Original subtitles

anyone can be a good writer. I think

people are natural storytellers.

Everyone wants to know what happens

next.

I have this one bit of advice

which I I really believe it's really

worked for me and I think it's very

important for writers. You don't have to

be afraid of writing. It's not scary.

Don't listen to all these people who

talk about how hard writing is. It's not

hard. You don't want to make it seem

like it's some something that's

complicated, something that you have to

work at, something that has to come from

deep inside you. It doesn't. You can

just write for fun. Why Why do you have

to write from your heart? You know, the

truth is I've written maybe 330 books

and I haven't written a single one for

my heart. Not one.

I'm RL Stein and this is my master

class.

Every author, their most asked question

is, "Where do you get your ideas?"

Everyone asks it. Adults ask it, kids

ask it, reporters ask it. Where do you

get your ideas? I'd say maybe twothirds

of my fan mail starts out like this.

Dear RL Stein, our teacher is forcing us

to write to an author. I chose you.

Where do you get your ideas? And I have

to say in all honesty, I can't tell you

how to get ideas. I can't. Other authors

I know people will say, well, why don't

you start by asking yourself the

question, what if? What if this happens?

But that doesn't that's not an idea. You

have to have an idea to answer the

question. And I I can't I can't tell you

how to get ideas, but I can tell you how

to go about getting ideas. I can tell

you how to stay alert for ideas. And

it's just a matter of thinking in the

right ways and

staying alert and keeping yourself open

and watching for ideas. For a long time

I used to go to schools and I would say

well there you can go to the idea store.

That's where I get my ideas. I get my

ideas at the idea store and there are

three different departments in the idea

store. There's experience,

memory, and imagination.

And those are the three departments you

can go to to find ideas. And actually,

I mean, I made up, you know, idea store.

It's ridiculous. But those three things

are the way to get to lead you to ideas.

Being alert is so important. I was

taking a walk in my neighborhood. It was

walking up West End Avenue in New York

and it was after school time and a boy

walked by with his mother

and just as I passed the boy said to his

mother, "I'm the only boy in my class

who can color inside the lines."

And I thought, "Wow, I haven't thought

about that in so long. the whole idea of

having to color inside the lines. And

I've just thought about that that heard

the voice, what the boy said. And I went

home and I wrote a story. It actually

became like a little radio play on my

website called um How to Color a

Monster.

And it was about some kids who start

coloring a monster coloring book. And if

they go outside the lines, the monster

will come to life. But I I'm telling

this just as an example of how you can

you can get an idea just from anything,

from any brief moment. You just have to

be alert to it. One day I was in the

airport in Los Angeles and I was

watching a family say goodbye to their

kid, their son. He was nine or 10 years

old

and he was flying by himself for the

first time and the parents were really

nervous. They were hugging him and

kissing him and saying, "You'll be okay.

You'll be fine." He was kid was fine. He

was perfectly okay, but they were very

nervous. And finally, he turned to go to

the gate to get on the plane. And as he

did that, his father handed him a white

envelope

and he walked off and went onto the

plane. And I'm watching this whole thing

and suddenly I'm thinking, what if

he gets on the plane, he sits down, he

opens the envelope, he takes out a note,

and it says, "We are not your parents."

How that I that just came to me. I don't

know, you know, why why would I think

that, but

just from something that I that I

watched and I used that in a Goosebumps

book actually. Uh it's a very scary

moment in a book called Curse of the

Mummy's Tomb.

The other department in the idea store

that I talk about is memory. You can

think back to things that will inspire

you. Think back to things that will give

you some kind of spark of an idea. I

when we were kids, my brother and I, I

we used to we were worried my parents

would go out and then maybe they'd be

late coming back and we'd worry about

it. We thought, gee, where are they?

It's like, you know, we were nervous

where they were out. And and um I had

this idea. I mean, what if parents go

out and then they never come back?

They're just gone. And I wrote this Fear

Street book called Missing where these

two teenagers are home and their parents

are just gone. And at first they

celebrate. They have a big party.

They're real happy about it. But the

next day, the parents still don't come

back and they still don't and then they

call their office to find out where they

are. and the people at work have never

heard of them.

They don't know who they are. They don't

know who their parents are and they're

gone. And that just came from

remembering having this childhood memory

of being nervous about parents being

gone. Let me think of another memory

example. Uh my dad had on his front

lawn, he had these hideous lawn gnomes.

These made out of they were clay lawn. I

don't know what they were. Porcelain.

They were hideous and he loved them. He

had like three of them and they were so

ugly and I just remember that years

later I remembered these things and I

wrote Attack of the Lawn Gnomes, a

Goosebumps book about lawn gnomes who

come to life at night. So you I you just

have to you have to be alert to these

memories.

The third department in the idea store

is imagination.

And you're going to use this more than

anything. I I I have to say one thing

people always say to me, do you you must

get a lot of ideas in your dreams. You

must have great dreams. And I say I

would say this to writers, don't rely on

your dreams. I have never had an idea

from a dream. Never. Not once. And I

have I have well I have the most boring

dreams you can imagine. One night I

dreamed I was making a bologn sandwich.

Really? It was I got out the white bread

then I got the baloney. This was like an

exciting dream for me. I've never had

never had an idea for dreams. So I I

don't you know I just don't recommend

that. But I was walking my dog in the

park and this is where the imagination

part comes in. And I it's very hard to

explain, but if you open yourself up to

these things, I I think this is going to

happen to you. I'm walking my dog in

Riverside Park in New York, and these

words flash into my mind. Say cheese and

die.

Why? I mean, where where did that come

from? I have no idea. Say cheese and

die. I'm thinking about it. Thinking

about it. I know it's a good title.

And so I think I then it just leads me

to think what if there is an evil

camera? What if some kids discover the

evil camera? What if the camera takes

pictures of things that happen, bad

things that happen in the future? What

would happen then? And that's how that

book developed. It just came from

nowhere, I think.

I haven't never really figured out why

did I like writing so much. Why? I was n

years old. Why would I shut myself up in

my room and be typing and typing these

stories and writing? Why did I like it

so much? And I've given it a lot of

thought and I think I grew up feeling

like an outsider and I always thought

maybe that's one reason why I would

wanted to write. I would I was like on

the sidelines. I was an outsider. I was

like observing. I could watch them and

see them, you know, and I would be in my

room and I I think I would be creating

the world. I would be creating people. I

would be I would be in charge. I'd be

part of it. And that's that's that's the

appeal of writing anyway. Whether you

feel like you're an outsider in the real

world or not, the appeal of writing is

that you're here creating your own

universe and you can control people and

you can make them funny or you can scare

them and you can do all this. It's in

your head and it's on paper and it's on

the screen and you're building your own

world. It's a wonderful thing.

If you want to write and you want to get

ideas,

um, you have to use everything. You have

to be alert and open to everything.

Everything you read, everything you

listen to, everything it you have to

allow these things to inspire you.

When I was a kid, um, some of the early

TV shows have inspired my writing a lot.

And of course, all those 1950s horror

films are,

you know, most of you can recognize them

in Goosebumps. Uh, when we were kids, my

brother and I used to go see a horror

movie every Saturday afternoon. They had

Tom and Jerry cartoons and then a horror

movie every Saturday. And we saw all the

films. The beast from 20,000 fathoms,

the creature from the black lagoon, it

walks among us, the brain that wouldn't

die, it came from beneath the sea, all

these great titles. And you I think you

can recognize some of them as Goosebumps

titles because most Goosebumps titles

are sort of like 50s horror movies. But

I, you know, I remember these films from

my childhood. I remember them. And then

you can like borrow the germ of an idea

from it and you can take it and adapt it

in your own way. I was a huge Twilight

Zone fan. Rod Serling is a big big hero

of mine and I know a lot of Goosebump

stories have come from, you know,

without even intending it have come from

my memory of Twilight Zone episodes that

I watched back in the day. And I this is

a great way for uh to to a very

important way I think to get inspiration

um just from all the things that you

read and the things you love.

A good title is a real attention grabber

that doesn't give anything away.

Doesn't really tell you what anything.

It just it it establishes a little bit

about the book. I did a Fear Street book

called Give Me a K. Give me a K I L.

So, you know, it's a cheerleader book

and you know someone's going to die, but

that's it. It's an attention getter.

That's all. It tells you a little bit of

the premise, a little bit about what

you're going to get, but it doesn't

really tell you anything. I have to

admit that I, you know, I've written so

many books now that I don't really try

to think of ideas anymore. I I never try

to think of ideas. I only think of

titles. I had this great title that I

loved. It was a little shop of hamsters.

It's a great title, right? But I, you

know, how then I'm thinking, how do you

make hamsters scary? That's the

challenge. And so I'm thinking, well,

what if there's a giant hamster? Or what

if there are a thousand hamsters? And

what if a boy is trapped in a place,

some place with a thousand hamsters or

something, but that all my books now

come from titles. I just think of the

title and then work out the story from

there. I know that's backward for most

authors. Most authors get an idea for

story, they start to write, later on

they think of the title. But I always

have the title first. Always start with

the title and it leads me to another

story. Um there's a book I want to write

that they won't let me write called

Morons from Mars. I love that title. And

I submitted it to my editor, Morons from

Mars. And he said, "I'm really sorry. We

can't do it. It might offend the

morons."

And so I I have but I use that title.

And then from that title you get like a

German idea. What if these really dumb

people came down from Mars? And then you

build from that you you then you ask

what if. What if once you have that

basic thing you say what if this

happened? What if that happened? And

that's how you grow the story from you

get some little nugget some title some

basic idea and then grow the story from

that. Are you I think if you're just

open to any experience that you're

having, if you just you have to have

this kind of just vision of seeing

things and thinking, "Oh, good. That'll

be a good title. Oh, that'll be you have

to be thinking about it all the time."

Um, I was in a a Walmart, which was a

rare experience for me. I was down in

Florida because we don't have Walmart in

New York. I don't have it. And I'm

walking around. It was Halloween time.

And there was they were selling

costumes, kids costumes. And on the wall

was a sign. It said mostly ghostly.

I just stared at it. What a great title

for a book series. And that became that

became a book series. I I it came from a

wall in Walmart. That's where the idea

came from. Mostly ghostly.

Sometimes you might want to start with a

topic,

not start with a title, not start with

an idea, not start I, you know, I have

to write just about every year I have to

write a Halloween book.

So I find myself I've done, you know,

I've done a lot of Halloween books. I've

done haunted pumpkins and haunted houses

and haunted masks and haunted costumes

and I've done

um creatures from outer space coming

down at Halloween time. I've done all

every Halloween day. But you know, so

but when I want to think of how to do

that, I sit down and say, "Oh, another

Halloween book. Okay, Halloween. What is

it?" Um trickor treat. They trick or

what is going to happen? everyone's in

costume trick or treat or some some

summers they'll say well we need a

summer camp book

okay we need a camp book so but this is

a good way to you know to narrow your

thinking down and say okay I'm going to

do a camp book now what is there about

camp that would be scary or what is

there about camp that would be fun for

kids and of course there's a lot

uh the camp first camp book I ever wrote

was called Welcome to Camp Nightmare and

it was based on my son's camp because I

hated his camp. It was terrible. It was

a real low rent camp. They had like one

leaky canoe and they had archery had

archery but they had one arrow so you'd

shoot the arrow and then you'd have to

chase it into the woods and and bring it

back. He loved it of course but I turned

that into welcome to camp nightmare. But

uh and that that just started the whole

book came about because I wanted to

write a camp book and you know there are

all these other topics you can just

figure out a topic and then start

thinking about that. It's another way of

thinking about getting ideas.

You don't need a dozen ideas.

You don't I I've seen other authors talk

about how they keep a card file with

ideas or they keep I don't carry a

notebook around. I don't I I I do one

idea at a time. I only do one I do one

book at a time and I don't think about

the others. You know what else is coming

up. I you you don't need five ideas or

you don't need a whole book of ideas.

You only need one idea. You just need

one story. So I if I get an idea, I'm

thrilled. I just I remember it. I go

home. I start making notes about it. But

I don't keep a notebook of ideas or I

have nothing in advance. Nothing. Also,

I think that's one way, you know, keep

things fresh.

Let's talk a little bit about how you

get to the point of developing your

outline, how you go from idea to

outline. I did a a Goosebumps book that

people don't mention that much, but it's

actually one of my favorites. It's

called Attack of the Mutant

and it's about a boy who is a comic book

fan and there's a superhero that he

really likes. He is named the Masked

Mutant

and one day he's reading the comic book

and he finds that he's in it. He's a

character in the comic book

and he's just he can't believe what's

going on here. why is he a character in

the comic book? And he goes, it the

comic book is printed. It's made in his

hometown. And so he works up his courage

and he takes the bus to the comic book

company. And when he walks in, he walks

through this light beam that's red,

blue, and yellow. And it zaps him. and

he's then he's in the comic book. He's

in a comic book world and he's suddenly

he's the sidekick to this hero that he's

read about and now here he is trapped in

another world which is really exciting

to him but horrifying and he's in

horrible danger. How could this happen

to him? And this story just started. I I

love comic books. I when especially when

I was a kid and was just thinking about

comic books. I hadn't done a goosebumps

about comic books and I had the title

Attack of the Mutant and I just the very

first thing I thought was what if you're

reading something and you find that

you're in it. That was the start. So I

write that down. And then I had some

scenes of what the superhero would be

like, what what what his powers would be

or what he would look like or and so I

wrote that down. That was next. And then

I had to figure out a villain. Who is

the archeneemy? Who is the villain here?

And I wrote that down and just just I'm

just thinking thinking and no story yet.

No story at all. just trying to get

these basic ideas, figuring out what's

the conflict here and then h then I had

to figure before I even started outline

how do I get the boy out of the jam

what's the big what's the ending here

and then I had so I had like couple

pages written written just a couple

pages of ideas and then then I go to the

outline and then I start to write I have

basic scenes I have a basic idea of the

story and I have what the characters are

basically and then I can I can really

start to plot it.

The outline is usually 15 to 20 pages

long and it's very complete because I

know the more complete I make the

outline, the easier it will be when I

start to write the book. And so I spend

at least a week on the outline, making

sure the story makes sense, making sure

I track the characters all the way

through, making sure I have good chapter

endings, making sure the surprises are

there, that there's a good middle, the

middle of the book doesn't sag. Um, I go

over and over the outline. The hardest

thing when you you sit down to write a

book is is the plot is making it hang

together. Is making it interesting all

the way through. And an outline allows

you to see what you have and to know

where you're going. You may not you may

hate it. You may hate the whole thing. I

say I had a writer friend who did teen

horror and she said,"I don't want to

know what happens to my characters when

they turn the corner. I want to be

surprised.

And I just I never buy that. I a lot of

authors in interviews, they always say,

I wait for my characters to tell me what

to do. I always think that's just that's

garbage. That's ridiculous. Say, "Oh, I

wait for my characters will tell me

which one of them will be the main

character, and my characters will tell

me the plot." And and I I never buy

that. I just think that's like phony

interview stuff that you say because you

have to you have to be in control.

You're you're creating this world and

creating these people. And for me to be

able to sit down and just do the create

the story, create the story and have it

in front of me when before I start to

write is totally useful. Then I can sit

down and just relax and write. I don't

have to think hardly because I've done

all the thinking. I've done all the hard

part. And that's that's why I can write

so many books, I think. I mean, I don't

like outlining either, but now I can't

work without one. I have to have it. And

it I have my whole plan and I sit down

and enjoy the writing.

I was in a school once and I answering

kids questions and generally kids

questions are are the same every

everywhere I go. What's your favorite

book you've written? What's what's your

scariest book? You know, where do you

get your ideas? And but a kid raised his

hand and he said, "Would you say your

books are plot driven or character

driven?" And I sort of stood there. I

was a little stunned because no one had

ever asked me that before. But I

realized that my you my these books, the

Goosebumps books and the Fear Street

books and most all the books I write are

all plot driven. They're all just, you

know, what happens next? What happens

next? And um that's but that's that's

the style of it. I think if you want to

write a page turner, there's certain

rules you you you have to follow. Well,

and one I think you have they have to be

fun. They have to be fun to read. Fun.

It's a really important part. And there

have to be fun kids in them if you want

people to read them through. There have

to be funny things that happen, funny

conflicts, funny fun things. I I think

that's one thing. And then the rest of

it is technical. um short chapters,

easy to read words, quick plot driven

stories that that that keeps them going.

Um in my books, the chapter endings, the

cliffhers, a lot of cliffhers, a lot of

just impetus to keep reading, keep

reading. You need enough stories so that

the kids while they're reading, they're

saying, "What happens next?" That's the

big question. What happens next? You

want them to want to ask that question.

They have to know what happens next.

Then if if you can do that, if you can

create something where they're saying

they're turning the pages, what

happened? I got to know what happens

next. Um that's the key to this. I think

the Goosebump stories are more adventure

than horror really. It's kids who are

out of the house. They're out at night.

