sequences of Alien, Scream and Halloween (oh boy, am I showing my age here with these examples, but trust me, guys, they’re rock-solid).

Concealment
Keep your monster (or malevolent force whether physical or psychological) in the shadows. If we see too much or know too much it breaks the sense of mystery and uncertainty that’s vital to creating a sense of unease. Don’t feel the need to explain everything away. As the master M.R. James once said, “When the climax is reached, allow us to be just a little in the dark as to the working of [the ghost’s] machinery.”

Emphasise your character’s emotional responses…
But don’t spell them out! Express your characters’ feelings as action, metaphor, dialogue, etc. If your character hurls a chair across the room, you don’t need to explain that they’re feeling angry. Remember to view everything through the prism of the character’s perspective, how they feel about this particular scene at this particular time.

If you’re describing a setting, the character will only notice what they are most likely to notice at that time depending on their emotional state. If they’re apprehensive, they’ll notice the shadows, the walls closing in, the feel of their own heartbeat. To write ‘Her guts twisted in fear’ is merely showing. What you’re looking to do is prompt that gut-twisty feeling in the readers themselves.

Read Donald Maas’s The Emotional Craft of Fiction or check out the TED Talk, How to Write Descriptively by Nalo Hopkinson. Also read Hemingway’s The First Forty-Nine Stories; most of them are super-short and each one a masterclass in showing not telling.

Think about your endings
There’s a long history of nasty twist endings in horror by writers like Poe, Saki, Ray Bradbury or Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone (the French called these the ‘conte cruel’). I did a blog ages ago that might help you identify the kind of thing you’re after: The Five Types of Twist Ending.

Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?

What you’re writing here is what American screenwriters call a ‘logline’. Blake Snyder’s (in)famous screenwriting manual Save The Cat provides a useful template on how to put one of these together. He advocates writing a paragraph that includes all the major elements of your story (stakes, objective, etc). Something like this…

‘In [insert setting] [insert dramatic premise that has just occurred]. [Protagonist] must [objective] in order to stop [antagonist] from [achieving their counter-objective] before [stakes].’

Don’t follow this to the letter though. You’re not filling out an application form for planning permission, you’re pitching a unique story that you want the editors to get excited about.

Here’s a logline I wrote for my Sister Adamanthea short Repentia…

On a sweltering jungle world, a veteran Sister Repentia has survived a suicide mission to recover a powerful relic that may turn the tide in a faltering campaign against the Ruinous Powers. But when her rescue ship crash lands, she and the handful of Battle Sisters who survived the crash must protect the relic from a detachment of pursuing Traitor Marines who want it for themselves. As the hunters close in on the ragged company, Adamanthea must choose between life (protecting both the relic and her newfound squadmates) and death (honouring her suicidal vow as a Sister Repentia).

Let’s go through that again…

On a sweltering jungle world (SETTING), a veteran Sister Repentia (OUR MAIN CHARACTER) has survived a suicide mission to recover a powerful relic that may turn the tide in a faltering campaign against the Ruinous Powers. But when her rescue ship crash lands, she and the handful of Battle Sisters who survived the crash must protect the relic (OBJECTIVE) from a detachment of pursuing Traitor Marines who want it for themselves (COUNTER-OBJECTIVE). As the hunters close in on the ragged company, Adamanthea must choose between life (protecting both the relic and her newfound squadmates) and death (honouring her suicidal vow as a Sister Repentia) (SOUNDS LIKE A DRAMATIC PREMISE AND STAKES TO ME).

Again, don’t – repeat DON’T – follow this template slavishly. Ensure those elements (character, objective, etc) are all there, that they fit together in a way that makes dramatic sense, then let the logline follow the contours of your proposed tale. Be like water, my friend!

Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume that most applicants will know the fluff, and will have little trouble finding nooks and crannies in which terrible things can happen to unsuspecting characters. But I’d definitely read up on the Warhammer Horror range if you haven’t done so already, just to get a sense of flavour.

It’s probably worth pointing out the need to check how explicit you’re looking to be. From all I’ve read in the range, the emphasis is on skilful scares, tension and restraint rather than explicit nastiness and graphic sex. Horror comes in many different strains; make sure you’re pitching something in the strain the editors are looking for: Survival, Psychological, Gothic or Cosmic.

If you haven’t read the author guidelines, then give yourself a boot up the arse and go read them! Go through them a few times, maybe print them out, run through them with a highlighter pen, whatever. Seriously, don’t waste your or your editors’ time by pitching something they haven’t asked for. That’s pro writer rule number one!

If you’re not a horror fan already, then get a taste for the genre with an anthology or two. For icy psychological horror try Shirley Jackson. For surreal body horror try Clive Barker’s Books of Blood (very strong stuff). For ghost stories try M.R. James. For modern gothic or survival tales go for Stephen King.

For cosmic horror Lovecraft is most people’s go-to, but I’d approach with caution…I could ramble for a while about this character. I love the mythos, I play the Chaosium RPG, and Lovecraft’s contribution to the horror genre is inarguable. But I’ve always felt he was better at coming up with stories than he was at actually writing them. Then there’s the industrial-strength racism that goes far beyond 1920s ignorance and into something far uglier. How the individual reader chooses to deal with that is their call.

For me, William Hope Hodgson’s cosmic novelette The House on the Borderland is tough to beat. Ramsey Campbell’s Cthulhu tales are another strong recommendation. Read these to get a sense of structure, as well as a sense of all the tropes (which you’ll need to avoid or at least put a new spin on).

Also, make sure you’re making your proposed story the right size. Scenes and characters add mass to stories, i.e. make them longer. So don’t add too many characters or have too much going on if you’re only after writing a 6-10,000 word short.

My Sister Adamanthea short Martyr’s End was 6,000 words and contained seven scenes with around three main characters. The Nothings, a story I did for the Warhammer Horror anthology Maledictions, ended up as 19,500 words with 18 scenes and around four/five characters (I remember having to take someone out of an early draft to cut back the word count).

Overall, don’t get hung up on all these ‘rules’. Making mistakes is good. It’s how we learn to do better next time. And if you get bounced by the editors, don’t get angry. The team at Black Library know their stuff. Treat any feedback you receive like pennies from heaven. Listen to it. Learn from it.

For now, just do your best in the time you’ve got; it’s all any of us can do!

Good luck, you crazy kids!

***

As ever, HUGE thanks to Alec for taking the time to answer these questions and provide so many great ideas. I’m sure you’ll agree that this is all really interesting, thought-provoking advice, and I hope it proves useful to anyone planning on submitting a story this year (or in fact anyone who’s interested in writing fiction). If you haven’t already, I would strongly recommend you check out some of Alec’s work. Here are a few links to some of my other reviews and interviews with Alec:

REVIEW: Dredge Runners (Warhammer Crime audio drama)

REVIEW: Judge Anderson: Year One

INTERVIEW: Alec Worley Talks Dredge Runners

INTERVIEW: Alec Worley Talks Battle Sisters and Broken Saints

Keep an eye out as well for another article coming next week with loads more advice and ideas about pitching Warhammer Horror stories, from a whole range of Black Library authors!

If you have any questions, comments or other thoughts about this interview please do let me know in the comments below, or find me on Twitter.