Welcome to the second part of Writing for Black Library – Pitching Warhammer Horror, in which another seven fantastic authors talk about writing horror short stories and pitching Warhammer Horror stories in particular. If you haven’t already, I would recommend you first check out these two interviews: Alec Worley Talks Pitching Warhammer Horror and part one of Writing for Black Library – Pitching Warhammer Horror. Assuming you’ve read both of those, check this out for loads more great advice, ideas and suggestions that I hope will prove helpful whether you’re preparing a pitch for this year’s Black Library open submissions window or you’re just interested in writing horror stories in general.
As with the previous article, you’ll find a range of answers here depending on each author’s experiences, style and approach. Some of these might contradict each other, but it’s always worth getting as many perspectives as possible on a topic like this! Once again I’ve listed the authors in alphabetical order, and included a quick overview of their writing portfolio. In this first article you’ll find advice from:
- Nick Kyme
- Steven Sheil
- CL Werner
- JC Stearns
- Richard Strachan
- Justin D. Hill
- Nicholas Wolf
Without further ado, let’s jump straight in…
Nick Kyme
For Warhammer Horror: Sepulturum; short story Stitches is available as an eshort or in Invocations. Non-BL: The Legacy of Deeds for Titan Books.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
Well, I think there are so many elements that can make a really great horror story. Horror is a pretty broad genre that can cover a variety of creative avenues. I think step one is probably figure out what you want to do, what part of the genre you’re interested in writing about, and lean right into that full bore. Don’t stint.
That said, there are some commonalities, at least to some aspects of horror. Intimacy is the first thing that comes to mind; a story that is narrow in scope, and isn’t about changing the world or saving it, but rather is distilled down to the experiences and fundamental needs of its central characters. What could those needs be? Survival, food, shelter, safety… greed, power, revenge. One of the interesting tropes with horror is that it’s often populated with characters that have either done wrong and are seeking redemption or are doing wrong and the horror is a way of punishing them or setting the balance straight… The horror element is the method of redress for sin. And then virtuous characters get caught up in the middle of that.
The important thing here, though, is making those characters and what they need/want relatable. We might not like the greedy merchant-baron who is trying to amass riches and power, but we can understand it. Or the Guardsmen who is trying to cover up the murder of his comrade because he’d been caught stealing from the quartermaster, but we get it. Small stakes, I think, work really well in horror because that’s where the intimacy comes from and in exploring that you naturally find yourself dealing with relatively low agency characters; those characters that can’t simply dispatch the monster with a swish of a sword or banish the daemon with an incantation. These are ordinary men and women who are dealing with the extraordinary. There’s a power imbalance freighted in the favour of the antagonist that puts the characters on the backfoot and says to the reader ‘These guys can die… these guys are probably going to die.’ All plot armour goes out of the airlock and into the void.
The other thing that is worth mentioning (and, again, there are many ways to write a great horror story) is the subversion of the ordinary. To me, there is nothing scarier than the ordinary and the mundane made uncanny and supernatural. Think of the haunted house. It’s just a house. It’s bricks and mortar and glass and metal… except, it’s not. Not really. It’s centuries of history bled into its bones; it’s every unknown atrocity committed within its walls; it’s everything that house has seen and been a party to; and it’s every unquiet spirit that lingers thereafter. It’s the perception of what’s normal. It should comfort us, the structures both societal and material that we use to make sense of our world and our place in it. When those structures are subverted, turned against us and made hostile, our equilibrium is threatened, our safety put into jeopardy and I think that’s scary and unsettling.
In universes as rich as the Warhammer universes are, there are tons of opportunities to tell low agency, intimate stories that subvert the mundane and the ordinary and make it terrifying. Mystery, too, can have a role to play. What’s the house’s secret, why are the ghosts unquiet? In that, and the solving of said mystery, lies the promise of extraction from the nightmare, the hope that it can end/be ended and a return to normality achieved. You need to give your characters hope, even if it comes to nothing, even if they’re doomed, even if they don’t unravel the mystery or their sins catch up with them. It’s all about the struggle, the desire to survive.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
I suppose I should answer this in a pithy fashion, but the truth is don’t overcomplicate. If you can’t summarise your story in a paragraph, if you have to hope the editor reads that extra bit in the character bio then you’re probably either trying to do too much (and you need to go back and think about a purer idea) or you’re not as clear as you need to be on what your central premise is. Chunk it down, pare it right back to its purest form, read it aloud and see if it still makes sense.
Not only that, but does it grab your interest? The pitch is a hook by any other name, so therefore it needs bait. If you have to cajole the fish onto the line (and in this particularly arduous metaphor, the fish is the editor) then you’re doing it wrong. Give them something tasty to bite on. If you’re still struggling, have a go at summarising pitching your favourite horror novel or film. Boil it down to its base elements and regurgitate it. It’s a good skill to hone, regardless of whether you’re pitching horror or something else, that ability to analyse and contextualise then represent without compromising on any of the key beats.
Lastly, be clear on what you’re trying to do. What kind of horror story are you pitching? (And consider what the different kinds of horror stories are, and know where your story fits in or sits between.) See… not pithy at all.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
Know your setting. Pitch to that. You have two elements to sell your prospective editor on: clever adherence and expression of the IP and all of that through a horror lens. Be concise. Be clear on what you’re trying to accomplish. Be honest with yourself. Is this a story or just a series of loosely connected events? Where’s the heart, where’s the spine of the thing? Why should anyone care? They’re tough questions, requiring of self-reflection, but I guarantee you that every writer has asked themselves these things in one form or another when they’ve pitched ideas. Keep it tight. Keep it focused. And, well, good luck!
Steven Sheil
For Warhammer Horror: The Healer in Invocations. Various horror movies such as Mum and Dad and Dead Mine.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
I think a great horror short story – whether for Warhammer or in fiction in general – should unnerve or discomfort the reader. I think it’s about creating a world, establishing the norm of that world, then pulling through an element which disrupts that norm, something monstrous (either truly a monster, or a human turned monstrous), inhuman or supernatural with the power to harm the people of that world.
In the Warhammer universe there are of course a lot of already quite threatening or monstrous things, so it’s good to look at your central character(s) and think “What would they consider monstrous or threatening? What would disrupt their sense of ‘normal’?” A lot of fears are universal and are echoed throughout different cultures, so sometimes it’s good to look at folk stories or ancient beliefs and develop something based on those.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
I come from a film background and one of the best pieces of advice I got for pitching was ‘Skip Act Two’. This means that you don’t get bogged down in telling the minutiae of the story in the pitch – there’s nothing worse than getting into an endless round of ‘and then…and then…and then.’ Have a good premise, establish your character and world, explain what the key driver for the story is – e.g. the arrival of a new character, a change in the situation, the beginning of a journey – and then be really brief in summarising the actual plot points from the middle of the story. Then make sure you detail the ending, and the effect on your characters so the reader is left with the sense of a complete story.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
I’m still relatively new at pitching for Warhammer myself, but I’ve found that, even if you haven’t got every detail worked out, having a strong premise and central story is what hooks people. Details – e.g. location or setting – can change in consultation with editors and it’s good to be open to that process.
CL Werner
For Warhammer Horror: Castle of Blood; stories in Maledictions, Invocations and Anathemas. Non-BL: stories and novels for various publishers – see Clint’s website for more details.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
A great horror story, in my opinion, needs to have an immediacy to what is happening. You need characters who you become invested in. They don’t have to be people you can see yourself in, but they do have to be people whose welfare you come to worry about. When horror is too broad in its scope, then it removes that immediacy and with it a great deal of the connection between the reader and what is unfolding. While having a Great Old One show up to destroy the entire city is certainly a horrific event, more horror will be evoked in the reader when you focus on a single person or group of people gradually losing their sanity as the dreams of Mighty Cthulhu bleed into their minds and distorts their perception (and understanding) of reality.
This applies to any brand of horror. The overview of enemy soldiers pillaging a city in a frenzy of murderous abandon is horrific, but the reader has that distance of scope to act as a buffer. Focus on a single individual trying to hide from a squad of mercenaries ransacking his home and you’ll be able to create that immediacy that gets under the reader’s skin.
Now, for personal taste, I always need a fantastical aspect to my horror to really have any appeal. I simply don’t find any entertainment in reading about some fictional murderer (I’ll read a non-fiction book for that) but if you make that killer a werewolf or vampire, and now you’ve got my interest. To be certain, this is just a matter of taste, but I thought it worth mentioning.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
I’m actually the worst author to pose this question to. I often have such a hard time condensing a pitch that for a short story I’ll turn in a page rather than a paragraph. I’ll be as interested in seeing what other authors respond to this one as everybody else!
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
The big one is to bear in mind what I said about immediacy. While your story could certainly feature Space Marines or Stormcast Eternals, you’ve got to bear in mind that for a horror story you’re going to need a more down-to-earth character as your perspective for the reader. You don’t have to go slather on too much domesticity, but it will help to create that reader investment. The more you can create a sense of the ‘normal’ for the character’s surroundings the more you will profit when the untoward manifests to upset that normalcy, whether that’s a genestealer cult rising up from the depths or a skaven assassin scratching a gnawhole into the Realm. Give some real thought to what is the mundane baseline for your setting and then see how much of it you can undermine once you spring the horror of the story onto your characters.
JC Stearns
For Warhammer Horror: The Oubliette; The Marauder Lives in Maledictions.
What makes a great horror story, in your opinion?
Personally, I’m a big fan of contextually specific horror. I mean, as an adult who grew up in the nerd culture genre, there’s not much that can actually scare me, personally, so I’m not going to hold it against a story if it doesn’t give me nightmares. I’m a much bigger fan of establishing an identifiable character and then putting them into a horrific situation. I’m never going to be a conscripted soldier fighting aliens on a faraway world only to discover that the alien menace who has been picking off my squadmates is actually a deranged brother-in-arms who has turned to eating us as a method of team-building, so the situation is inherently unscary to me, Jim. But Predation of the Eagle [by Peter McLean, featured in Maledictions] is an absolutely amazing piece of horror fiction because it shows us an identifiable character in that exact scenario, and to me, that’s why it succeeds.
I guess I’d say good horror begins and ends with the characters. To enjoy horror, I need to see characters I’m actually invested in. I need to care about whether they live or die, and whether or not they can withstand the traumas the uncaring grim, dark future is thrusting on them.
Do you have any tips on condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
I suspect I’m actually quite terrible at this, so I’m not sure how good my advice will be. But I strive to remember some key points: who the main character is, where the story is set (not specific names or anything, but ‘a prison’ or ‘a Cultist church’ is fine), what the main character is trying to accomplish, why they are threatened or prevented from doing so, and how the story ends.
“Corsair Baron Leyvelyn just wants to steal enough wealth to retire to some rimworld with her human lover, Trenette. When she discovers the location of a defunct Necron outpost, it seems like the perfect score. As she and her mixed-race pirate crew delve deeper into the ruins, however, it becomes apparent that the outpost is not as abandoned as she was led to believe. Worse still, is the revelation that her crew was implanted with Necron mind-slaving technology months ago, and there is no way to tell who can be trusted. With the goal of plunder turned into a desperate retreat for their lives, Leyvelyn is forced into a deadly confrontation with her own soulmate, where she will be forced to kill the woman she loves if she wants to escape with her own soul.”
I reiterate: I have no idea how my editors feel about my ability to make a good pitch, so I can’t recommend this necessarily. I’ll probably be reading these author responses myself pretty avidly.
Is there any other advice you would give someone looking to pitch a Warhammer horror short story?
The main gripe I heard when the horror line launched is actually its greatest strength, in my opinion. The setting is so horrific, that horror is everywhere.
I would definitely look at things that don’t get a lot of focus. There are a ton of units in the game, or groups in the lore, that don’t get much attention because they aren’t epic enough. Gretchin and mandrakes mostly only show up on the tabletop to die horrifically at the hands of Space Marines. When they do show up in the fiction, it’s usually just to get mowed down by the heroes after making an entrance.
Both of those examples are, to a regular old human in the 40k setting, absolutely terrifying. Gretchin are tearing through your house or neighborhood, crawling through gutters and in windows, turning anything they can get their hands on into lethal weaponry. Mandrakes are darkness incarnate, burning you alive with freezing flame and flickering from shadow to shadow like a creepy, stalker-demon. So I’d say look at things that aren’t impressive on the tabletop or when pitted against Inquisitors and daemonlords and the like, then show how they are horrifying to a regular person like you and me.
Second, I’d definitely keep your focus on regular people. Not Inquisitors, not Space Marines, and nobody of great importance. The more ground-level they are, the more your character is going to be empathized with by the audience, and the more your story is going to pop.
Richard Strachan
For Warhammer Horror: stories in Maledictions, Invocations and Anathemas, plus the 2019/20 Events Anthology. Non-BL: published in magazines such as Interzone, The Lonely Crowd.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
I think a sense of atmosphere, more than anything. That atmosphere can be one of creeping dread, disquiet or despair, but the best horror evokes and sustains an emotional tone that should (hopefully) generate a commensurate feeling in the reader. To this end, things like a sense of place or a character’s psychology can almost become more important than the forward narrative momentum of a more conventional story. For me personally, I’ve always felt the best horror deals in a sense of inevitability and inescapable fate. That suffocating feeling of being trapped, with no way out, is what makes me feel most afraid, and conjuring that feeling is the key to making a horror story work for me.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
This is arguably the hardest part of the whole Open Submissions process, but it’s absolutely essential to master the ability to pitch ideas if you want to make a success of it. If you get a story accepted and Black Library ask you for more, you’re going to be pitching a lot! (For every one story of mine that I’ve had accepted, I’ve probably pitched six or seven different ideas.)
You need to really focus on the core idea of the story in order to condense it down. Cut out every extraneous detail, stick to the basic principle of the story, and don’t feel that you have to keep the ending a secret; the editors at BL will want to know how the story ends as well. I often think along the old lines of ‘Who, Where, What, Why’ to organise a pitch. Who is the main character? Where are they? What’s happening around them, and how do they affect it? Why is this important? If you keep to these basic questions, you should be able to come up with a snappy summary of what your story’s about.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
In many ways you have to think counterintuitively to how you might normally approach Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar. These are vast, outsized, bombastic settings, where the fate of billions is at stake. The Horror stories invert that scale; they’re a ground-eye view, where perhaps no more than a single life is at stake, and where the characters have absolutely no idea about the wider events in the setting around them. Keep the focus personal and grounded.
Also, BL have provided a few different horror categories to think about, and I’d really try to drill down into which one of those most appeals to you. For example, ‘Gothic’ horror has an extremely rich and varied history, from Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto onwards. Do some background reading around those genres, identify the perhaps overused tropes and clichés that have accrued around them over the years, and try to do something new within them. Finally, don’t get fixated on just one idea. Once you get started, you’d be surprised how many ideas you can generate, and any one of them could be fleshed out into something bigger.
Justin D. Hill
For Warhammer Horror: short stories in Invocations and Anathemas. See also Terminal Overkill, which is a Necromunda novel but a very dark one! Non-BL: several historical fiction novels – for more information see Justin’s website.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
I like a story that disturbs me and leaves me with a lingering sense of dread, disgust, or fear.
Good horror stories have an intensity of focus which you want to get across in your short sample. You can do this through the character’s (warped) perception, through what they are experiencing, or the world that surrounds them. Focus closely on the specific details of that experience – whether it is the threat or the experience. Slow time down, and play it out in horrifying detail.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
Your pitch should be short, simple, and catchy. One simple way of explaining the story is to mix a couple of titles together… something like ‘Mary Poppins meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ or ‘Conan the Barbarian meets Aliens’. These little combos do a great job of catching attention, and provoking the imagination of the editor, which hooks them in. It also helps you define what your story will be like. If in doubt, don’t over-labour it. Less is more.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
First: read the instructions clearly. The submissions editor is going to be trawling through a lot of material, much of which they will dismiss within a few lines. Make sure your submission is presented clearly, neatly, and addressing their criteria, which ask for a ‘paragraph-length summary of an original short horror story, along with a 500-word extract of it.’
BL are looking for ‘a chilling atmosphere within a context that is definitively Warhammer.’ They’ve also asked you to pick a category from Survival, Psychological, Gothic, and Cosmic. I’d read their suggested titles, especially for your particular genre, at least to get a feel, and then get going.
Last piece of advice is really encouragement! BL need authors and someone has to write them. You should ask yourself, why the hell should that not be you?! And to back this up, BL have done a great job of bringing talent in from within the community.
Finally, don’t let reading or preparation become procrastination. The first step to becoming a writer is that you write. And once you have started, don’t be afraid of cutting ruthlessly. Writing can be like sculpture. Your first drafts are like a block of stone. You have to chisel that away to find the figure within.
Nicholas Wolf
For Warhammer Horror: Miracles is available in Anathemas or as an eshort.
What makes a great horror short story, in your opinion?
This is a funny question for me, because I generally don’t watch horror movies (because they scare me). That said, for me horror isn’t about the monsters or the otherworldly, but about how those forces tear at the things closest for us. For example, while my story Miracles has a strong emphasis on the supernatural, the real terror comes from how these forces threaten to utterly destroy a man’s innocent family. As a father with young children I can’t imagine anything scarier than something happening to my kids. If you want to write good horror, find the thing you cherish most, imagine losing it in the most horrible way possible, and start there.
Do you have any tips for condensing a story or even a synopsis down into a concise, one-paragraph pitch?
I get asked this quite a bit, and my advice is generally the same: once you’ve written your pitch and done all your tweaking read it aloud to someone with zero understanding of the universe, and ask if they’d be interested to read more. I specifically recommend someone outside of the fandom for two reasons:
One: a person with no prior knowledge isn’t going to be enticed by their favorite faction or character showing up in a story, they’re going to be enticed by a story that has good bones, which makes them a better judge of a story’s quality.
Two: every pitch is going to be taking place in the same IP universe anyway, so laboriously highlighting some specific element of it doesn’t make you unique, it just wastes time you could be spending making the editor fall in love with your pitch.
Focus on what matters: who is the character, what are they facing, and what are the stakes. These elements transcend genre.
Is there any other advice you would give to someone looking to pitch a Warhammer Horror short story?
Like I said before, draw heavily from your life experience and don’t get too caught up in the setting and lore. Not that setting and lore aren’t important, they’re table stakes, but what really sells a story is how intimately your reader can connect with the terror you’re conveying, and the best way to do that is to make it something you can connect with first.
Also, as cliche as it sounds, you have to leave your audience (in this case the commissioning editor) wanting more. This doesn’t have to be as blatant as a cliffhanger, but in horror especially respect the power of mystery and don’t over-explain.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is to keep trying if you don’t make it this time. As I’d mentioned in an interview when I first joined the Black Library in 2019, I was pitching for seven or eight years before I was asked to do my first story, and even now as a writer 90% of my pitches don’t make the cut. Don’t take rejection personally. Learn from it, and keep writing.
Good luck everyone!
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That brings us to the end of part two – I really hope you’ve enjoyed hearing from all of these authors, and can take some or all of this advice away and apply it to your own writing. Please join me in saying a huge thanks to Justin D. Hill, Nick Kyme, Steven Sheil, JC Stearns, Richard Strachan, CL Werner and Nicholas Wolf for taking the time to contribute such fascinating advice! If you haven’t already, do also check out the first part of this article for more advice from David Annandale, Ray Cluley, Lora Gray, Graham McNeill, Jake Ozga and Tim Waggoner.
See also: Alec Worley Talks Pitching Warhammer Horror
See also: all of my Writing for Black Library articles, including loads more author interviews
See also: all of my Warhammer Horror reviews and 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.