They're they're having adventures. And

there are some Goosebumps books that

aren't pretty much aren't that are

adventure books. The deep trouble books.

Billy Deep and his sister who are out on

their uncle's marine lab out on the

ship, out on the ocean, and they have

adventures with all kinds of sea

creatures. Those are basically adventure

books. And then there's some that are

pirate books that are just adventure.

They're not really they're not horror

books. Um, and so I they're books that I

just consider as advent adventure books.

A good adventure is like any other book.

It's where the kids are in danger. They

have a mission. They have something they

have to do, but someone is trying to

keep them from achieving their mission.

Someone is after them. Someone's trying

to hurt them. They've got to do what the

whatever the mission is. They have to

find the missing jewel. They have to

find something and keep themselves safe.

Once I have the scenes in my head and

I'm ready to start my outline, I try to

figure out the ending. I always try to

get the ending first if I can. Sometimes

you can't do it, but this is just a

trick. If you have the ending, if I know

what the big surprise at the end, the

big finish, I know what's going to

happen. Then when I go back and start

writing my outline,

I can make sure that I keep the reader

from guessing the ending. I know what

the ending is and I can keep them away

from it. I can deliberately move them in

a different direction. Move them in this

direction, then move them in that

direction. And so that the ending is a

huge surprise. And it's just easier to

write it. If I know what the ending is,

then it's easier to go back from the

very beginning and fool them. It's it's

just it's a trick. That's all it is.

Kids will not accept an unhappy ending

to these kinds of horror novels.

I once um just for fun, I wrote a Fear

Street book

and I had a I put an unhappy ending on

it. And in the very end, the good girl

is taken away as a murderer

and the girl who committed the murder

gets off scot-free and she's fine. I

just did it for fun. I just I have never

done it before to see what happened.

this. The kids turned on me immediately.

It was a huge mistake and I started

getting letters right away. Dear RL

Stein, you [ __ ] Dear RL Stein, how

could you do that? You idiot. Are you

going to write a sequel to finish the

story? They could not accept an unhappy

ending. And I would go to schools. I'd

visit schools and every time someone

would raise their hand and say, "Are you

going to finish that book? Why did you

write that? Why did you do that?

Everywhere I went, it haunted me. And I

actually had to write a sequel to put a

happy ending on it. The readers of Fear

Street and Goosebumps like a happy

ending because they've been through all

this trouble. They've been through all

these monsters and horrible things and

they've been chased and they've had all

these creepy, terrible adventures and

they want relief from it. They want to

and you know my my books are they're

like a roller coaster ride really and

kids who like roller coasters but they

like these books because they know like

a roller coaster kids know what to

expect when they read a Goosebumps book.

They know they're going to get on. It's

going to be a very fast ride. There's

going to be a lot of turns, a lot of

twists, a lot of turning around, a lot

of screaming. and then it's going to let

them off. Okay. And I think like a

roller coaster, that's what they want in

these books. What I try to do is I give

it a good happy ending. Every book has

to have a happy ending. And then I throw

in like a little twist at the end. Just

something that's a little odd. And I I

the one that comes to mind right now is

from Stay Out of the Basement. Um the

very second Goosebumps book. And it's a

book about these two kids are horrified

because they learn that dad, who's been

down in the basement all the time, is

turning into a plant. And now they have

their real father is is here and the

plant father is here. And they have to

decide which is which. And there's a big

finish of surprise ending. They figure

it out which one. The plant father is

destroyed. The real father is back.

Hugs. Lots of hugs. Everyone is happy

and you have your happy ending to the

book. The two kids walk out of the house

and the flowers in the backyard start

talking to them.

So that's that's what a surprise ending

is. You have your big happy ending,

everything's nice, and then something

right at the end says, "Wait a minute,

kids. You're not out of it yet.

Where did I learn the value of a

cliffhanger?

Well, I have to say I learned it when I

was a kid, a little kid. My brother and

I

shared a room. We were My family was

very poor and we lived in a tiny little

house like three doors from the railroad

tracks. And my dad finished the upstairs

for us. And that was Bill. Bill and me.

We shared this very narrow room, long

room. And we had twin beds on each side.

And at night, Bill and I, we just got

into the habit of telling each other

scary stories. We would try to scare

each other. And I was, I don't know, I

was nine, maybe. He would be six or

seven. He was three years younger than

me. Every night we would like tell scary

stories to each other. But I loved

being the older one. I loved torturing

him. Loved it. And anyway, we would tell

these scary stories. But I had this

great idea. I was this kid and I would

say um I would tell this thing and I'd

say and the ghost crept into the room.

The ghost came closer and closer and uh

I'll finish it tomorrow night, Bill.

That's it for tonight. And he'd say,

"No, finish the story. Finish." I say,

"No, I'm going to sleep. I'm going to

sleep. No, forget it." And I would keep

him waiting till the next day. And I

think this was like the beginning. I was

like 10 years old, right? And already I

was doing cliffhanger. I was doing

chapter endings. And I was just it was

driving him crazy. I would get such a

good reaction that I kept doing it. And

now I I'm still doing it. In my books,

every chapter has a has a cliffhanger

ending. Every single chapter, there's

some shock at the end. There's something

hang that leaves you hanging. I mean,

that's what a cliffhanger is. It leaves

you hanging off a cliff. You're you're

stranded in space and you you don't know

are you going to survive? Are you going

to make it? You have to go on to the

next chapter. Now, a lot of writers

think this is a really cheap trick. They

think it's what a cheap gimmick to end

every chapter with a cliffhanger. But,

you know, my idea is to get kids reading

and to keep them reading. And this is a

trick. It is a trick. I don't know if

it's a cheap trick, but it's a trick.

And they have to go on to the next

chapter. And I love it when parents tell

me, "Oh, my kids start reading." And I

say, "You have to go to bed." And they

say, "One more chapter, please. one more

chapter, but but then they get to the

next cliffhanger and they have to go on.

For me, these cliffhanger chapter

endings are just as important as

anything else in the book. I it's I

spend so much time and I I get from my

editors when it comes back many of the

comments are about the chapter endings

and they'll say you have too many

chapter endings that are similar or

that's not scary enough or your your

cliffhers are boring that's that's too

boring or you've done that it's it's

become a really hard part and now of

course now that I've written over a

hundred Goosebumps books it's The real

the challenge for me is to come up with

new cliffhers. How do you come up with

new, you know, you can't just have

someone grabs her from behind and she

screams. I've got to find new things to

keep them moving on to the next chapter.

But I and it's something I spend a lot

of time on. I don't but I don't think I

can explain how you do it. I it's just a

matter of leaving the reader in

suspense, doing something, having

something big happen, something that

maybe maybe it's a surprise, maybe it's

not that big a surprise, but it leaves

them hanging and they have to go on and

read the next chapter.

The haunted mask, I think, is my best

Halloween story out of all of them. And

here, but here is a very typical

cliffhanger. It's it's very cheap. Very

cheap trick. And I've probably done it a

hund in a hundred different chapters,

but I think it really does keep reading.

And Carly Beth is wearing the haunted

mask. It's stuck to her face and it's

turned her really evil and she can't do

anything about it. And now she's done

something to her friends and now she's

running. She's running uh running wildly

over the front lawns, jumping over

shrubs and hedges, flying over the dark

hard ground. She was running blindly,

the houses worring past on both sides.

She's out of control now. Carly Beth.

The blustery wind swirled,

and she swirled with it, rising over the

sidewalks, rushing through tall weeds,

blowing with the wind like a helpless

leaf, holding her bulging candy bag. She

ran past startled trick-or-treaters,

past glowing pumpkins, past rattling

skeletons. She ran until her breath gave

out. Then she stopped panting loudly and

shut her eyes, waiting for her heart to

stop pounding, for the blood to stop

pulsing at her temples. And a hand

grabbed her shoulder roughly from

behind.

And that's the chapter ending.

That's it. So you have who? Why? What?

Who grabbed her from behind? You have to

read on to the next chapter. You have

her panic here, her total panic, out of

control, blowing like a leaf in the

wind. And then something grabs her and

it turns out to be her best friend

Sabrina.

It's it's all it's a tease. It's not a

real scare. And about half the half the

cliffhers are teases and half of them

are real scares. And but it it's the

trick I use to keep kids reading.

Too many children's books, YA books,

middle-grade books are too linear and

they become predictable. They they may

be beautifully written and great

characterization,

but they just move along. They move

along, move along. They're just linear.

And I think one reason that my books

have lasted so long, I mean, here's

Goosebumps 25 years later and Fear

Street, which is even older. But it's

the surprises in the books and it's the

twists and it's the fact that they're

not linear that they'll turn around and

suddenly they'll be going in a different

direction and they'll come back and they

and there'll be something that kids

haven't guessed. It it sort of plays

with their minds. The books are a tease.

They're a real tease because they're not

that scary really. But the it's it's the

teasing part. It's the joking part.

That's the surprising part that I think

keep kids reading these books. I did a

book called My Hairiest Adventure.

It's a Goosebumps book. And in the

beginning of the book, these kids are in

a garage and they find an old bottle of

suntan lotion and they all splash it on.

They all want tans. They splash on this

thing.

And then a short while later, the main

character looks down and he's growing

hair. He's got hair growing and he's he

quickly shaves it off. He say he doesn't

want anyone to see. He doesn't know

what's happening. And then he goes to

see one of his friends and his friend is

gone. his friend isn't there and no one

wants to talk about it and no one his

friends are disappearing for the kids

who are in the garage and he's got more

hair growing on him more hair growing

and his parents finally he has to let

him know he's he's growing hairy and

they is take they take him to a doctor

and he he's gets these shots and this is

this is one of my best twists I think

this is like no I don't think kids are

going to guess this the he's not a boy.

He's actually a dog and he's reverting

back to his dogness. And all these

parents were in on it where they took

these dogs and gave them shots that

turned them into kids, but it's all

wearing off and he's actually a dog. And

to me, you know, I I think kids are

they're shocked by this. It's got you

you got a great surprise here. Oh, wait,

wait a minute. Wait a minute. And then

he's looking at his sister and his

sister has eyes just like the family cat

and he's wondering what what is his

sister really at the end. So is you got

twist after twist on that. And I just I

think this this is especially writing

thrillers or writing horror. I think

this is really important for kids

writing. I try to have at least two or

three twists in the book at least. I

would love to even do more, but then it

might get crazy. But I I like to have

right in the middle of the book, I like

to have a moment where the reader says,

"Oh my gosh, I Oh, I had no idea. I Oh,

I I'm, you know, totally shocked because

the whole book is suddenly turned around

and no one is who they thought they

were." And I try to do that in every

book.

To me, the middle of the book is the

hardest part. It's It's great. You get

started, you know your beginning. You

can get a really It's very easy to get a

very good beginning for a book. And you

can figure out a good end. You know your

end. You get a good finish. You know

what the big surprise, what the action's

going to be, how it's going to end. But

getting getting to the end is hard.

Getting through the middle, you've got

to have a lot of story. You can't just

try to get there. You can't. You've got

to have a lot going on. There's got to

be a lot of twists. It's got to turn.

It's got to move. The middle has got to

carry them through. The middle is, for

one thing, it's the longest part of the

book.

And so, I spend a lot of lot of time

working on the middle, making sure the

middle is good. Sometimes I will write

an outline and have something in the

very middle and it turns out that he's

actually a werewolf. He's not a a normal

kid. Something like that. And uh it'll

come back from my editors and they'll

say, "Oh, we guessed that in chapter 2.

You got to work on that. We guessed it

already."

And so it's hard. It's hard to you've

got to come up with a way to either keep

that same twist and go back to the m

beginning. Go back to the beginning and

figure out how to keep them from

guessing it. How to make it not obvious.

There was one great line in the

Goosebumps movie that I really loved. I

didn't write it. Jack Black is me at the

end of the movie and he's a teacher.

He's teaching and he said, "I'm going to

teach you about writing. We're going to

learn about how to every how to write.

Every book has a beginning, a middle,

and a twist. And I just I think that's

great.

I always try to put in a lot of false

leads in the books. It's very important

to mislead the kids and I try really

hard to fool the kids. And one of the

best ways to do that is to put somebody

in the book to some character that

everyone is going to think is evil.

Everyone. And that they're going to be

very some guy lurking around. They're

going to be terribly afraid of him. And

then the big surprise then halfway

through the book you say, "Oh," he says,

"Yes, I'm with the FBI. I've been

investigating this monster. you're

after. I'm not the monster. I'm I'm

Yeah. And it's just it's a red herring.

It's it's just the character is just

there to lead the reader off the path.

The teenager who you think is behind all

the trouble and the teenager who you

think is the one who's torturing the

girl who is is going to be the one who's

not and in Fierce Street especially, it

turns out to be your best friend. the

books are a cheat and that's deliberate

and that generally there are no clues as

to the surprises that are coming. I

don't want to I don't want them guess

and I want to be so careful that they

don't guess that the gorilla is actually

not a gorilla, it's actually a chicken

or whatever that I I don't plant to be

in in mysteries, adult mysteries to be

fair, you have to plant clues. You have

to be fair with the reader. Um so that

when they get to the solution of the

mystery, they say, "Oh, I should have

seen that. I should have seen that

coming. I didn't guess. But I don't do

that. I don't give them a clue.

Cell phones have ruined just about every

mystery plot. And this is another real

problem for writers who want to write

mysteries or horror. How do you get rid

of the cell phones? Get them out of

there. Um, in the old days I'd write a a

Fear Street plot where a teenage girl is

getting these phone calls. She's getting

these threatening phone calls. She said,

"Who is this? Who is this?" Now she

looks on the dial, she sees who it is,

and the book is over. You can't That's

it. The cell phone's ruined everything.

Now we've got kids trapped in a cabin.

They're trapped in a woods with a

murderer. They pick up their phone. Hi,

bring help, please. There's a murderer

in the woods, right? The book, that's

it. Cell phones ruin ruin every story.

So, this is these kinds of things, you

know, think it's funny, but you've got

to think about it. I I did a Fear Street

book recently, a new Fear Street book

called Party Games where there uh uh one

of the Fear Kids has a birthday party on

Fear Island and invites everyone in the

winter to his summer house and they're

on this deserted island. And the very

first thing he does when they arrive on

the island is he collects all the cell

phones and says, "We're not we're going

to have a non- cellphone weekend. it's

going to be great. And he takes all

their phones away. And that's how I

dealt with it.

I put two outlines online on masterclass

resources for you to download and

compare. One is the first outline of I'm

Slappy's Evil Twin, which was rejected

by my editors. And then the second one

is the one that they accepted and the

one I wrote the book from. And you will

see quite a difference between the first

version of the outline and the second

version because the first outline was

totally rejected by my editors. If you

look at them, you'll see that in the

first outline, it's supposed to be a

slappy book, but Slappy doesn't appear

until chapter 13. And this was a real

problem. They said, "How how can you do

a slappy book when he isn't there? He

doesn't even appear till nearly, you

know, twothirds of the way through the

book.

I was trying something a little

different, but they hated it. So, I you

will see in the second outline that we

have a prologue and then Slappy appears

in chapter 1 and Slappy and his twin

both appear in chapter 1 and the book

gets off to a really fast start. I'm

going to read uh the first three

chapters of the second outline. This is

actually like a 12page outline. And this

is the prologue. The book has a prologue

that happens before the story actually

starts. And I'm just going to read the

read it to you and you can see just I

think this gives you a better idea of

how how the outline thing works. This is

chapter one of the prologue. 1920 a farm

village puppeteer France Mayahar working

in his workshop finishing a

ventriloquist dummy you were made of the

finest coffinwood and I've given you the

dark powers I learned on my tour of

Europe someone will pay a million

dollars for you when they learned of the

abilities and powers I have given you so

you see I put dialogue it's it's not

just action in the outline there's also

dialogue

And of course, when I go to write the

book, there'll be a lot more. There'll

be it it'll be stretched out. This just

gives me an idea of where I'm going. But

wait, a pounding on the door. Who is

beating on the door like that? Mayhar

opens the door to find the entire

village storming his cabin. They carry

guns and torches. What do they want? End

of chapter. Here he's in this bad

situation. and he's got these menacing

villagers outside and the chapter ends.

So you pretty much that's the

cliffhanger for this first chapter

two. They angrily accuse him of bringing

bad luck to the village. The crops have

withered and died and the cows are all

giving sour milk. It's the doll, they

cry. Look at that evil face. The doll

has brought evil and bad fortune to our

village. They grab the dummy. Mayhart

pleads with them. No, it's my life's

work. I beg you. But the villagers build

a tall bonfire and they burn the dummy.

As the flames consume it, a scream of

pain and horror rings out over the

village. End of the chapter.

Chapter 3. The scream came for Mayar as

he watched his dummy burn. The villagers

warn him to stop his evil work. My work

is over, he tells them, appearing to be

a broken man. You have destroyed my

life's work.

Mayor slinks back to his workshop. The

fools, the stupid fools, he mutters

bitterly. Did they really think I'd give

up my precious dummies so easily? They

burned one of Mayhar's copies, a fake.

He has two dummies on the shelf. He

picks one up. They burned a fake, a

useless, lifeless hunk of wood, he tells

it. He and the two dummies toss back

their heads and laugh.

And that's the end of the prologue. And

that's, you know,

those are the three chapters. And those

chapters each become five or six pages

long. But you see, I I think one reason

that I read this prologue and that I

like it is that you get your very first

twist right in the beginning of the book

because here's Mayhar and you think he's

ruined and he screams in horror and he's

says, "You've ruined my life's work. I'm

over. I'm finished." And he's he's

actually playing them. It's that and

that is a very first twist and it's

right in chapter three already and he

knew what he was doing the whole time.

And the kids reading the book, people

reading the book know that one of those

dummies has to be Slappy. And because

the book is called I'm Slappy's evil

twin, the other one has to be Slappy's

twin. So we've established what's going

to happen later on.

By the way, I this it's a scene out of

Frankenstein where the villagers with

their torches come up and bang on the

door and bang on the door and invade the

house. Um, that was my reference for

that. But the outline is the hardest

part of the process. Of course, the

outline allows you to have fun writing

because you've done the hard part. And

each time I then I revise the outline,

it gets better. I've done I've done some

books where I've done maybe three four

outlines before I started to write and

but I could see the book getting each

time it's better. It's better. It's

better. It's it's I hate this part but I

know I see it getting better and

especially when I've written three or

four outlines sometimes I'll call my

editor and I'll say um have I written

this book yet? I forget whether I am I

just outlining or maybe I've written I

feel like I've written the book already

since I've done so many outlines but it

it's a it's a struggle but it's always

worth it

when you have an outline that you like

and it really would be good to share it

if you don't have an editor to show it

to somebody and get you know someone you

trust and someone who likes to

That's really very helpful if you don't

have editors yet. Um, and have them

comment and say, "Do they think the

pacing is right? Do they think there's

enough adventure? Is there enough plot

in the story to keep people reading?"

It' be nice to get other people's

advice. Um, if you then find you you

have an outline, you like it, you think

it's ready to go, you you're going to

find out when you're writing the book if

it's a good outline or not. Once you

start writing, you're going to have a

feel. You're going to write your first

chapter. You're going to get into it and

you're going to have a feeling that it's

going really well. Oh, this is good. I'm

the plan is right. Or while you're

actually writing that, you might find,

gee, this is it went too far here. I'm

got to pull back or go this chapter is

boring this outline and you want to you

probably want to depart from the

outline. Um, that's how you find out

really whether an outline works or

I love the idea that people can turn to

books for just for entertainment and

nothing else.

And so I have um in Goosebumps or Fear

Street, there's nothing you can learn.

There's no moral lesson. People always

say, "What are the morals that you're

teaching? What are the There aren't any.

There are none. The main moral lesson is

run. Run as fast as you can. That's it."

Because I just I don't want that. I You

know, adults have the right, they give

themselves the right to read all kinds

of trash, right? And adults can read

entertaining, you know, magazines, but

somehow they think when it comes to kids

reading that the kids have to be

elevated by what they read.

There was always um a rule in children's

publishing that the characters in a

children's book have to learn and grow.

And I just rejected that idea. And I

thought if adults can read something

just for fun with nothing else, no

socially redeeming value whatsoever,

kids, kids have the same right. And

you're competing now. If you're writing

books for kids, you're competing with so

many other things with, you know,

tablets and phones and video games. And

there's such competition. You've got to

really work to get kids to read now. And

you've got to create something that

they'll think, "Oh, this is just as much

fun as watching something." People

always say, "Why do you write these

scary books, you know, if I'm in a crowd

you speaking or something?" And I always

say, "Well, I just like to scare kids."

But that's not that's not really what

the books are about. They're about

getting kids to read. Believe me,

there's nothing more satisfying to me

than these parents who come up to me all

the time and say, "My son never read a

book before. Last night I caught him in

the middle of the night under the covers

reading one of your books with a

flashlight." And I never get tired of

stories like that. And wherever I go, I

get these stories of my kid learned to

read on your books or my kid learned to

like books from from yours. And that's

that's the whole point of it. It's not I

don't really want to terrify kids.

Some of you may be thinking of writing

for kids. You you might be starting to

think about your audience. Um you know

ju generally there's middle grade which

is generally 7 to 11 maybe 7 to 12 I

lose readers at 12 they move on to other

authors and then there's you know young

adult which is very popular now um the

YA books are generally read uh maybe

kids starting at 11 or 12 and then up to

15. And the interesting thing about a

young adult these days is that 40%

of the young adult novels are read by

adult women. Adults read them. So that's

something to really keep in mind if you

want if you're going to write teen

books. Um that there's a giant adult

adult readership now which is didn't

used to happen in the past. You know, I

write for both. Uh, and I you have to

kind of know what age you have to start

with the age of the characters. And if

you write you kids like to read about

kids who are a little bit older than

them

and so not younger

and so kids in Goosebumps, they're all

12 years old. everyone's 12 years old

because the readers are mostly younger

than 12. So, they're going to be really

interested in in that. Um, for young

adult, there's much more of a range.

Generally, my young adult, my Fear

Street books, they're all 16 and 17,

18 occasionally.

This is very important to when you pick

an audience and to get to know them. And

you know, I do a million book signings

and I visit schools all the time so that

I can see what the kids look like. So I

can see who I'm writing for and then I

can remember that when I'm writing books

for them. When Goosebumps started, my

son was the right age and he and his

friends would be over all the time and I

could spy on them. I would listen to

what they said, listen to the, you know,

the things they the things they talked

about and I could watch and see what

they wear. And it's very important. I

for me, it's a big part of my job. It's

a big part of a writer's job to know

that audience and to you don't want to

sound like some old guy from Mars who

doesn't know anything. You really want

to be tuned in. And so I spent a lot of

time spying on kids. There are many ways

to get to know your audience. And once

you've chosen who you want to write for,

um, one way is to

actually see what you want to keep up

with their culture. Tune yourself in to

that group and really get to know them.

I'm very lucky since I get to do a lot

of school visits. I'm invited to a lot

of book festivals. So, I get to see kids

and I I spend a lot of time I take it

very seriously

um getting to know them and talking to

them um just so that my books seem real

and don't seem out of date. You have to

know teenagers

know pop culture. I try to keep up with

music. I try to keep up with what you

know what they watch on Netflix and try

to keep up with their culture. But you

have to be very careful about what you

include in your books because you don't

want to date your books.

When we were starting out Fear Street

and back in 1990, 1991, we're doing

these Fear Street books and I I was

looking at one the other day and it

said, uh, oh, we're going to a Rick

Ashley concert. Yes. Oh, Rick Ashley,

we're going I thought, who is that? What

was I thinking? Why? He made me 1990 and

that was it for Rick Ashley, right? And

now here he is in this book 20 years

later. It's a horrible mistake. You have

to be careful about that.

One thing I would like to help you with

is to decide what audience you would

like to write for. And I will tell you

right away, my audience is the best

audience in the world. the seven to 12

year old Goosebumps audience. They're

amazing. It's there's no better

audience. In fact, I cannot imagine why

anyone would want to write for adults. I

don't know why they would. I get them

the last time in their lives they will

ever be enthusiastic.

This is the last time 7 to 12 year olds

the last time they'll ever be

enthusiastic about authors, about books.

When they turn 12, they discover sex.

They totally change. They have to be

cool. They're lost forever. That's it.

But I get them right before then. And

they are a wonderful audience. They want

to know you. They want to know all about

you. They want to live in the Goosebumps

world. They want book after book. And

they're just terrific. I'm going to read

a few letters to you. These are all real

letters from kids. and you'll see just

how terrific these kids are.

These are real letters that I've

collected over the years from mostly

from Goosebumps readers.

Dear RL Stein, I love your books. You're

like the scariest man on earth. I want

to know everything about you. Do you

have hair?

Love Grace?

I don't know. Dear RL Dear Relstein,

I don't know if you remember me or not,

but when you came to my school, I'm the

one who stepped on your foot.

I do remember that kid.

Here's a great letter. Dear RL Stein,

you are my second favorite author.

That was the whole letter. That was it.

Talk about keeping you in suspense.

Dear RL Stein, I'm not that smart, but I

like your books.

I guess that's a compliment, right?

Here's a very odd one. Dear RL Stein,

I'm your biggest fan. I read your book

so much I need my parents to escort me

to the bathroom.

I don't really get that one. I don't

know. And here is my all-time favorite

letter over all the years. This is my

favorite letter from a kid. It's from a

boy. Dear RL Stein, I've read 40 of your

books and I think they're really boring.

Perfect letter, right?

I work very hard to make sure that the

books are appropriate.

I mean, I'm doing horror, so it's got to

be scary. It's got to be creepy. But I

hate it when parents come up to me and

I'm doing a book signing and they say,

"Oh, you gave my kid nightmares.

You gave them nightmares for weeks. They

had to sleep with us. You I hate that.

It's not It's not what I want to do at

all. In fact, I a woman wrote to me once

with the perfect line. It was like the

perfect letter. She wrote and she said,

"Um, I love your books for my kids

because they give them shuddters but not

nightmares." And that that's what I try

to do. I did a um a Goosebumps book

called The Girl Who Cried Monster.

And it's about a girl who uh goes to the

library and she knows that the librarian

is a monster. She's watching from the

stacks and no one no one this the story

is sort of the girl who cried wolf

because no one will believe her. No one

believes her and then one she knows the

the librarian's a monster and then one

day she's back in the shelves and

watching and in the original version of

the manuscript the librarian eats a kid.

So I handed this book in and they said,

"Bob, we're not having a kid eaten. The

librarian cannot eat a kid." This is one

place where I may one of the few times

where I went too far. They said, "That's

just we don't have kids eating." So I

said, "Okay." So I took that out and I

put a large bowl of live turtles on the

librarian's desk

instead of the kid.

And every once in a while, the librarian

would reach over and take a pick up a

turtle and put it in his mouth and

crunch it up. And that was my solution

to, you know, having gone too far. And

it actually it was better, I think,

because turtles are crunchier,

right? It's very crunchy and a great

graphic, great, you know, image for a

monster. So, you have to be careful when

you're writing for middle grade. Well,

look at Goosebumps. Um, no one ever

dies. There are no guns.

No one ever dies. If there's a ghost, it

happened a long time before the story

started. Um, the real world is pretty

much kept out. That That's my one rule.

My big rule for writing middle-grade

horror is that they have to know it's a

fantasy. They have to the reader has to

know this couldn't happen. Couldn't

really happen. It's all just a story.

And once they know that, if they know,

you know, if you've established that and

you've written it in a way they know

that it couldn't happen, then you can go

pretty far. You can go pretty far with

the scares.

Writing for teens is kind of the

opposite. It has to be very real or

they're not going to buy it. every the

details have to be real. And I kill I do

in Fear Street kill off a lot of

teenagers. So, we do that. But, um

the it's sort of the opposite of the

middle-grade books because every detail

it has to be so real. They have to

believe it. They have to believe this is

happening. This is happening. it had if

it's phony, if it's goes too far, if

it's they're not they're just not going

to buy it. In the early days of Fear

Street, I got criticized a lot for

having violence

in these books where kids there was be

fighting and there'd be a lot of

violence. And I always say that there's

kids are really smart. That's one thing

I've learned 40 years of writing for

kids that kids are really smart. And

there's a very big difference between

reading violence. You see read a thing a

scene in a book and it's exciting. It's,

you know,

horrifying maybe.

And then if you walk outside and you

walk down the street and there's a fist

fight going on, that's a totally

different thing. And it gives you a to

that's too real. That's that's

frightening. That's real world

frightening. Someone's fighting,

something's happening on the street, and

it gives kids a total different feeling.

They have a total different feeling from

reading about a fight or and from seeing

a real fight.

Kids have very violent feelings. When

kids write horror stories, for me, there

there'll be a contest or something and

kids will write horror stories. They're

so much more violent than my books.

They're so much more gruesome than what

I write. It It's amazing. Is it

cathartic for kids to read these books?

Well, I will tell you I I have one

example. I only have one. I think I well

my personally I think it is. Every book

is kids standing up to their fears.

Every single one. And every book has a

happy ending. They always win. they

always triumph

and so in that way I do think the books

are cathartic. Um I was talking to a

child psychologist in Los Angeles

and he had a patient who ca a girl who

came in every week and just all she did

was recite the plot to a Fear Street

novel. She would just tell him the plot

of the Fear Street novel that she had

read that week. And he said that it was

really helping her quite a lot, that she

had was very troubled and that these

having these experiences and going

through this scary stuff and reading

about other kids having these scary

adventures was really helping her. I

think it's a healthy outlet. And I think

people who say, "Oh, the violence on in

these games or the violence in in the

books is can lead to I don't believe

that at all. I don't believe that at

all. Kids have angry feelings. They have

things the things to get out. They got a

lot of energy and um I think it's very

healthy to read something that's

harmless and has a happy ending and

works out fine. You know what one secret

of Goosebumps I think and I never talk

about this very much is that we have all

these monsters in Goosebumps. These

horrible monsters, angry monsters. And I

think one reason, we never talk about

this. One reason kids like Goosebumps so

much is that they identify with the

monsters,

not the protagonists.

I think they identify with these raging

creatures because they all feel out of

control at sometimes. They have feel the

anger and I think they I think they

identify with the monsters.

When I'm writing the books, I think

about the age of the audience constantly

and I keep pictures in my mind of what

the audience looks like. If I'm writing

a young adult, I try to see an 17, 18

year old person I or younger, a little

younger, I try to for middle grade, I

try to picture those kids and it helps

me as I'm writing. But if you're

developing, if you're just developing

your style and you want you're trying to

figure out um vocabulary level for what

you write, how how far you can go, the

best way is to read read

what's out there and read what's selling

and

you will you'll pick up all these style

tips and you'll see what authors are

doing and you will by osmosis you will

get a thought of it, but it's also

really informative. When I was an editor

at Scholastic,

I was given a magazine to edit. It was a

social studies magazine. It was for

junior high kids, seventh and eighth

graders who read at a fourth grade

reading level.

So, I had to write a magazine that had

the interest level of seventh and eighth

graders. It would keep them interested,

but the reading level had to be fourth

grade. And there are all these systems

and I I had to learn there was a Dalech

system of grades, what writing grades

you write for. And I had to learn to

write for fourth grade level and fifth

grade level and what the vocabulary was

for both. And at the time it was kind of

annoying. I didn't, you know, I didn't I

I wanted to do this magazine, but it was

kind of a chore to figure out what the

vocabulary was for fifth grade or fourth

grade. But then when I started

Goosebumps, it came in so handy because

I wanted to be I want to keep it simple

and I want Goosebumps to be on a fifth

grade reading level and I know how to do

that from from learning that. And

that's, you know, that's a very

important part of of the style of the

books is that the reading level is

pretty much straight fifth grade reading

level. Here's my big secret.

I never challenge them in reading.

There's nothing challenging. There's no

hard vocabulary word, no new vocabulary

words to learn. They don't have to learn

new words. There's nothing that

challenges to keep them from reading on

and on and on. It's so simple and so

short sentences,

easy to read words, short chapters,

and that's my writing style.

Questions I get all the time are, "How

far can you go? What can you do in

Hawaii? What's the language? Can you use

bad language in YA? Can you have real

sex? Can you have sex scenes in YA? Now,

and the way to figure out what you want

to do is to read read the books. Read

what's out there. Read what's popular.

It's easy to see the bestseller list and

see see what people are reading, how far

book some people go farther than others,

some don't. But as far as figuring out

what kids will read, the best way to do

it is not to just start writing and

experimenting is to is to read

read a lot of the stuff and see what's

going on. These are older readers and

they demand more detail. They demand

more characterization.

They it has to be real. If if I'm going

to scare someone who's 14, 15 years old,

I have to really build up the world and

build up the details. It has to be and I

have to bring in real world things that

I wouldn't do in a middle-grade book. In

Fear Street, there's a lot of heavy

kissing. That's as far as I go. A lot of

my authors go farther, but I I don't do

it. I that's I'm it's not what I'm

interested in. But the dialogue has to

be very current and very real. And I do

have family problems. Kids whose uh

parents are out of work. I I do just

real problems that they're going to

know. Father loses his job. The kids are

desperate. They're thinking maybe

they'll rob a store or something. Um, it

has to be real uh in order otherwise it

it's just going to be silly to

Here's an example of writing for

teenagers as opposed to writing middle

grade. And you'll see that the

characters are different. They're older.

There's more sophisticated.

This is from a book I wrote called A

Midsummer Night Scream. And you can see

the difference in the writing level

between a a middle-grade story and we

have these kids, these teenagers in a

car. Um, and it's takes place in the

1950s

and this is the very beginning of the

book. This is chapter one.

One hand on the wheel, one hand around

Darlene's shoulders, Tony pounded the

gas pedal, and the van roared over the

bumps and pits of the narrow dirt road.

So, we have a picture right away, a te

we have a teenage picture right away of

a guy driving one-handed with his arm

around a girl.

Leaning against the window on Darlene's

right, Sue gritted her teeth and

absorbed every jolt and jerk in silence.

Tony was driving too fast, trying to

impress Darlene, and Sue had to fight

down her fear. The van was roaring

through thick woods, and the overhanging

trees blocked the evening light, making

Sue feel as if the world had gone black

and white.

In the back seat, Randy, Brian, and

Cindy were singing a children's song,

singing and laughing at the same time.

Darlene shook her head. Sue covered her

ears. Sue was the shy one in the group

of friends. She appeared on edge with

them as if she'd love to be somewhere

else. The van hit a big stone and the

six kids flew up from their seats, their

heads thumping the ceiling. The wheel

spun wildly in Tony's hand. Sue and

Sydney screamed as they veered toward

the trees.

So, it gives you an idea of it's

fastpacing, but the vocabulary is higher

and than a a middle-grade book. And you

can you get these s you have six

characters right away and you pretty

much start to get an idea of what

they're like. The danger is very

believable. They're roaring down this

road. He's showing off. They're in a big

van. They hit a rock. It's nighttime.

They're in the middle of a forest. Uh

it's a a very real kind of uh uh

beginning.

Now, here's a little section from a

Goosebumps I wrote called Here Comes the

Shaggedy. And the Shaggedy is this

horrible swamp monster.

And I thought I would read this to you

because it's a an example of how you

could write a monster for middle grade,

how middle-grade kids will react to it,

and gives you a sort of an idea in

contrast to the teenage thing of the

different style that I would use for

middle grade and the different

vocabulary level. And I'm describing

this monster who comes popping up out of

the river. This horrible, hideous thing

comes up and staring at this brother and

sister and um but you can see the

different it's a different fright level

alto together I think uh its face was

blue and puffy its eyes were an eerie

yellow water rolled off its head its

bare shoulders the creature appeared to

grow taller as it rose in the water and

began to stomp toward the shore it

pulled a tangle of weeds from its long

sea green hair down past its shoulders.

Its mouth hung hung open in a silent

roar. A slender silvery fish slid out of

one of its nostrils and splashed into

the water. "Run, Kelly! Run!" Shawn

screamed. He spun away from the

terrifying creature, his shoes pounding

the soft ground. Kelly turned to run,

but then she stopped. She remembered

Ranger Saul's words. The shaggedy would

rise out of the water and do whatever

she asked it to do. She was the boss.

She was its master. She took a deep

breath and summoned all her courage. She

could still hear Sha's footsteps as he

ran away. But she was determined to

stay. I called it up. Now I will control

it.

Its bare chest was covered in thick

brown fur. Its arms were powerful and

long. Its massive hands hung below his

knees. Its legs were the size of tree

stumps.

It uttered a low grunt. So, you can see

how Goosebumps differs from Fear Street.

In Fear Street, you've got these six

teenagers in a van and they're in the

woods and they're they've hit a rock.

They're going to be lost in the woods.

It's very real. Here you have this

incredible monster, this hideous monster

rising up from out of nowhere. And maybe

it's going to obey Kelly. Maybe not. But

we know right away that it's silly. It

can't it can't really happen. And the

vocabulary is less the is lower. The

vocabulary level is lower in the

goosebumps book and the sentences are

shorter. This is sort of a rare example

that I picked uh because this is a third

it's written third person and I think

that has to do with the plot that has to

do with some surprises that come later.

But um even with the third person I

tried to get as close to Kelly as I

could try to get even third person try

to get right there so that she's seeing

the monster and smelling it and hearing

the sounds of it.

One of the decisions you have to make

when you're starting to write a book is

are you going to write it first person?

Is it going to be from the point of view

of your protagonist or are you going to

write it third person from the point of

view of the author? If you're interested

in writing horror, the secret to making

it scary is close point of view with

your main character.

I almost write all my books, almost all

of them are first person because it's so

much scarier to be in the protagonist's

head.

Everything that happens in the book,

your the main character sees. It's

everything she sees, everything she

hears, every smell, everything

everywhere she goes. It's you're right

with her.

It's such close such close point of

view. That's the whole secret of horror,

I think, is being able to do this close

point of view because then when

something har terrible happens, your

reader is the protagonist. your reader

is right with it and the reader is

experiencing this horror close up. The

closer you get to the character, the

better your scares will be and the

better your story will be. That's the

whole secret to being scary. That's it

in one sentence.

Close point of view. close point of view

with your main character.

When you're writing first person and

it's a point of view of the teenage girl

who's being terrified by something, you

have to be very careful to keep the

balance between what she's feeling and

what she's seeing

and what she's thinking. The one

advantage of first-person writing is

that you can write the thoughts of your

character. But you have to be real

careful. You can't overdo that. If

there's too much thinking in a book, it

slows it down. It It makes it tedious.

If the girl is thinking, um,

be braver, Julia. You got to be braver.

Go in there. I I'm I know I can do it.

You don't want that kind of thing. You

don't want that kind of thinking. You

don't want to put in too much thinking.

It's a real fine line. And it's a fine

line between what how she how scared she

is and what's scaring her. And that's

that's just takes experience, I think.

And you have to be careful. You you're

going to really describe what the scare

is and what what danger she is in. But

but you don't want to spend a whole lot

of time saying, "Oh, I'm so scared. Oh,

I'm you should know that from what's

going on." So you you've got to be very

careful of the balance between feelings

and actions.

Of

course, there are limitations to writing

for first person in that it's at some

point at sometimes you want to skip from

character to character. And this is why,

you know, most authors do a lot of third

person writing because you can't go,

it's very hard if you're a first person

with someone and then you want to tell

you want them not in the story. you want

to tell someone else's point of view,

it's very hard to switch over. And if

you're doing a whole book first person,

um it that can be confusing. You know,

Robert Grace writes these um the police

procedurals that are really excellent

and he has two characters and sometimes

both characters are in the same book and

he'll do one

character first person and then he'll do

the story with the other character third

person and then you can tell you can

tell the difference that way. It's it

helps you. It's I I don't know. Some

people find that a little confusing, but

I think it's a good technique if you

want to switch from person to person. If

you write first person, you're stuck

with that character and she can't she

has to be in every scene. She has to be

there all the time.

I wanted to show you a an example of

close point of view and how close point

of view makes a scene much scarier. And

I'm going to read a little section of a

short story I wrote called The Ghostly

Stare.

And it's about a girl named Lauren and

her brother Mark. And during the day,

their teacher takes them to a graveyard

to do gravestone rubbings.

It's winter and Lauren has this pair new

pair of gloves that her grandmother has

given her, very special. And she leaves

them in the graveyard.

And that night, she realizes that she

left her gloves. And she and Mark go

back to the graveyard at night uh to

find them.

And they can't. She they go back to the

tombstone where they were working and

they're not there.

And I just thought this would be a good

example of uh close point of view

writing. Okay. And Lauren

uh Lauren is telling the story.

And there they are in the graveyard. The

wind sighed again. The trees groaned and

shook. I heard a shrill cry far in the

distance, probably a cat. So there she's

hearing it. You're telling what Lauren

hears. What you know, she feels the wind

and she hears the cat.

Bending low, I circle the grave. Where

are they? Maybe they blew down the hill,

Mark suggestion.

He walked slowly down the hill, sweeping

the light from side to side over the

ground. Where are they? Where are they?

I repeated, rubbing my tingling nose, my

frozen face.

I almost bumped right into the girl. Her

long dark hair fell over her face,

hiding it from view. She wore only a

thin dress with long sleeves and a long

pleated skirt down to the ground. She

stood very stiff and erect, hands behind

her back. "Who are you?" I gasped, and

then a gust of wind blew the hair away

from her face. I stared, stared in

horror at her skeletal face. No skin, no

lips over her broken teeth. No eyes,

just empty eye sockets. So deep and

dark. I'm Abigail,

she croked, her voice dry. Dry as

sandpaper, dry as crackling leaves. And

then she lifted both arms. There was no

skin on her arms either, only bone. And

at the end of her gray bony arms were my

gloves. She took a silent step toward me

as I stood there frozen in horror. "I'm

so cold," she moaned through her rotted

teeth. "It's so cold here, Lauren.

Please," I whispered, staring at my

gloves, my gloves at the ends of those

bony arms. "I need your coat," she

moaned, reaching out with both gloved

hands. the deep empty eye sockets, the

bony head tilting toward me beneath the

blowing hair. Lauren, I need your coat.

No, please. I turned, looking everywhere

for my brother. Mark, I cried. I saw him

running, running full speed, arms flying

in front of him, running from a tall

skeleton in a flapping black overcoat.

Get going, I ordered myself. Lauren, go

now. But my legs were shaking too hard.

They wouldn't move. Lauren, I need your

sweater. No, stop. The fingers inside my

gloves grabbing for me. Lauren, I need

your clothes. Lauren, it's so cold here.

I need your coat. I need your sweater.

No, get away from me. I shrieked.

Lauren, I need your shoes. Lauren, I

need your skin.

And that's a sample from a short story,

The Ghostly Stair. And I think you can

see that if if you had written that

third person, I don't think you could

get that fright. I don't think you're

right in Lauren's head. And I think

that's what makes that scene so scary.

And if you I think if you try to write

this third person, you're going to lose

a lot of that closeness.

And at the end of her gray bony arms

were Lauren's gloves. And to me, that's

not as good. It's not as scary as

saying, "And at the end of her gray bony

arms were my gloves." My gloves. It's

much more frightening. Just changing

that one word and just um doing it first

person. Maybe you don't agree with me.

Maybe you you think, you know, some

people think writing everything first

person like that is just a trick or it's

not. I think try it. Try it out. Try try

writing the same scene. The girls in the

graveyard, this figure appears. Try

writing the same scene, first person and

third person, and see which one you

In the first chapter of a book for kids,

they have to know the first chapter has

to tell them what what's happening, what

the book is. It pretty much has to tell

them what they're going to expect.

It has to establish an awful lot. And

kids know right from the start that it's

something they're going to want to read,

that it's something, it's characters

that they like right away, and something

bad has happened right away. And first

page, first two pages, they can see

what's going to develop, what the

problem is going to be, what's going to

happen right away. We get them get the

kids in, get them described, and then

get into the action and get it going.

Chapter one ends in some kind of shock,

some kind of cliffhanger. No time for

background, nothing. Nothing interfering

with the action and keeping the plot

going. And that's that's one of the

tricks.

I thought I would read a section of I am

Slappy's evil twin. There's a prologue

and then this is the first chapter and I

I'm reading it because I think it's a

really good example of what you want to

do in the first chapter. You want to

meet the kids. You want to kind of find

out what they're like a little bit. And

then you want to know what's going to

happen right away. And this chapter

pretty much uh does that. Hey guys, I'm

Luke Harrison. I'm the red-headed kid

poking around in the tool chest in the

garage trying to figure out what a

Phillips screwdriver looks like. Yes,

I'm 12, as are all Goosebumps, kids. I

probably should know more about tools by

now, but I'm not the mechanical type. I

mean, the most complicated thing I ever

built was a snowman.

That's a joke. Actually, I've never

built anything in my life until we

decided to build this drone for a school

contest. So, there now you you've met

the Luke. He's the main character and

you you pretty much you know quite a bit

about him just in the first two

paragraphs. Hurry up, Luke. I can't hold

this forever. That's my sister Kelly

across the garage. She's holding two

pieces of the frame together. Kelly

isn't much help either. Well, she's good

at holding things, and she's good at

telling us what we're doing wrong, so I

guess that's helpful.

Now we know Kelly. Luckily, our friend

Jamal is a mechanical genius. No,

seriously. He's a genius at this stuff.

He was one of those kids who built an

entire city as big as his living room

out of Legos when he was still in

diapers.

Jamal bought the make your own drone kit

we're using. And when he spread all the

pieces out in our garage, he didn't like

the instructions, so he threw them out.

He said he could do it better, and we

believed him. The drone had four motors.

We had special batteries for the motors

and then a small propane tank for the

back of the frame, I guess, for liftoff.

Kelly and Jamal began to assemble

another side of the frame. The afternoon

sun slid behind some trees and shadows

swept over the garage. I stepped to the

back wall and clicked on the garage

lights. Don't say I'm not helpful, I

called to them. They ignored me. I

turned and stumbled over the big propane

tank. The tank was huge, about 3 ft

taller than me. It looked like the water

heater we have in the basement. I

stumbled into it, and as I watched in

horror, the tank began to tilt and fall

over. I made a wild grab for it, but it

was too heavy. It slipped right out of

my hands. Like a nightmare, the whole

thing seemed to be happening in slow

motion. The tank was going down, about

to crash onto the hard concrete floor. I

grabbed for it again, missed, and then I

screamed, "Look out! It's going to

blow."

That's the chapter ending. So, you can

see that's designed. Then what? Then

what? You got to go on to the next one.

And so you see we've we've established

the characters very quickly and you kind

of know their personalities and we've

started the action right away in the

very first chapter. There's one other

thing that first chapter does and that

aside from the characters, it

establishes the propane tank. And of

course the propane tank doesn't blow

right after this. It's there. But the

propane tank we now know is there and of

course the reader forgets about it. And

it's there because it plays a major role

in the end of the book. And I'd already

I'd planned the ending. So, I had to

establish the propane tank right

I was a really fearful kid. I was afraid

of a lot. Um, I think that's why I

stayed in my room typing all the time

because I really was I it was a terrible

way to grow up. I was uh uh afraid of

the dark. I was afraid we we had this um

freezer down in the basement. It was

sort of shaped like this desk. It was

shaped sort of coffin shaped, a white

enamel freezer that they my parents kept

meat in it and frozen candy bars and

things. And my dad would say, "Bob, go

down and uh bring up some lamb chops."

And we had a creepy basement and I was

it was the stairs creaked. It was, you

know, it was typical. It was I It was a

scary basement. And then I would go up

to this freezer and here was this white

enamelled this freezer and the lid came

up like this. And I knew I was always

afraid I was going to lift up the lid

and there would be some body frozen,

some sprawled corpse sprawled on top. I

just imagine I could picture it and

lifted up the lid to get the thing. And

I, you know, I had a lot of fears like

that. I used to ride my bike around the

neighborhood and come back at night and

I was always sure something was lurking

in the garage. There was something in

there waiting and I would take my bike

and heave it into the garage and go

running into the house. I was really

afraid of things. But it how lucky was

that? Because then here I am writing

scary books, right? And I can now I can

remember that feeling of panic, that

feeling of being a kid and being afraid.

And I can bring it back. I can remember

it and try to put it into my books. So

it turned out it was something lucky.

Any place can become scary. when I first

started doing uh the Goosebumps books

and was thinking it was no one had ever

done a scary book series for seven to 12

year olds. It had never been done and I

had to try to figure out what will be

scary and what will work, what will they

be able to identify with and what will

they be able to see when it create these

stories.

And of course, the impulse with horror

is to set it in some dark castle in in

the middle of a forest in middle Europe.

And I like the werewolf movies. They're

deep in some European forest and these

strange people. And I thought kids just

can't they can't identify with that.

That's not part of their lives. You have

to make it location part of their lives,

something that they can really see and

know. And that's how I made the decision

that most Goosebumps books would take

place in the backyard. They take place

at school. They would be in a in a

neighborhood and not in somewhere in

middle Europe or like, you know, a

Dracula's castle. We don't do that at

all. You take these normal places that

kids know and then you have to make them

scary. Um, a kid is in school and the

teacher says, "Would you go down to the

basement, please, and ask the custodian

to come up in there?" And the kid goes

down and he gets lost down in the

basement of the school. And he's in some

area he's never seen before. There's all

this the furnace and all this dark

equipment and weird things going on down

in the basement. That's a scary

location. His right in school, but it

becomes a scary location. You can do

that. Um, a kid is going to stay with

his aunt who he's never really seen

before, but his parents have a business

trip and the kid has to go with the

aunt. And the aunt has this strange

house and she's got a collection of

knives and she says, "Whatever you do,

don't go in that room.

Don't go in that room because Henry's in

that room. So, don't go in that room.

So, you have a normal house here, but

suddenly it's a he's he's in a scary

situation. Well, who's Henry? What's he

doing? I just made that up. And what's

he doing? What's he doing in the in

locked in there? Why is he? So, you

know, the kid has to is forced. He's got

to go over and knock on the door. He's

got to find out what's behind the door

and you've t just taken a house and made

it a scary location. So yes, you take

any location and you make the kids

vulnerable. You make the kids helpless

in it. You do something that's just

changes it and makes it horrifying for

them. and and then you've got you have a

story.

How do you create suspense?

You first of all, there has to be some

unknown to have suspense. There has to

be something that your character doesn't

know. There's something on the other

side of the door. What's pounding on the

door? What are those sounds? There has

to be one of those scraping sounds on

the ceiling. What is that? There has to

be something they don't know that they

have to find out or it has to be really

dark or they have to be lost somewhere

or they have to be somewhere they've

never been before. And then you can

really create suspense pretty easily.

And what you have to do is get inside

that person's head and talk about what

they see and not not so much what they

feel. You don't talk. You don't want to

write and say, "Oh, it was the scariest

moment of my life. Oh, I'd never been so

terrified." You have to show it. You

don't want to say it. You don't want to

say, "I was in a total panic. I You

don't want to write that. Don't write

that. You want to You want to have more

sounds, more scraping sounds. they're

coming closer. You want to write it

really slowly. You want to know what

that kid feels like. What is what his

skin is tingling? Maybe his teeth are

chattering. What what smell? What does

he smell? What does he hear? What can he

see in the darkness? You want to know

all of that. And you want to tell it

really slowly. Really slow. You don't

want to skip anything. You don't want to

leave anything out. And that's suspense.

In horror, you want to really set the

scene. You want to know where the kids

the kids are out late at night. They're

in lost in the woods. They they don't

know how this happened.

You have to really set the make the

woods real. Make the background real.

So, you have to spend time and just pick

out those details that will bring the

setting to life, that will make the

reader see. They're in the woods. Maybe

they hear a howl in the distance. May

they look up and there's just a tiny

little sliver of a moon, but it's making

the trees shimmer like silver. Something

like that. Just details like that that

make that make a picture and make it

real. You want to take something if you

want to write something really

terrifying. You want to take something

that people can see and you want to make

it different. You want to make it

frightening. You want to have I there's

a book called Goosebumps book called The

Scarecrow Walks at Midnight

where the scarecrows in this field come

to life. This is one I think one of the

scariest books I ever wrote. It's not on

a farm and just the sound of these

scarecrows

brushing through the corn, brushing

through the tall corn stalks. It's late

in fall and the corn stalks are just

there and the sound of these scarecrows

moving toward the house, moving toward

the house through the corn was a really

terrifying scene, I think. And I think

anytime you take some inanimate object

like that, especially something that's

almost human

and you make give it these humanlike

things, I I think that's very

terrifying.

Now, here's a scene with the sponge

being scary. The sponge is just a little

kitchen sponge, a little round sponge,

but he's actually a creature. It's a bad

luck creature called a grl. He's

actually alive, the sponge. This is from

It came from beneath the sink.

And I think this is I picked this out

because I think it's it shows you how

you slowly scare people.

You scare your readers. You slow things

down. You you make it you create tension

by not going fast, by not giving away

what you're doing, by not telling them

what's going to happen. You make it very

slow and it makes it much scarier. Much

scarier. And the kid says, um, um, he's

looking under the sink. He's looking.

Then I heard it breathing the grl. But

where? I held my breath and stood

completely still. I concentrated really

hard, trying to figure out exactly where

in the inky blackness the breathing came

from. Whoa. Whoa. Somewhere to my right.

I knew I had to walk over there and

snatch the grl, but I was afraid to let

go of the ladder. Finally, I decided to

count my steps there, find the grl, then

count the same number of steps back to

the ladder. I swallowed hard and let go

of the ladder. I stepped into the

blackness. It's totally darkened and

started counting. 1 2 3 4 The breathing

sounded a little closer. Five six. You

see how I've slowed it all down? I keep

you waiting. They have to wait. You're

anticipating. You're waiting for the

horror. I stopped. I listened hard. Huh?

I cried to myself. What's that

scratching sound? Then I saw the eyes.

Not the gr small round eyes. Big bright

eyes. Several pairs of them all glowing

at me in the dark. That's the

cliffhanger chapter ending. What is it?

The scr and then you go on to the next

chapter. The scratching grew louder. The

eyes stared up at me. yellow eyes

glowing in the darkness. I heard a

creature scrabble over the floor. Felt

something warm and furry brush against

my leg. Were they raccoons? Rats? I

didn't want to know. Another one brushed

against me. They were all starting to

scrape around on the floor. They were

growing restless. I forced myself to

breathe. I turned and started to run.

Get me out of here, I thought. Get me

out of here before they attack.

That passage illustrates one, the power

of darkness. He was in total darkness.

Two, you're right inside his mind. This

is another, I think, a good example of

why first person really works for

scariness. You're inside his mind when

he sees these eyes. He hears first he

hears the breathing. So you have you

hear the sound, then he sees the eyes,

then he feels something brush his leg.

So you're using all the senses, all of

his senses, and you're doing it through

him. You're feeling all this. And I I

think that's um what this passage uh

demonstrates.

What makes a monster a monster?

Yeah. I think it's anything that not

controlled.

And I think kids have this fear. I mean,

they have these feelings of wanting to

be out of control. They have feelings of

anger and they have anxiety and they and

it's mostly suppress it all the time.

Have to suppress it and hold it in. And

a monster is something that doesn't

suppress it at all. A monster is out of

control. And what's scarier? I don't

think anything is scarier than something

that's completely out of control and

something you can't do anything about.

That's a monster. You have to be open

and remember things that you've seen.

Remember all the old monsters and try to

come up with new ones. I did um a

Goosebumps called Frankenstein's Dog

where the dog is a vicious horrible

monster. I try to picture the monsters.

I I I can't draw. If I could draw, I

would draw them. Some people can draw. I

can't draw anything. But I I do try when

I was doing a swamp monster, you have to

try to picture what exactly it looks

like. If you're doing um even something

like monster blood, monster blood, they

open the jar and it starts to grow and

it's sticky. People stick to it. You

have to kind of picture is it bubbly? Is

it smooth? You have to you have to force

yourself to be visual.

Some writers talk to me and say, "How do

you do a new monster? How can you do

it?" And I say, "Anything can be a

monster." Take anything. Anything. You

know, a teddy bear. Take something. It

came from beneath the sink. Was about a

sponge.

Now, who writes a horror novel about a

sponge, right? But in this book, the

monster was a sponge. It was just a

sponge that actually had eyes, but it

was a sponge. If I can turn a sponge, a

little tiny sponge into a monster, you

can take anything. Just take anything

and give it power, make it terrible,

have it do horrible things. Even an

inanimate object uh like a camera. I'm

thinking of say cheese and die and the

evil camera. Even a camera becomes like

a monster. This camera in this book

shows terrible pictures of things

happening to the kids who have the

camera. A few minutes later

they take a picture and then a few

minutes later they take a picture and

the one of a kid's in a car accident.

It's showing the kid in a car accident.

They say, "Well, that's" and then a few

minutes later the kid is in a car

accident. The photos always come true.

But here's something. It's not a big

creature. It's not a giant King Kong.

It's not a big, you know, dinosaur. It's

just a camera. But it's just as

horrifying.

Of all the creatures I've create, all

the ones I've created, there's only one

that's really captured everyone's

imagination. And it's kind of a surprise

to me. Of all these monsters, Jelly Jam

and um the Shaggedy and all these

things, only Slappy has become like

universal. Slappy, the evil dummy. This

idea of a doll coming to life is very

scary to people. And I and I I don't I I

don't I don't know. I love writing it.

It's it's it's a lot of fun to write.

I've written 12 slappy books. I keep

doing new ones and which is hard because

it's just a dummy coming to life. It's

a, you know, how do you get more plots

more plots about about that? But it and

it surprises me how people are afraid uh

of this kind of thing. I get all kinds

of singing saying I can't I can't look

at dummies. I'm terrified. But for real,

people who are really scared of it, and

I think it's oh, it's crazy, you know,

it's silly, but I I don't know. I keep

writing it. We We did I had a TV series

called The Haunting Hour,

which was a lot like The Goosebump Show.

It was a little a lot scarier. And we

did an episode about a doll. These pe

this company sells uh life-sized dolls.

and you can send in the picture of your

daughter or your son. You send them a

picture and they make the doll look like

your kid. So, you get a doll, a

life-sized doll that looks like your

kid. And we did a few episodes of the

haunting hour with this doll, Ellie D.

Ellie D named Ellie. and she would come

into the house and the little girl would

have her, you know, identical doll, but

the doll would then come to life and the

doll would look around and the doll

slowly took over the girl's life and

became the girl and the girl was like

out. And I hear about this show all the

time, how frightened people were and how

scary they thought it was. This idea of

an inanimate object coming to life.

Um, I don't know what that proves, but

um, it's kind of amazing to me um, how

effective it is and then how popular

Slappy

For me, the function of dialogue in the

story is actually to tell the story. Um,

my books, I would say, are maybe

twothirds dialogue because that's the

fun part. Kids talking to kids. Kids

talking to creatures. Kids shouting and

screaming and talking and kids fighting

with their parents and fighting talking

and and to me I I actually as a writer

I'm not great at description and I find

it difficult. I don't know all the names

of trees and I don't know all the names

of flowers. A lot of authors that's very

that's an important thing but I'm not

good at that part. And but I think I'm

really good at writing very believable

dialogue of kids talking and I try to

tell my stories and I I just think this

works and it's more fun for kids to

read. They instead of reading paragraphs

paragraphs they have all this short

dialogue and the whole story is told

through the dialogue and you get their

character you get their personalities

you get their fear from what they're

saying and instead of describing it but

the conversation also has to tell you

something. It has to reveal something

about the characters or it has to reveal

something about what's going to happen.

a little foreshadowing maybe in a

conversation. It it can't just be I mean

the way we talk we'll just chat and be

talking or something. But that's that's

the kind of stuff you're reading a book,

you skip it. You say, "Oh, they're just

they're just talking, not anything." And

you just go past it to find out what's

really going to happen. And you don't

want your reader to skip parts. You want

to you want to take out all the parts

they're going to skip. And you want to

make sure they're not going to skip. So

I think every every dialogue, every

conversation that they have has to

either reveal something about them some

reveals something the reader didn't know

before.

Here are my rules for writing dialogue.

One, use as little current slang as you

can.

I find I made a lot of mistakes early on

and if you you know if if you try to

sound like teenagers now or if you

really s you know and put what they're

saying in two months it's all going to

be out of date. It's all changed.

And so you have to be very careful to

that your characters sound like real

kids and real people. But you've got to

try to stay away from all those words

and things that that will be gone in two

months. The same is true for technology.

You know, you have to be very careful

about you you can't I I write a book

about 10 years ago where the kids are

all walking around with Walkman.

Now what you know what's a Walkman? They

don't know what it is. You the the

technology changes every two weeks. So

you have to be very careful and try to

avoid all that. Try to keep it out

because you don't want your book to

become dated so quickly. The other thing

is you've got to be really careful with

your references.

Now my readers were born in

2010

and so they don't know anything. They

have no references.

If you're writing for 10 year olds, they

don't know anything that happened and

maybe two years before. And so you can't

talk about some rock group, some music

group, or you can't talk about even a

president. You can't talk, they have no

references. And so I think it's very

important to keep that stuff out and to

because it they'll just be baffled. They

don't know anything. My other rule of

dialogue is

that kids don't talk in complete

sentences. I don't know any kids who

talk in full sentences. Uh guys, teenage

guys mostly grunt. They mostly just

grunt. There's no words. There's

nothing. Kids don't speak in really

long, difficult words. So you need to

have

sentence fragments, very short sentences

and low vocabulary level. I think when

you have kids talking

when you start to write the way there a

couple ways to figure out your pro

style.

One is to write.

See what your style is. If you you start

writing, you're going to have a style.

You you're going to you have an idea and

you have a plan for your book. And you

start writing the book, you're going to

see what you know what what naturally

what your language naturally falls into,

what kind of style. The other thing is

to model it after somebody. There was a

um

a Midwestern humorist named Max Schulman

and he wrote u maybe people remember the

many loves of Doby Gillis which was a TV

series. This is going back and he wrote

a book. I read a a Max Showman book uh

once I was a teenager I think it was

called Barefoot Boy with Cheek

and it made me laugh so hard I just

laughed on every page. He's like

forgotten now. People just forget

humorists. They they're just gone. But

it was so funny. And then I sat down and

one summer I wrote a novel just copying

him, just trying to do what he did.

Spent an entire summer writing a novel

like that, just copying that. Um I I

just loved it so much. I think it's a

really good thing if you find an author

that you really like and you like the

style of the writing that you could try

to do that same style. I it was sort of

a challenge. I love um

Robert B. Harker the Spencer novels and

the writing is so tur and it's so clean

and it's just there'll be dialogue

dialogue dialogue a paragraph of

description dialogue dialogue dialogue

and I it's it's just you know nothing

wasted and I always try to do that I try

to copy that style and I think this

happens if you find books that you

really like and authors that you know

appeal to you in that way that it's it's

a I think it's a good thing to try to

copy the style. I would say if there's a

writer you really admire, if there are

books or kinds of books that you really

like that just pay attention. It's a

matter of read while you're reading,

paying attention to the way the author

handles things and that will get you to

a style.

It's hard to talk about what is funny

and and what makes you laugh. I mean, we

all have this is why I think humor

writing is much harder. It's much harder

to write funny stuff than it is to write

horror because we're all afraid of the

same things. We all have the same fears.

We're all afraid of the dark and we're

all afraid of being lost in the woods.

We're all We're all the same when it

comes to horror, but we don't all laugh

at the same things. We all have

different senses of humor. I laugh at

stupidity humor. I When people are

really like Dumb and Dumber, that movie,

I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe.

From the time I was little, I always

liked funny stuff. I loved cartoons when

I was little and comedians and all kinds

of comedy shows and comedy films. I was

just drawn to it. And so when I started

writing, that's what I wanted to write.

And I wrote humor for years. I wrote

maybe a hundred joke books for kids. My

first book was called How to Be Funny.

When it came time to writing scary stuff

and changing gears,

I knew that I'd have to carry over what

I love and carry over the humor into the

horror. And it's proven very effective

because, you know, I don't really want

to terrify kids. It's not really why I

write Goosebumps. Um, we write to

entertain them and you give them little

creepy stories. So, I use a lot of humor

in that book to keep in those books to

keep them from getting too scary. Now,

there's something I have to say there's

something wrong with me. I mean, there's

something strange about my brain and

that horror doesn't scare me. When you

go into the movie theater and you're

seeing the shark comes up and eats a kid

and is chewing the kid and there's blood

splattered, I'm the one in the theater

who's laughing.

Horror makes me laugh. And I've never

had that feeling. You know, people come

to me and they say, "Oh, when I read

your book, I had to lock all my doors

and I left my lights on the whole

night." I've never had that feeling.

I've I don't know what that's like to

read a book or a movie and be scared. It

just it it always makes me laugh. And I

think it's the same visceral reaction.

Um when you come up to somebody, come up

behind somebody, a baby or even a

grown-up, and you go boop,

the person always gasps and then laughs.

It's so closely connected. I think when

you uh go to an amusement park and you

walk up to the roller coaster, what do

you hear? You hear people screaming and

laughing at the same time. What if you

got on a roller coaster and it went up

up up up and then it came down and then

it came down again and then it came down

again and then it went upside down again

and then it came down and there was no

no pause in between it. I don't think it

would be very much fun. I think it would

be one exhausting and two just too

terrifying. And that's why roller

coasters are built. You go up, you come

you come all the way down, you're

screaming, and then there's like a

pause. There's like a nice part and and

you're lulled into this thinking you're

safe and then it happens again. And then

you're lulled again. And then it happens

again. And that's so much more fun than

if it were just thrill after thrill

after thrill.

Now, if you are thinking about writing

scary stories for kids or for grown-ups,

if you're thinking about writing for

horror, and you also agree with me that

putting in a lot of humor really helps

the horror along and helps make it more

fun. Um, it's here's the hard part. It's

just such a careful fine line. You have

to be so careful of one not to have too

much horror in your book. I always say

people who who start out writing horror

for kids or adults. They start out they

want to pile on the horror. They want to

start off and it's good to get the first

chapter have something terrible

happening. But there I know there are

these TV shows where something terrible

happens in the first 10 and then

something else terrible happens and then

something really scary happens and some

and there's no normal life. There's no

humor in between. There's nothing in

between and it becomes ridiculous. You

can't buy it and it loses its

effectiveness. But I don't know if I can

advise you on how to do it. But you have

to be very aware that there's this very

fine line. You have to have so much

horror and so much normal life. So much

niceness, so many nice things happening

and then horror and so much pause in

between. Otherwise, you're just you're

going to the reader just going to laugh.

This is a chapter from a book I wrote

called Young Scrooge. It's a

middle-grade book. It's a Christmas

book. It's totally stolen from Dickens.

Scrooge is a 12year-old

and he's a total bully and he's a

horrible kid. His name is Rick

Scroogeman.

And in this chapter, he has gone up. He

knows where his mother hides a Christmas

present. All the Christmas presents. and

he goes, it's in the attic closet and he

sneaks up there

and he tears open the rappers to make

sure she got him really good presents.

And he also opens his brother's

presents. And he's in this closet doing

this when the door slams shut and

suddenly he can't get out and he's

locked in the closet.

No air in here. This is, by the way,

this is an example of doing a scary

scene, but also adding a lot of humor.

This is I think you'll see how I did

this. No air in here, I thought. It's

getting hard to breathe. That thought

sent a chill of panic, shooting down my

body. The light went out, too. I reached

for the light switch, clicked it several

times. No light. The bulb was definitely

burned out. Should I call for help? It

was worth a try. I opened my mouth to

shout, but I stopped when I saw the

eerie green yellow mist swirling at the

other end of the closet. I uttered a

sharp gasp. It looked like a cloud. It

curled in on itself like a snake. I

stared without breathing, without moving

as the mist curled and uncurled up to

the closet ceiling, then down again. Was

it going to wrap itself around me? No. A

cry escaped my throat. The mist grew

brighter. Flames sparked out. "What is

happening?" I choked out in a whisper.

The air suddenly felt cold. I was

shivering now, shivering from the cold

and from my fear. And when I opened my

eyes, I found myself staring at a face,

a pale yellow face, an old man's face

with scraggly white hairs on a craggy,

bald head, white whiskers down both

cheeks. I couldn't look away from his

glowing red eyes. They held me as if I

were hypnotized. And then I suddenly

realized what had happened. The closet

was so warm. I'd fallen asleep. I

drifted off to sleep. And now I was

having a nightmare. Am I dreaming this?

The words escaped my throat in a horse

trembling voice. Can I wake up now?

You're not dreaming? The old man

replied.

The words sounded as if they were coming

from somewhere far away.

I swallowed. My mouth was dry as

sandpaper.

I told you there's only one thing in the

world I'm afraid of, and that's ghosts.

And now I was staring at a ghost locked

in a closet with a terrifying ghost. Who

are you? Don't you recognize me? He

boomed. No. Why should I recognize you?

A wave of heat washed over me. The old

ghost's eyes bulge. I'm Marley's ghost.

My mouth dropped open. Huh? His eyes

narrowed on me. I'm Marley's ghost. I've

come to warn you. William Delaney.

Whoa. I raised both hands, signaling him

to back off. William Delaney? The old

ghost raised a bony finger. You are

William Delaney. Don't try to escape

your fate. William, you cannot run from

your doom. But I'm not William Delaney.

I'm Rick Scroogeman.

A flash of light made me blink.

Scroogeman, you're telling the truth. I

let out a long shuddering breath. The

Delaneies live across the street, the

red brick house on the corner. You got

the wrong house. Marley's ghost nodded

slowly. His eyes appeared to sink deep

in their sockets. Sorry about that. My

bad. I'll be gone now. I have to haunt

William Delaney. Uh, wait. I said,

before you go, could you do me a favor?

Could you open the closet door for me

and let me out? He nearly disappeared.

He floated closer. Your turn is coming,

Scroogeman. You must remain in this

closet. Your journey is about to begin.

You won't help me. He lowered his head

and began to vanish. Don't let the door

hit you on your way out, I said.

So, there you have Marley's ghost. He's

in the wrong house. So, you've got a

good creepy scene. It's scary. He's in

the closet with a ghost, but the ghost

says, "My bad." And he leaves. You don't

expect this. It's Marley's ghost. A lot

of people know the Dickens story. And

they know that Marley's ghost comes to

warn him that three ghosts are coming to

take him away. And you know, this is a

really terrifying moment. So, we have

this nice twist. Suddenly, the reader

said, "Wait, wait a minute. The ghost

made has made this stupid mistake and is

in the wrong

When I write a Goosebumps book and I I

figure out the characters, I don't do

very much. In fact, I'm criticized a lot

for not having much characterization in

my book. But the idea

in a Goosebumps book is that the you

want the reader to identify with the

main character. You want the reader to

become part of the book. The reader is

seeing what the protagonist is seeing is

having is experiencing all these

horrible things. So you want the reader

to be able to closely identify with your

main character. So I do very I don't

characterize the main character much. I

give them a little description, but I

leave it open so that the reader can

become the protagonist. My longtime

Goosebumps editor, Susan Luri, we've

done over a 100 Goosebumps books

together. She says that I am fabulous at

creating full-blown cardboard

characters.

And that's really what I do. And I do

get criticized a lot for this. You say,

"Oh, he doesn't do any characterization.

and he doesn't but it's it's deliberate.

It's totally deliberate because it

brings the reader closer. It brings the

reader into the book by not having a

really strong not not really developing

the character. We have these ordinary

kids in extraordinary circumstances

solving these problems, trying to get

out of danger, saving their own lives on

on their own with their own smarts and

their own imagination. The kids in

Goosebumps

are always well, they're always 12

because the readers are a little bit

younger and they like to read about kids

who are older.

They're always normal kids. They're not

especially smart. They're not talented.

Almost always they have no talent.

Sometimes maybe they play an instrument

or something. They're not special in any

way. And

that's because that's just this is all

so more readers can identify with them.

And when you have some average kids,

it they're they're more vulnerable, I

think, and they can get into more

trouble because they're just regular

kids. And it makes it more scary.

When you start to write,

you want to create a likable character.

You want to create a character people

are going to want to root for or read

about through a whole book. But you have

to be careful as an author. You have to

remember that you are not the

protagonist friend. And I'm mainly

talking about writing horror, writing

thrillers, writing mysteries.

You have to remember that you are

actually the enemy of the protagonist.

And this is a very important thing I

think because you have to take your

protagonists and put them in trouble and

then you have to cause more trouble. You

have to cause more difficulty for them.

They you have to cause all kinds of

problems all through the book for them.

You're not their

hero. You're not their friend. you. The

idea is to get the protagonist in as

much trouble as possible and then

finally get them out at the end because

remember the more trouble you get your

protagonist in the tighter the net you

wrap around them the more fun the book

will be and the more satisfying your

ending will be.

The other thing talking about characters

is the parents in the Goosebumps book.

They're they all have parents of course

and the parents are totally useless. The

parents are always useless. Either

either they're not there or they don't

believe the kids. The kids come to them

and say, "Mom, dad, the dummy, it's

talking. The dummy came alive." You say,

"Sure, have a nice time. Go play." and

they're on their own and they have to

use their own wits. They have to use

their own imagination to get out of

trouble. And that's pretty much every

single book

with Goosebumps. I've made it everything

as hard as I possibly can for myself

because every Goosebumps book starts all

over again with a whole new cast of

characters. Most series you have a

character and the characters continue

from book to book and you get to know

them and it's easy. I have a whole new

cast every I need five or six kids every

time I start a book. When we were back

in the day when we were starting

Goosebumps back in the 90s I had my

son's school directory and it had all

the kids' names in it because I need I

need a lot of names, right? I didn't

need five or six names. And I think I

used every kid in his school, but

sometimes my son would come home

and he'd say, "Dad, you have to put

Jamie in the next one." Or, "Dad, you

have to put Will in the They paid him to

be in the next Goosebumps book." I think

they paid him 10 bucks so they could be

a character in the book. But that's how

I got the names. Now I use I use I try

to use names that are really popular and

current and you know online you can see

the the 20 most popular boys names the

20 most and I use those names because

then more kids will be able uh to

identify with

To me, a lot of teen fiction is too

grim. No one ever cracks a joke. No

one's ever laughing about anything. And

I I I put a lot of that in these books.

I think it's more true to life. I mean,

when you if you observe a bunch of

teenagers, they're laughing all the

time. They're laughing and it's they're

fun. And then when you read a lot of

teen literature, no one's laughing. I

don't know why. I think you you need

that in the book. I think it helps to

make it seem like real teenagers, which

is what you want to create. And you you

want to do characters that aren't

cliches, but they're still they do fall

into groups. And there some of it is

unavoidable.

And so you have your different types and

it helps the plot along. If you know

that there's a guy who's very angry and

his par his household is a mess and he

wants to drop out. I mean this creates a

lot of tension immediately and um you do

you have you know the cheerleaders. I do

a cheerleaders books um which actually

may be a little dated now I don't know

but everyone likes to read about the

cheerleaders and what how evil they are

and how terrible they are to each other

and how they're murdering each other and

your characters really determine your

plot. Whoever what you choose, the

characters you choose, they they're set.

You that's what sets off your plot. And

you always you have to know when you're

writing these characters what what they

want. What they want. You can't just

describe them. You have to tell what's

their aim. What is their goal? Their

goal is not to be so shy. The goal is to

meet some guy or get somebody's

attention, but you constantly have to

know and usually you do it through

dialogue, of course, and what they say

to each other, but it's very important

to get across

exactly what they're about and what they

want.

When I'm planning any book, a Goosebumps

or Fear Street or any novel, I figure

out I populate it. That's the first

thing I do. I have basically I know the

story. I I I have the idea in my mind

and then I I populate it. I come up with

characters and I make a cheat sheet of

the characters

um and with their traits sort of what

they look like uh so that I I know who's

in the book I have it I don't do it for

every single character not for everyone

some I improvise as I'm writing the book

but for the most of the main characters

I like to have at least a chart of what

they're like and this is um the one I

wrote wrote when I was planning out the

Fear Street book called Give Me a K I L.

It's a fear the evil Fear Street

cheerleaders are back. And this is uh

I'll just read a little of it. This this

is what I wrote and I scribbled

scribbled. This is what I came up with

for character planning.

Gretch and Paige. Straight blonde hair,

olive colored eyes, not happy with her

looks, nose too short, hates the cleft

in her chin, tense, has nightmares.

Small town girl, Shadyside High is big

to her, uncomfortable in new school,

ambitious, determined to win.

And that's so I had a pretty good idea

of Gretchen. I mean, she's the main

character in the book. And I had a

pretty good idea. I mean, she was moving

from a small town, even smaller than

Shadyside and going to Shadyside High.

And so I I had that and I had the

tension from doing that and the

problems. I I had that all in mind. So

that's what I did. And you see, I did a

little bit of description of what she

looks like. And of course, that that

really gets fleshed out. Uh in a Fear

Street book, you do a lot of detail on

the characters. Gretchen's mom. Tall,

athletic, short blonde hair stre with

white. Youngl looking for 43. Haggarded

since her divorce, wears too much

makeup. Gretchen thinks, and there's,

you know, just a picture of her mom. So,

it's just a start. It gives me a start.

And when I get to writing that

character, at least I have something. I

don't have to sit there and stare at the

screen and say, "What does Gretchen's

mom look like? What do I I have I have a

head start." And that's what I I always

think. Give yourself a head start.

Don't, you know, don't stare at a

screen.

Coach Walker, cheerleader. Coach, very

tall and thin, black, all business, but

sympathetic, very fair-minded and

reasonable, not afraid to stand up to

Deborah.

Deborah Dolby, she's a villain.

Rich, cold, snobbish, blue eyes, wavy

red hair, creamy skin, beautiful but

icy, cutting sense of humor, totally

entitled father owns department store

chain. She's related to a character from

the old days, from the old Fear Street,

uh, one called Silent Night, where her

cousin was the same kind of person.

There are two more. Madison Gman plays

violin since she was three. Intense,

very thin, birdlike, long curly black

hair, sharp nose, very pale, very

tightly wired, artistic family.

So you see it's a there she is. Sid

Viviano, sense of humor, funny, wears a

lot of denim, serious dark eyes that

crinkle up when he smiles, short brown

hair, buzzed haircut, warm and likable,

goodlooking, except for big ears.

So, I, you know, I kind of have fun

writing these and I I have the character

ready to go and it's um I I think you

should try it. It's a big help to me. I

took this uh character sheet that I did

and I put it on masterclass resources

for you to look at and um take a look

and see what you think and you can get

an idea of what I do um as far as

characters go and what I do before every

[ __ ]

Go ahead and enjoy what you're doing.

Enjoy creating your characters and enjoy

making them say all kinds of things and

go through with your first draft and

have fun with it. Think of it as fun.

Think of it. You're creating this thing.

You're doing this. It's not hard. It

isn't hard work. It's not it's not a

struggle. And maybe there there's scenes

already you don't like. You don't like

and I you go back the next morning and

you read what you read yesterday, wrote

yesterday, and you don't like it. Go

keep going. Keep going.

As an aspiring writer, I you might feel

more comfortable starting with something

that's short. start. You might feel more

comfortable uh sitting down planning

something that's only 20 or 25 pages

long. And if you feel more comfortable

doing it, I would say do that. Do that.

If you feel that that it's starting out,

it's too ambitious for you to plan a 200

300page novel to work out what what that

would be. Ju try as you know is the

story is the microcosm of the novel and

just try something nice and short. Well,

here's the interesting thing about short

stories and novels and writing both. I

find, and maybe you will too, that

writing short stories is harder because

you have so little space. And when you

write a short story, what you need, you

need one really good solid idea. You

need something really strong and one

really powerful thing to put into this

story, to drive this story. When you

write a novel, you can have a bunch of

ideas. is you know where you're going,

you know what you want to talk about,

but you've got, you know, 300 pages, 400

pages. It's so luxurious. When you write

a short and when I write a short story,

I'm like, how how I've got to be so

concise. I've got to set it up so

quickly. I have to figure out who who

are these characters. I've got to get

that characterization done. I've got to

get to the problem right away. And then

I have to have a really good ending. So

in that way, I think stories are are

harder.

After the outline is approved, I'm ready

to go. I sit down. I start chapter one.

I write always totally in order. I'm I'm

the kind of writer that I have to, and

maybe you'll be like this, too. I I have

to write right from the beginning. I

have to write every word in order. I

can't skip around. When we were first

starting out, my wife and I collaborated

on some kids books and u we did a book

called The Sick of Being Sick Book and a

couple other books and it didn't end

well because Jane liked to she'd write

write some of the middle and then go

back and write the beginning and then

and I couldn't do it. We just couldn't

work. I have to go entirely in order.

And the uh collaboration actually ended

up uh with her locking me in the closet

and leaving the apartment.

And no, this is true. I probably

shouldn't tell this story, but she

locked me in and just left the

apartment. And we realized we probably

shouldn't be doing books together. She

got me out about half an hour later.

And um so then that was it. That was the

last book we ever wrote together.

Sometimes I'll have uh I'll be twothirds

of the way through the book and I'll

think, well, it'd be great to put in a

talking cat here or something like that.

It would be great to this would be a

great place to turn things around and

show that they're actually on Mars.

They're not really on Earth. So if I put

that in, I'm twothirds of the way back.

Then I there's a lot of going back and

forth when you write. You don't just

keep going, keep going. You have to keep

going. I go back and forth a lot. So

I've added this weird thing that I

didn't have before. So I have to go back

to the beginning and I have to plant

clues about it. I have to establish

something back in the beginning or back

in the early chapters and maybe in a

couple pl two or three places. Maybe

I've added a character at the end. Then

I have to go back in the beginning and

put that character in and make sure so

that people will be ready for it when I

get to to the ending. So, I find myself

going back a lot and adding things or

changing things that I've that I've done

and going, you know, going back and

forth. As an aspiring writer, I just

think if if you find that you're putting

adding stuff at the end of a book or in

the middle of a book, make sure that

you've established it. Um, you probably

will have better ideas. you have you're

writing you're writing you're in intense

writing you know you're going to have

other ideas that you didn't have when

you started the book so you have to make

sure that the reader will be prepared

for what you're doing here and you have

to be sure that everything is

established so I'd say don't go don't be

afraid to go back even though you're

twothirds of the way through the book go

back and put in what's going to help you

later on.

I would also say if you're having

trouble with the first draft, just keep

going way I do. If I'm having a bad

writing day, I just keep going. Do it.

Finish your first draft because you're

not going to turn in the first draft and

you can always go back. And once you

have this complete thing, it's so easy

to start revising. And you can see the

problems when you go back and read it.

You can see what the problems are. And

you can go back and fix up the writing,

add things, take things out that you

don't like. And you know you're going to

turn in your second draft at least,

maybe more drafts. Some authors do many

drafts before they turn the book in. So

don't worry about the first draft. The

first draft, I think, should be fun.

Should go fast. Go write fast. Just

write it. Get it down. Enjoy it. Just

have fun with the first draft. And

because and then you can do the harder

work later on the other drafts and shape

it up.

Keep going. This is just your first

draft. And you just want to get through

it and have fun with it and get to the

end. And then you'll go back and you'll

be more serious. You can be more serious

the second time and then you can start

start to look at things and start to fix

things. But once you have that

foundation, that first draft is such a

great head start. What a great feeling

that will be. Here you'll have this

thing. Print it out. Don't leave it on

the screen. No one prints out their

manuscripts anymore. They always say, in

fact, you know, I I never almost never

print my manuscript. In the old days,

you'd print them all out and you'd put

them in a box and you'd have this box.

You would have this thing, look what I

wrote. And you'd take it to the post

office and mail it off to the publisher.

Now, you know, click, click, click,

click. It's on the screen. It's gone.

But print it out and look at it. Look

what you've done. You've written 300

pages. You've written 400 pages. That's

what an amazing accomplishment. That's

great. and you know you're just in the

beginning stages, but there it is. You

have this thing that you've done. It's

wonderful. Completing your first draft

shows that you can do it. No matter what

trouble you have later on, you know you

can do it. No matter what how much

trouble you have with the second draft

or how much what you kind what you run

into with editors and their comments or

what kind of reviews you get further

down the line, you know, you've got this

thing. You've written it. You've

finished it. You made it all the way

through. You know you can do it. I wish

someone told that to me.

When I finished a manuscript, I have a

first draft of a book. I go back up to

the beginning and I read it. And I read

it as a reader, but I also read it

looking for a lot of things. And I look

for scenes that seem to drag. I look for

mistakes that I've made. Uh, once I

wrote a I wrote a manuscript about a boy

named Chris and halfway through the

book, his name was Jack and his name

changed halfway through. So, but I

caught it, you know, I after the first

draft, I I caught it. I was able to

change it. So, you look for mistakes. I

always look for weather mistakes. You

know, you're always saying, "Oh, it's a

cloudy day." And then suddenly the sun

is on the next page. you. I look for

consistency all the way through and then

I look for typos and then I typing is

very important to me and then I look for

um scenes that don't go far enough. And

a lot of times I'll have some scary

scene that I've done in the first draft

and I'm looking at it and I I I think I

can make this scarier. I have it down

already. I can just take what I have,

but I can increase the horror. I can

slow it down. I can add this. I can add

more feeling. I can have the kid more

scared than I It should be more. And I

usually do that almost in every

manuscript when I go through the second

time because you have something to look

at. You've got a base here and then you

can build on it.

You've done a first draft and then

you've gone through, you've done a

second draft and you've caught

everything and you've read it and

thought about it more. You've got your

second draft. Then find someone who's

willing to read it. Find someone who

likes to read, someone who's maybe whose

opinion you trust. Um, find somebody, a

family member, somebody who who will

read it. If you you have somebody who's

willing to read your manuscript, ask

them after they read it, ask them what

did you think of the characters? Which

characters did you like? Did you did it

did it seem real? Did the characters

seem real? And how was the pacing? Do

you think it dragged in some places?

What did you think? Was there any place

you didn't believe? Anything you didn't

believe? What did you think? What did

you think of the action? That's those

are the basic questions you want to ask.

After a second draft, find someone. A

lot of people have readers or they have

reader clubs. A lot of writers I know

have first readers and they just they do

it for fun or they they pay people to

say just give me an opinion. Ask someone

in your family who likes to read. Find

somebody who and just say give me an

opinion and it'll help. I you know when

you're starting out you don't have an

editor you don't have someone to tell

you go through it line by line but to

get an opinion on your first draft just

someone who says gee I loved the first

part and then it kind of dipped off or

someone who says oh gee I I that

character just wasn't likable at all I

didn't want to like that person and that

kind of help even though it's not coming

from a professional it still give you a

clue clue as to what people are going to

think about what you've written.

I think everyone hates to revise,

but I know I maybe I'm a bad example. I

don't know. I love I love it when I hand

in a manuscript and they they'll change

a couple words and say, "That's good,

Bob. We're sending it on to the

publisher." I love that. There's no

where there's no revising,

but and and this happens a lot more in

adult publishing than in children's

publishing. In children's publishing,

you really get edited, but a lot of

people, a lot of writers want to revise.

They're ready. They're eager to revise

and they they sort of depend on

revising. And I know a lot of my friends

who are writers are very disappointed if

the manuscript comes back and the editor

hasn't suggested a lot of revisions.

They kind of feel cheated and they kind

of feel that maybe it's it needs to be

edited and why didn't the editor do

that? And I know I have writer friends

now who before they send it to the

publisher hire editors. They hire their

own editors personally to go through and

so they make sure it's edited and then

after they do that then they send it to

the publisher. But I I have to say it's

it's not as much as I hate it. It's

always worth it. I've never had a book

never had a book come out worse after

revision.

They always come out better.

There are some major authors who refuse

to be edited. Some some of the real best

sellers and they've just told their

editors, I'm sorry, you have to print,

you have to publish what I hand in. And

um I'm I won't talk about who they are,

but uh their their work has really

suffered. I notice it. I notice their

books aren't as good.

I'm married to my editor and she's a

very tough editor and I once handed in,

this is true, I once handed in a

manuscript and it came back from her

with two words at the top. It said

psychotic ramblings.

That was it. So, I had a lot of trouble

with that book. I know a lot of people

are really sensitive and I my advice to

writers, advice to people taking this

course is don't be sensitive. Don't you

you have to know yourself and you've got

to say you got to be confident and say I

like what I wrote. I I I like what I

this is what I meant to write and do it.

I I'm I'm just twisted because I get a

lot of bad reviews. I get more bad

reviews. My my very first book came out,

my first horror book, and Publishers

Weekly said it was stomach churning.

And they didn't mean it in a good way.

They That was not a compliment. But bad

reviews always make me laugh. I don't

know why. I always It's funny. I don't

It It doesn't bother me. It abs It just

I It like washes off. And I saw a lot of

people aren't going to like what I do,

but I I like I like my books. I maybe

that's my big failing as an author is

that I like everything I write. I'm

happy with what I've done. I'm not

miserable about it. I'm not worried

about, oh, I could have been so much

better. And that's probably a real

failure of mine. But help it helps a

lot. makes life a lot easier and not to

take criticism, you know, and I I would

take real criticism from editors or from

people who've read the book. I I would

certainly take it seriously, but bad

reviews, bad reviews don't bother me at

all. Here's my best review. This is the

best review I ever got. My best Amazon

review. Want to hear it?

This is my best Amazon review. Five

stars.

The packaging was really good and it was

very easy to open.

That's a great review, right? Five

stars.

This is bad for my horror image, but one

of my favorite writers is PG Woodhouse,

who wrote the Jeves and Worooster books

and a whole lot of other books. And I

just I' I've read well, he he wrote 92

books and he lived to be 92 and he wrote

92 novels and they were all exactly the

same. They all took place in the same

world. They all took this wonderful

world you want to be in. They're all the

same zany characters and book after book

basically the same same plots. And I

love them. And I think when you're

writing something, you have to think

about that and think about how are you

going to get people to feel that way

about you? How are you going to get

people to think, gee, I want to read the

next one? I wanna I want to be back in

that world. And as a series writer, I

mean, that's what you try to do. That's

why you write a series. You want people

to like the world you created so much

that they'll come back.

I think readers like series because they

know what to expect. They're going to go

back in the world that they know. They

know exactly what's going to happen in

the book, but it's going to be a little

different. They they know they like

these characters. And I think this is

why they series have always been

popular. But as far as writing a series,

I I would say don't count on it. Don't

don't start out by thinking you'd want

to do a series. I say let's say you have

a book that really catches on. you have

uh some characters that people really

like and the first book is a bestseller,

then think about doing a sequel, do

doing a second one, then think about

maybe I can keep going with these

characters. Maybe I can keep going with

these stories and then have it develop

into a series. But I think it's very

hard these days, especially to start out

saying, "I'm going to do a series."

Publishers aren't looking for series and

it's kind of a dead end for beginners

and for people publishers

they don't want series anymore. In 1992

we took Goosebumps to Scholastic and we

said we'd like to do this scary series.

Here's a bunch of titles we'd like to

try a scary series for 7 to 12 year

olds. And they said all right well let's

try it out. We'll buy four of them.

Let's start out with four. That would

never happen today.

No one buys more than one book or maybe

two. It just doesn't happen.

It's publishing has just changed. And

they're much more careful and much more

much more costconscious. And they're not

going to buy 12 books unseen without

knowing. They're going to buy one and

see how it does. And if the first one

catches on, then they'll buy another one

and try that.

And the thing is with Goosebumps, if if

if we had tried it today, it never would

have worked. We put out the first

Goosebumps, no one noticed it. We put

out the second one, there were two of

them, no one they sat on the shelves.

And today with the bookstores with

computers and everything, they would

have been gone. But when we got four

books out and there were four of them on

the shelf, suddenly kids found them.

Somehow kids discovered them. But it

took four and that's very hard to get

anyone to do four books these days.

After four books, kids just started

telling other kids. There's a secret

kids network of kids talking to kids.

And there was no advertising for

Goosebumps. No hype of any kind. No one

really knew me. It was just kids just

finding it and liking it and then

telling other kids. And I think that's

how all book crazes get started. Harry

Potter I think started the same way.

Hunger Games, Twilight, you can't force

kids to buy books. And advertising

doesn't get them to buy books either.

They have to they like it and tell each

other.

So it's very hard to talk these days

about starting a series.

There are two types of book series of

course. one is the easier kind I think

where you have a character you have

Harry you know Harry Potter and he's

going to be this it's going to be the

same cast in all seven books or it's

going to be um any book series almost

every book series it's the same cast and

the same kids or the same people and the

author can then develop them and turn

them into real characters and readers

get to like those characters and readers

get to identify with them and look

forward to seeing them in book after

book. I don't do that. I I make

everything hard for myself. And

Goosebumps is what's called an anthology

series in that it's a diff it's sort of

like the Twilight Zone. Every episode is

completely different. I The Goosebumps

books don't continue. You don't have to

read them in any particular order. And

that's one nice thing about an anthology

series. You can come in anywhere. You

don't you're not following the same

people. Um I start over again with every

book. I have to come up with a whole new

cast of characters, a whole new

situation. Usually a whole new location.

Everything is new. It's like just

starting over, like doing individual

books, but doing them one after the

other after the other, which is I I

enjoy that. I like that. But it's it's a

lot harder. I think

when you're thinking of creating a

series, it's an important thing to think

about creating your world and creating

something if you're interested in a

series that people will want to a place

uh feeling um just a location anything

that people will want to come back to.

The Goosebumps world is basically

everyone's backyard. It's everyone's

kitchen. It all It's very suburban for

one thing. The world is very suburban.

And I when I picture it, I kind of

picture um my neighborhood back in

Columbus when I was a kid. And I try I

just do that suburban kind of thing

because I think most kids can identify

with it. They can see what it looks

like. They know what it is. and it's a

world they can come back to and come

back to. I live in New York City. I've

been a New Yorker for years and years,

but I've never written one about New

York City because I think kids, it's

hard to picture New York. If you haven't

been there, if you haven't spent some

time in New York City, I think very hard

for a kid to just picture what it is.

And but it would be harder to write too

so that they would be able to see it.

But with a nice backyard, a suburb, a

nice block of houses, they walk to

school. That's a world that they can

enter really easily and quickly and a

world they want to come back. They

identify with and come back to.

The Goosebumps universe is not like the

Marvel universe. It doesn't hang

together at all, but it's everything's

all separate. It's all crazy. Take the

the Monster Blood books. Sometimes it's

blue, sometimes it's green. I'm I I'm

not consistent about it, but I try to

be, you know, it's important to be

consistent in every book inside the

book, but I I don't really follow that

kind of rule where it has to be the same

every single time. And I think there are

some books where monster blood comes out

of the jar and comes out and has other

powers that it didn't have in the

earlier books, things like that. I'm not

I don't know. I'm not big on consistency

at all. But the here's the big rule, and

I this I guess this is good advice.

You don't mix ghosts and werewolves.

You don't mix. You never mix two things

together. You always do one or the

other. You don't You can't mix ghosts

and invisible. That's what my editors

always tell me. You can't mix. And when

I do it, you know, without realizing it,

they write on the thing. You can't mix

ghosts and invisible. You can't do both.

The story's not going to work.

I will tell you the origin of

Goosebumps. And of course, it's like

many of my stories. It's embarrassing.

I was doing Fear Street, the teen

series. And it was we were doing Fear

Street every other month or so, killing

off teenagers. And it was doing really

well. It was a very successful YA

series. Eventually, we sold 80 million

Fear Street books. It was just doing

great. And my editors came to me and

said, "You know, no one has ever done a

scary book series for 7 to 12 year olds.

We should try one." And I said, "No, I'm

not interested."

That's the kind of businessman I am,

right? I didn't want to do Goosebumps.

And they said, "No, we should try it."

And I said, "No, it'll mess up Fear

Street. the younger audience, the kids

will get confused. It'll I didn't want

to do it. And they kept after me and

kept after me. And finally, I said,

"Okay, if I can think of a good title

for the series, maybe we can try a few."

And I was one day I was reading TV Guide

magazine. And in those days, in the

middle of the magazine, they had all the

TV listings, everything that was on that

day for a week. And I'm just thumbming

through the TV listings and just going

through. And there on the bottom of a

page is a little tiny ad. And it says,

"It's Goosebumps Week on Channel 11.

They were showing scary movies." And I

just stared at the ad. I just stared at

it. And I thought I knew this is

perfect. We'll call it channel 11.

That's a really bad joke, isn't it? Now

I have to apologize. I apologize for

that joke. But no, that's that's where

the name came from. There it was. And I

knew it was perfect. Goosebumps. It's

funny and it's scary, right? And so I

said, "Okay, we've got a good name for

it. We'll try a couple." That was 25

years ago.

In the beginning, I wrote a bunch of

individual novels, uh, horror novels.

The very first ones I ever wrote, Blind

Date, Twisted, I did one called Beach

House, uh, a bunch of novels. And we

were trying to figure out how to do a

series, how do you do a horror series

and that people will want to come back

to again and again? And no one had ever

really done a teen horror series.

And we thought, well, we'll have these

two kids, these two teenagers, and

they'll move somewhere and ter it'll be

terrible things will happen to them. And

then you realize you can't have the same

two kids in a horror series. If this

these poor kids over and over again,

they have these horrifying adventures.

It just no one would buy it. Who would

believe that? So then we thought, well,

it's got to be the location. If we have

a scary location, then we have any

number of uh characters can come in and

out and it'll make more sense. And then

we thought, what if there was like a

normal town and

it was just a a normal small town,

but one street in that town was cursed.

One street had a totally evil history

and anyone who moved to that street or

walked on it or went over there for some

reason went over what if terrible things

would happen and the horror would take

place over there and that's how we got

and then I sat down um I said we need a

name for the we need a name for it this

is a good idea because you can if if

it's just a place you can do a hundred

books

and you know all different characters

and and you could create the history of

the street. Why was it cursed? Why what

was the evil on that street? And I said

try to think of a name for it. And I sat

down with a yellow pad. So I was going

to try to think of a name for this

series. And I wrote Fear Street.

Just came to me. It was Fear Street.

That would be the street. And then there

would be the fear family. It was cursed

because of the fear family. And then we

started to create a whole history of how

evil the fear family was. What horrible

people they were and how what dark

powers they had and a rivalry that they

had with the good family. Go O. The good

family. Going back to witchcraft times.

going back to colonial times and the

terrible things that happened and

burnings and and we created a whole

history of that went back of generation

to generation of fears of the fear

family and all ending up on this street

where and then we wrote characteristics

of the street. We figured this all out.

We had it all. No, there's a big woods,

the Fear Street woods. No birds would

ever go into the Fear Street woods.

And that was this was part of the

legend. And in the early days, three

girls were found in dead in the woods.

Three little girls were found and their

bones were missing,

just their skin. And no one ever knew

what happened or how that could happen.

And that was part of the legend, part of

the legacy.

Somehow it goes hand in hand. If you

want to be a writer, you probably are a

good reader. But I find that the more I

read, I read a lot of thrillers and a

lot of mysteries. And it it really helps

my writing. um not by stealing things or

by taking ideas, you see, but just sort

of by osmosis. When you see how people

say things and how they how they write

and just just the different writing

styles, you kind of absorb it. I think

most writers love to read. I if I do I

read all the time. I read every day. I

try to read all the new fiction and I'd

read hor I read some horror novels,

mostly mysteries and thrillers. I was an

English major in college and read all

the great stuff and it has to affect you

and it's a lot of it stays with you. So

I and I think when you start to write,

it's perfectly fine to remember those

things you loved, those things you read,

and to use them, to go on and develop

them in a different way. It's sort of to

borrow what they did.

I'm a big borrower. I you know I one

thing I write so many books and I need

so many ideas so I rely on the things

I've seen and the things I've read. Um I

was going to I've never written a

Christmas book and um an editor at

McMillan asked me let's do a Christmas

book and I thought I was thinking

immediately I thought well I I hadn't

done it because Christmas isn't scary.

It's not, you know, it's not really

doesn't seem appropriate time for

horror. But then I realized that the

most popular Christmas book of all is a

ghost story, the Dickens story, you

know, Christmas Carol. And it that's a

ghost story. And I thought, oh, okay.

Well, what okay, I will do that. Why

not? Why not, you know, steal from the

best, right? And take from Dickens. And

I wrote a book called Young Scrooge

and it's about Scrooge. I took the

character as a 12-year-old

and he's the biggest bully in school.

He's just a horrible bully and the I

have the ghosts. I have the whole story

and he's 12year-old Scrooge. But that

was something borrowing from um a

classic. I wrote a um a teen horror

novel called A Midsummer Night Scream.

So I Shakespeare is useful, too.

I'll tell you a story about a librarian

who actually changed my life.

Um, I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, in this

little community in Columbus, Ohio. And

one day my mom dropped me off at the

library. We had a little library on Main

Street. And I walked in and the

librarian

knew me. And she said, "Bobby, I know

you like comic books." And that's

actually all I read as a kid. I only

read comic books and these horror and

funny comics. She said, "I know you like

comic books.

I have something I think you'll like."

And she took me over to a shelf of Ray

Bradberry stories.

And I couldn't believe these stories. I

They were so creative and so beautifully

written that I just I was like blown

away by them. They all had great funny

endings and they were just just what I

liked and they were Ray Bradberry really

and that librarian really turned me into

a reader. Kids always ask me to

recommend a scary book and I always

recommend Ray Bradbury's book Something

Wicked This Way Comes and I it's a

wonderful book, a very influential book

on me. It's about a boy in the Midwest

who sneaks out of his house late at

night and he goes a couple blocks down

the street to where a carnival is

setting up and he gets involved with the

carnival and it turns out to be the most

evil carnival on earth and it's turns

horrifying and it's what I grew up in

the Midwest of course and I could

identify with this boy and creeping out

of the house at night and when you read

something wonderful like that. It gives

you all kinds of ideas. I get all kinds

of ideas for doing amusement park

stories and carnival stories and going

out late at night. Taking those elements

that he'd put together, Bradberry, so

perfectly many years later,

I had a chance to meet Ray Bradberry.

And this was I mean, he was so important

in my life. I mean, I was nine or 10

years old and he he turned me into a

reader and I was at the LA Times Book

Festival in Los Angeles and there was

Ray Bradberry sitting in a booth eating

a hot dog was in a publishers booth and

my wife said, "Go say hello to him. Go

say hi." I said, "No, I Oh, I can't I

couldn't do it. It was like it was too

much. I'm I'm kind of shy anyway." And

she said, "Oh, no, I couldn't." I said,

and Jane said, "Well, you're he's so

important to you. He played such a big

part in you. You have to say hello to

him. You have to go over." So, I went

over to him. And I was shaking like a

kid. I was like a kid. And I was so

nervous. And I shook hand I turned over

and I said, "Mr. Bradberry, you're my

hero." and he turned around and he shook

hands and he said, "Well, you're a hero

to a lot of other people."

It was this amazing moment. When he said

that, I just burst out crying.

It was too nice, you know. It was too

nice. Then I got myself together and we

had a really nice conversation. It was

like what an incredible thing to happen.

And I when I talk and give talks or

things I always say that's the kind of

moment that I would wish for all writers

to have. It was just this overwhelmingly

wonderful thing for him to say.

I've read every book Agatha Christie

ever wrote and she was not a a fabulous

writer but she was an amazing

storyteller and amazingly clever at

coming up with plots and it's just

inspiring to read these books and see

how clever these plots are and I've used

many of them many of them because you

know and adapted them for kids I

remember one where there was a big party

and everyone was sitting around a round

table

and it was at a nightclub

and they got up to dance. They all got

up to dance. Then they came back, they

sat back down at the table and they had

champagne toasts and they drank the

champagne and one of them dropped dead.

There was cyanide in the champagne

and you spend the whole mystery trying

to find out who would kill this person,

who would do that, who would put

cyanide. I'm going to spoil the book

now, but who would put cyanide in their

drink? And the, you know, detective is

trying to find out what's the motive,

why they would do it. And it turns out

that when the people came back to the

table, this round table, they didn't

take the same seats. They moved over one

and the wrong person got murdered. So

you spent the whole book trying to

investigate the wrong person. It's just

brilliant and so simple.

Stephen King's Pet Cemetery. That is the

creepiest book I ever read. I think I

always think that may be the creepiest

book. And I what a wonderful plot that

is. And then you read it and then you

think, well, what can I how can I use

something like that? How can I You can

just You're inspired by it. Um the basic

premise of pet cemetery

of taking your dog and who's died to

this place and reviving the dog to bring

something back to life is really creepy.

And the whole idea is but you've done it

and it's a wonderful success. Everyone's

happy the dog is back but the dog isn't

the same. the dog is really evil now.

He's come back from a very bad place.

Um, that's just so clever and it's it's

a terrifying thing to think about. First

of all, bringing someone dead back to

life. For 30 years, I never met Stephen

King. I'm Stephen King for kids, right?

And for 30 years, I say no, I've never

met him. And then uh last the year

before last, I met him at the Edgar

Awards in New York. We were both there.

I saw him across the room and he came

over

and we had a nice talk and he said, "But

he accused me." He said, "You've stolen

every theme park idea anyone could

have." He said, "You haven't left

anything for the rest of us. There's no

amusement park thing you've done." And

uh I I took that as a compliment. And I

said to him, I said, "Steve, do you know

that a magazine once called me a

training bra for you?

They called me a literary training bra

for Stephen King." And he said, "Yes, I

know.

If you think you want to be a writer, I

there's one thing I think it's really

important and it's very basic thing. You

have to actually like to write. There

are I don't know. I I'm I was an odd

kid. I was weird. When I was 9 years

old, I was in my room typing. I was

writing. I was like driven to it. I have

no idea why. And I think if if you

really want to be a writer, you have to

like the process of writing. If you

think if you want to do it because it's

easy or you like being alone all day or

you want to be famous or you want your

books to become movies, that's probably

not a good idea because it probably

won't work out.

I think very early on you have to decide

what kind of writer you want to be. Um,

I always wanted to entertain people. I

started out writing funny books and then

the scary books came along and my whole

goal was just to just to entertain to

get kids to read. It was reading

motivation to show kids that it could be

entertaining. You could turn to books

and just be entertained and nothing

else. And I had no further ambition than

that. I wanted to be a commercial

writer.

And I think you have to figure out

whether you want to do that thing or if

you have literary ambitions and you want

to write something that's more for

yourself than for an audience. Ken Flet,

the novelist Ken Flet um told me a great

story

on this subject. He was having a phone

conversation with another author, a very

literary author, very artistic, very

serious author.

And the author said to Ken, um,

I only write for myself.

I don't write for the audience. I only

want to please one person. That's me.

And when I write, I write everything

just for me.

And Ken said, 'Well, that's why you are

a great writer and I'm rich.

When you're starting out as a writer, I

think before you start thinking about

your audience and who they are, you want

to pick specifically. You have to figure

out how are you going to figure out what

you want to write.

You don't you're not going to just sit

down and start writing a novel about

something. You I you have to think about

what you're interested in for one thing

or what do you read? Do you read a lot

of science fiction?

So maybe that's what you want to write.

You you're going to you want to write

about what you're really interested in.

Do you read a lot of romances and do you

find those really fun? So maybe you want

to try one. That's what that's what you

want to write. And then once you figure

out what genre you want to write, then

you can start thinking about the

audience and thinking about who these

people are who are going to want to read

it. Maybe there are people just like

you. But I think it's really important

if if you're drawn to something to

figure out what you want to do, what

audience you want. Who's your audience?

Do you want to write for adults? Do you

want to write for a big general

audience? Do you want to write for um

someone who's a literary audience? Try

to figure out what you want to do first.

Once you figured out what genre you want

to write in, whether you you want to

write romances or you want to write

funny books or you want to write

westerns, go out, go to the bookstores,

go online and see what's already there.

It's so important, I think, to know the

market first, to know what people are

reading. Look at what people are reading

to know where your book, if you have an

idea for a book, where will it go in the

store. Don't try to do something that

won't fit in somewhere. Don't try to

write something that will be its own

category because that almost never

works. I think a lot of people would

probably criticize that advice and say

you don't want to think about the

marketing part first. You want to just

write something you like. But if you

start out and write something that

no one's going to know what it is or no

bookstore is going to know where to

place it, you're going to have a lot of

problems. My very first book was called

How to be funny.

And it was a kids book. It was about how

to get big laughs at the dinner table

and how to crack up your class. And

parents hated this book. They hated it.

But once um I was it was my first book

and I was excited and I went into a

bookstore and I said, "Do you have How

to be funny?" And he said, "Oh yes,

that's in theater arts. They put it they

didn't put it with they it's how to be

funny. They put it in theater arts." And

after that I always thought it's very

important to be very clear about where

your book should go and about what

you're doing. And uh people might think

that's crass advice, but I don't think

so. I think it's a good head start.

I grew up in Ohio and I thought at the

time if you wanted to be a writer, you

had to live in New York City. So right

at I thought you had no choice. That's

where you had to live. So right after

college, I moved to New York. I drove to

New York. I drove my little car. I came

I got an apartment in the village. I on

the corner of Waverly Place and Waverly

Place. That was where my apartment was.

And my very first job in New York was

writing for six movie magazines.

Um I was this woman had six movie

magazines that she had to fill up every

month. And there were three of us

writers and we would go to her apartment

and write and fill up to fill up these

movie magazines. And we'd come in in the

morning and she'd say, "Do an interview

with Diana Ross." I'd say, "Fine. Okay.

Type type type. Type and make up an

interview." And then she'd say, "Do an

interview with the Beatles." Okay. This

was back, you know, then. I say, "Okay."

Type type. Write. And I would write two

or three interviews a day making up

everything would make up the whole

thing.

And that's how that was the job. And it

was actually was a very creative job and

it was very useful for later on because

I learned how to write really fast and I

had learned how to imagine dialogue

because I had to make up uh everything

with these stars.

That job didn't last very long, but it

was it was a you know that was fun and

also I think very good training. But I

went from job to job, got these writing

jobs and then I ended up at at

Scholastic doing social studies

magazines and I would do my work at

Scholastic in the morning and then I

would sit there and write in the

afternoon.

That might be one reason why they fired

me. I don't know. But I did I would get

my work done and get it done so that I

could get back to my writing and I would

do my writing in the afternoon. And if

you can find something, it's hard, but

if you can find a job that gives you

time and doesn't take all your energy

away and gives you time to write even in

the evening, um I that's that's

certainly what I would recommend.

always say yes. Say yes to everything.

Um

I wouldn't have this career if I didn't

have that policy. Um when I was starting

out as a freelancer, I said yes to

everything. I was writing. I wrote

Bazooka Joe comic jokes, the bubblegum

jokes. I wrote G.I. Joe books, even

though I've never seen a gun. I've never

had I had, you know, I wrote G.I. Joe. I

wrote Mighty Mouse and Rocky and

Bullwinkle coloring books. You know,

there's that line at the bottom of every

coloring book. I wrote those. It's a

great job. I've got $500 a coloring book

and I'd write these. I said yes.

Everyone, anything people asked, I'd be

writing. I did a humor magazine for 10

years called Bananas.

and which was my life's dream. And when

the magazine folded, I went home and I

thought I would coast the rest of my

life. I just I thought that was it. I've

done it. I've had my humor magazine. I

didn't know what was in store. And one

day I was having lunch with my friend

Jean Fwell, who was uh at the time

editorial director at Scholastic.

And Jean had just had a fight with a

writer

who wrote um young adult horror. He

wrote teen horror novels. And she sat

down to lunch and she said, "I'm never

working with him again. You could write

a good teen horror novel. Go home, write

a book called Blind Date." She gave me

the title, everything. And I didn't know

what she was talking about. What did she

mean teen horror novel? I said, "Yes,

sure." I always say, "Yes, yes, sure. No

problem." And then I went running to the

bookstore to find out who, you know, and

I read Christopher Pike and Lois Duncan

and all these Richie Tankers Lee Cusk,

all these other people who were writing

teen horror so I could find out what it

was. But if I had if I'd say to her,

"Well, Jean, I don't really know what

you're talking about. It's, you know,

I'm a funny guy. I write jokes. I don't

write horror. If I had done that,

instead of saying yes, I wouldn't have

had this whole career. None of it would

have happened. So that's why I always

tell people anyway, I wrote I wrote that

book, Blind Date, and it came out. It

was a number one bestseller.

And I was like shocked. What do you

mean? I I'd never been close to a

bestseller list. A year later, I wrote a

second book called Twisted

Horror, Teen Horror. again, number one

bestseller. And I thought, forget the

funny stuff. I'm going to be scary. I'm

going to be scary from now on. And that

just that came from, you know, from

saying yes. And I just about everything

that's happened to me has been so an

accident. It something that I didn't

plan. The whole thing of writing for

kids was wasn't anything that I had

planned. But by saying yes to all these

possibilities

um

it it worked out

Well, most children's book authors

cultivate a fan base by doing school

visits. You might start out just locally

or you might have your publisher find

schools for you to visit um and do

classroom visits or assemblies of the

whole school. Um and it's a this is a

wonderful way. It's what a nice thing

that kids are all together all the time.

Adults aren't adult adults aren't in

school. kids are so much easier to reach

because they're all together and then

they can talk to each other and they can

tell each other about books and that's a

wonderful thing for a kids author. So, I

would always say start with the schools.

You know, school visits are so much more

effective than bookstore appearances as

far as familiarizing yourself to

readers. The other thing to look for

when you have a when you actually have a

book out and you're ready to sell it and

you're ready to show it to people and

you want people to know about it is to

look at all the book fairs that take

place all around the country. There are

many of them, many of them. And many of

them look for authors.

U the Miami book fair, the Tucson Book

Fair, which is really good and has 300

authors. The LA Times Book Festival has

over 300 authors come. Uh there are many

local the um Tampa St. Petersburg book

festival and with a lot of Florida

authors come there. They're always over

and it's a great way to be there, appear

there, sign books there, appear with

other authors, go on panels. Um, these

book festivals, I think, are invaluable

and just a great way to introduce

yourself and to be around other authors

and to meet the crowds. Most children's

books are bought by parents and

librarians. So, it's it's nice to be

able to get in touch and find get them

to know find ways to let them know that

your book is out there because that's

kids. Most kids don't buy their own

books uh unless it's a school book fair

or a school book club or something like

that. And even then the parents are

involved. So it's very important to try

to reach parents and teachers and

librarians um as much as you can.

I use social media a lot and I think

more and more authors find that they

really need to do this to get out the

word about their books. I'm on Twitter

and Facebook and Instagram. But I enjoy

all that. I mean that's really fun for

me. But even for authors who don't enjoy

it that much, it's very important.

Partly because in a lot of um

publishers, the marketing department and

the publicity departments have been cut

back and a lot of publishers expect you

to do your own marketing. They expect

you to do your own publicity and they

expect you to have your Facebook page

for to sell your book and your Twitter

and they they want you to do it. And the

nice thing is that having those things

helps. It really does help you sell

books. I'm on Twitter all the time and

I'm always thinking, am I selling too

much? Am I using it too much for

marketing? So, I do a lot of other

stuff. I make sure that I don't just

say, "Hey, this book is still available.

Hey, only 12 shopping days till

Christmas. Here, buy Young Scrooge." I

make sure that I don't just do that. I

put a lot of funny stuff on Twitter and

a lot of other news and talk a lot and

talk to people. There's some authors who

only market on Twitter and only put

nice comments they got and retweet those

and put their book covers on. And I do a

lot of that, but I try to disguise it by

doing a lot of other things so it

doesn't look like I'm just selling all

the time. It's a fine balance. I think I

write stories live on Twitter. I do. I

sit down and say, "I'm going to write a

story for you now." And I'll write a

story 140 character story and write

stories on Twitter. And I also I I love

I do Q&A sessions on Twitter where I'll

say, "I'm going to be around for the

next half hour. Does anyone have a

question for me?" And those work very

well. People really like it. And it's a

great way to hear what's on the reader's

mind and what they're interested in and

what they want to know about. I love

doing that. And it's so easy to do on

Twitter. Just say, "Here I am. What do

you want to know?" Uh there are no kids

on Twitter. They're all 20 and 30somes

and they're they're the ones who grew up

with goosebumps. And it's so great to

have a forum to have a place where they

all are where I can hear from them and

talk to them. And I I so I spend a lot

of time, but my most popular tweet, this

is my most popular tweet. Thousands of

likes, thousands of all the things I've

written. Are you ready? Here it is.

Shakira. Shakira.

That's it. That was the whole tweet.

Thousands of likes. Why? I have no idea.

No idea.

Everyone asks about writer's block. This

is like after they say where do you get

your ideas? They say what do you do

about writer's block? And I've never had

it. Which I think is partly luck. