With the Black Library Open Submissions window themed around Warhammer Horror this year, I asked over a dozen fantastic authors for their thoughts on what makes a great horror short story, and their advice on writing and pitching a Warhammer Horror story to Black Library. I’ve already published the results of one conversation in my article Writing For Black Library – Alec Worley Talks Pitching Warhammer Horror, and I’ve gathered together the thoughts of the remaining authors to give you as broad a range of opinions, ideas and advice as possible to help you plan your submission this year. There’s way too much for just a single article, so I’ve split things into two parts, of which this is the first!
I asked each of the authors to write as much or as little as they wanted, so you’ll find a range of answers from succinct to highly detailed, all united by a clear passion for the genre and a real depth of experience. Of course, everyone takes a different approach to writing and pitching so bear in mind you might find differences of opinions here…but that’s ok. I’m going to blatantly steal a line from Tim Waggoner’s upcoming book Writing in the Dark (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2020) here: “There’s more than one way to skin Poe’s black cat, and the more perspectives you can get on writing, the better. Even if they sometimes contradict each other. Especially then.”
For each author I’ve included a quick overview of their writing portfolio – all of these authors have contributed at least one Warhammer Horror story, and many are regular contributors to the horror genre not just for Black Library but a variety of other publishers too. Some of these names will be very familiar to anyone who’s a regular Black Library reader, while others might be a little less so, but if you’re interested in horror fiction then I would urge you to check them all out! In this first article you’ll find advice from:
- David Annandale
- Lora Gray
- Jake Ozga
- Ray Cluley
- Tim Waggoner
- Graham McNeill
Once you finish this article there’s a second part available as well, with advice from lots more Warhammer Horror authors. In the meantime, I hope you find this article useful whether you’re planning on pitching a story to Black Library or just wanting to write more horror fiction in general!
David Annandale
For Warhammer Horror: The House of Night and Chain; The Faith and the Flesh (included in The Wicked and the Damned); five short stories available either in anthologies (Maledictions, Invocations and Anathemas) or as standalone eshorts. Non-BL: Gethsemane Hall for Dundurn Press; Curse of Honor for Aconyte Books.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
That’s the big question, in any horror context. Let me try to tackle it in a couple of different ways.
First, from a slightly nuts-and-bolts Warhammer perspective, the focus in horror has, more often than not, been on the sorts of characters who would be minor players in a traditional 40k or AoS story. These are not the heavy hitters (that makes it harder for us to be frightened for them), but the ordinary people of these worlds. As well, the stories are often lighter on the IP side, more accessible to readers not deeply versed in the lore.
But the larger question about what makes a great Warhammer Horror story applies to any horror story, and there we get to the more difficult questions of fictional alchemy. There is a massive range of horror that can be done here, from the subtle to the full-on body-horror. Make us care about the characters (as we would want to with any story), and bring us in close, make us intimate with them, so their terror is ours. As for what might be the source of horror, we are all influenced by the stories and films and games that we have loved and have frightened us, and recognizable tropes and familiar themes cannot always be avoided, nor should they be. But don’t rely on the surface level of a given trope. Think about why it is scary, and try to convey that.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
Don’t do a pitch that indulges in some hidden byway or loophole in the lore. I try to make my pitches like mini-stories. Strip out anything that is not absolutely essential. Focus on the main character, what they do, and what happens to them. And be clear about the ending. Pretend we’re sitting around a hearth and you are given a minute to tell us something spooky.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
Remember how huge the universes are. This is your chance to tell the stories that don’t often get told, about someone other than the Big Names. I would stay away from any named character, as you can’t do anything permanent to them, and horror stories are the chance to do something VERY permanent to your characters.
Lora Gray
For Warhammer Horror: short stories in Maledictions, Invocations and Anthemas, with He Feasts Forever also available as an eshort. Non-BL: stories published in magazines and anthologies including Shimmer, Strange Horizons and The Dark – more information at Lora’s website.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
I always find horror that includes intimate details and psychological terror to be more engaging than horror that’s full of splatter and jump scares. Startling, gory details in mundane settings [see He Feasts Forever for a great example of this], unsettling internal dialogue etc.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
It helps to reduce your story to its most essential beats – the moments of conflict and/or significant character development – and go from there. I sometimes force myself to describe the entire story in three short sentences first just to get a feel for the story’s basic structure.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
Don’t be afraid to explore how the horror of Warhammer touches the lives of ‘ordinary’ people. And have fun!
Jake Ozga
For Warhammer Horror: Skull Throne available as an eshort; stories in both Invocations and Anathemas.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
I think the best horror stories are an experiment in empathy where the author shares something personal in the hope that it connects and that people care and become emotionally invested. And so they have to be genuine, they reveal meaningful truths and this leads to a sense of intimacy, a sense of shared humanity. And then once you have that empathetic connection you can exploit it – you can really upset people, you can traumatise them. I like horror that lingers, horror that you lie in bed thinking about. A great horror story makes you care.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
Pick the best bit of your story and write that for the submission. That’s not always going to be the end because without the build up, the end will fall flat. Pick your favourite idea – the image you have in your head that is strongest and most exciting to you and write that. Don’t worry too much about how it will fit with the rest of the story, you can edit it later if you get through.
I struggle with synopses. I think the temptation is to write something that sounds like a cheesy book cover blurb and the Black Library editor is going to be quite jaded by another one of these. Instead I would try to be concise and emphasise what makes your idea interesting – if that is a clever plot then you can lay that out, but horror is often quite light on plot and you may want to place more emphasis on describing the tone and the characters instead. Rework it until it sounds like something you would actually want to read yourself.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
I got in through open submissions – I submitted the usual Space Marine sample and was then asked to try submitting something for the horror imprint instead, and to try it in my own style, my own voice. The temptation is to try and emulate Black Library’s house style but I think with horror I would suggest trying to write in your own style – whatever that may be. The important thing is to be genuine. I think more than any other genre, horror needs to be genuine: you need to make that emotional connection. Think about what really scares or upsets you in life – chances are it isn’t that unpainted Bloodthirster you’ve had in your cupboard for several years – and write as honestly as you can about that.
Ray Cluley
For Warhammer Horror: Flesh and Blood in Invocations. Non-BL: Probably Monsters from ChiZine Publications; stories published in all manner of magazines and anthologies – more information at Ray’s website.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
For me, it’s fear. If you can make the reader feel the fear, wonderful, but really it’s about the characters (besides, if you do a good job creating characters the reader can believe in – and even, to some extent, become while reading – then some of that fear will pass over from character to reader anyway).
In the horror genre, the fear needs to be of something potentially life-altering, which might be something life-ending but not necessarily; there’s so much to be afraid of in the world of Warhammer. I often find that fear ties in with loss – fear of losing your life, your mind, your body, somebody else, maybe all of the above. Give your character something to lose and make them afraid of losing it.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
It’s a tricky one, because you’re doing two difficult things at once – you’re condensing down everything you intend to write (or have already written) and at the same time you need to ‘sell’ it, arouse someone’s interest enough for them to want more. If you’re lucky/clever, you can make these two things help each other.
I find it very beneficial to condense different aspects of the story in the early stages of writing anyway because it can help clarify my own intentions or highlight what’s important to the story (making the later job of redrafting later much easier). For example, you’ve created a deep, complex, character, maybe written a character sheet for them, fleshing out background, physical description, family tree, all of it, but if you then force yourself to reduce the character to a one line description you’ll often discover what it is that really defines them or drives them, and that can make the writing so much easier. It might be their profession, it might be something they desire, it might be something they fear.
Same with plot; avoid ‘this happens and then this happens and then this’ and go straight for the heart of it. For example, you can reduce the incredible Alien down from its 2 hours running time to: “A competent warrant officer, concerned for the safety of her crew, tries to enforce a quarantine when one of them is exposed to an alien life form, but when her orders are ignored and the entire ship is put in danger, the crew must fight to survive as a dangerous alien foe strikes them down, one by one…”
Writing a concise paragraph in place of a whole story can seem daunting, but don’t think of it as trying to crush an iceberg down into an ice cube. Think of it as selecting what part of the iceberg to show while the rest remains hidden or suggested. You don’t need to see all of an iceberg to know it’s an iceberg.
When it comes to the pitch part of the question, I’ll stick with the iceberg analogy, although it might seem flawed – after all, you’re trying to attract someone to your work, and people tend to steer clear of icebergs. But what you want is for Black Library to see there’s more to this iceberg than you’ve shown them, that under the surface of your concise synopsis is a lot more to be afraid of – and that’s what they want! You can tempt them by not revealing the ending in your pitch (does that warrant officer survive the alien threat?), you can tempt them with originality (it’s a haunted house story, but in space!), and you can tempt them with interesting, diverse, characters (unknown to the rest of the crew, one of them is a robot with his own secret agenda).
So, strip it all down to the essentials. You’re not really showing off your writing skills in the pitch, more your idea.
(What I wouldn’t do is pitch Alien. It’s been done – quite a few times.)
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
Try to go for the less obvious characters, the less obvious settings, the less obvious fears. In my story Flesh and Blood, although on the one hand it’s a straightforward run and fight panic story when ghouls attack, I also added original details such as the main character’s unpleasant job and how it fit in with the strange relationship the town had with the neighbouring ghouls now attacking them. And although the whole town was under attack, the fight was really just the backdrop for the story, not the story itself – the plot actually focused on the main character’s relationship with the town and with his mother. In other words, it focused on the personal. What’s great about Warhammer Horror is that you’re looking at a battle-focused world from a fresh perspective and your pitch should show an awareness of this.
Tim Waggoner
For Warhammer Horror: Skin Man in Anathemas. Non-BL: thirty years of writing horror fiction for all sorts of publishers – see Tim’s website for more information. Keep an eye out, too, for Writing in the Dark – a guide to writing horror fiction coming September 16th from Raw Dog Screaming Press (pre-order here) – I’ve got a separate interview with Tim talking about this book coming soon!
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
All the same elements that make any fiction effective – characterization, description, style, etc. But in addition to these, a great horror story needs a strong, interesting concept. It’s not enough to write a story about a ghost. There have been millions of ghost stories written before yours. What makes yours different than the others? What makes it stand out from the pack? What makes it a ghost story that only you can write?
Great horror stories aren’t about the monster or evil force or whatever plagues the characters. Great horror stories about how people react to the evil force, how it affects them, changes them, pushes them to their limits and beyond. A threat may be external, but fear – the anticipation of confrontation with a threat – is always internal. Because of this, I think the most effective horror stories are written with a close point of view, allowing readers to know what the protagonist is thinking and feeling through the course of the story.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
Briefly describe the main character, the main conflict, the main character’s connection to the conflict, and the setting: Sally Jenkins is a seamstress in 19th century Chicago whose young daughter has recently died. When she’s asked to make a dress for a rich man’s daughter, she sees an opportunity to get her child back – if she’s willing to make a bargain with an ancient dark power with its own sinister agenda.
Don’t feel you need to tell the entire story in your pitch. Think of it more like a movie preview that you’d see in the cinema, something that sets up the story and makes the viewer/reader want to know more.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
Try to make the story concept one that could only take place in a Warhammer setting. Don’t just name check the Emperor or Space Marines in a generic horror story. Also see if you can come up with an aspect of Warhammer that other writers may not have covered. This will make your pitch stand out when an editor reads it. For example, for my Warhammer 40K horror story, The Skin Man, which appears in the anthology Anathemas, I began with this question: What would a planet be like after the battle against Chaos has ravaged the world and moved on to another portion of the galaxy? What would day-to-day life be like for the survivors? What pockets of Chaos might remain, and how might they manifest themselves? Go explore the dark corners of the Warhammer universes no one else has yet ventured into.
Graham McNeill
For Warhammer Horror: The Colonel’s Monograph, No Good Deed in Maledictions. Non-BL: three Arkham Horror novels – more information at Graham’s website.
What makes a great horror short story?
First and foremost, a great horror story has a strong hook that exposes you to the awful truth that you’re not as safe as you think you are. From the outset, the reader needs to know the stakes of what’s in play; what can be lost, what tragedy will unfold if things go badly?
Like any story, a horror story needs that constant flex of tension and release for the reader, but in a horror short, that cycle is weighted much more towards the tension end of the scale. That level of tension is only usually sustainable in something short, so use it to the maximum by tightening the screws on the reader and your protagonists all the way to the end.
And on the heels of that, remember that great horror, more than any other genre (apart from romantic fiction, perhaps…) relies on emotion. Horror lives in heightened states of emotion, and you need your reader to feel what the characters are feeling, to experience the horror of their situation. I’d argue that this is where really great horror stories excel, in turning your emotions into knives under your skin without having to rely on gory horror or visceral bloody descriptions (though those are also useful if deployed at the most vulnerable moments). Just remember that the rule of ‘show don’t tell’ is doubly important in horror. You can’t tell a person they’re scared, they have to truly feel it, and you achieve that by triggering their emotions, be it fear of losing a loved one, the terror of pain, their deep-seated insecurity, fear of being buried alive, etc.
And you get them there by figuring out what terrifies you. Think of the thing you’d fear to lose the most, the thing that, if it happened to you, would have you babbling in terror. Write that. So many fears are universal to us all, that if it scares the shit out of you, there’s a good chance it’d scare the living shit out of your readers.
But at the same time, a good horror story needs hope, faint though it might be, that somehow this might turn out okay, that if the stars align, our protagonists might just make it out alive. More of then than not, that hope might be cruelly dashed, but it needs to burn just bright enough that it lights our way from beginning to end, even if it ends up being cruelly snuffed out.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
Pare your idea down to what the story is actually about, which isn’t the same thing as what happens in the story. What questions is the story asking, what societal ill is it an allegory for, what commentary on the human condition is it addressing? The Omen, for example, is about the horror of knowing your child isn’t your own and might actually be a literal devil, as opposed to all the various scenes throughout its runtime. Focus on the core idea of the horror and amplify that in the pitch as opposed to beating out the individual actions and scenes. My horror story in Maledictions – No Good Deed – is about the horror of taking a chance with an act of kindness, only to find out that you’ve invited a monster into your home. It’s about the things that stop good people from opening their doors, for fear of letting the darkness of the world inside.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
The Warhammer worlds are already rich and dripping with horrible things, and even a ‘regular’ story in AoS and 40k can be pretty terrifying, so you’ll need to dig deeper to find things that cut to the bone beyond ‘orks and/or daemons might kill you’ (which are already pretty terrifying…).
Good horror is intimately close to you; its fingertips are brushing up against your clammy skin and its hot breath is in your ear as you read this. It speaks to a fear any of us could experience in those worlds. The horror of that thing that was always thought to be far away…no, no, no… it’s right next to you, and it was all along.
When I plan out a horror story, I like to focus on the small, the individual, as that brings the horror much closer to home and is a fear I can truly understand. Armies at war are stirring, epic, and terrible, but are hard to inspire horror at that close, visceral level. Having a small squad of Guardsmen hunted by a Lictor in the ruins of a bombed out city is horrifying as they’re picked off one by one (the Predator Principle). A lone psyker haunted by visions of murder on a suddenly and inexplicably abandoned starship is horrifying; an isolated family’s home under siege by the dead; a man struggling to get back to his wife before an enemy killer reaches her…all those things are frightening because they keep the horror grounded and real.
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That brings us to the end of part one! I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing from these six authors, and have found lots of useful ideas to take away and think about in relation to your own writing. Please join me in saying a huge thanks to David Annandale, Ray Cluley, Lora Gray, Graham McNeill, Jake Ozga and Tim Waggoner for taking the time to contribute such fascinating advice!
If you enjoyed this, make sure you check out part two featuring Justin D. Hill, Nick Kyme, Steven Sheil, JC Stearns, Richard Strachan, CL Werner and Nicholas Wolf.
See also: all my Warhammer Horror reviews and interviews.
See also: all my other Writing for Black Library interviews.
If you have any comments or questions, or would like to chat about anything from this article in more detail, please let me know in the comments below or over on Twitter.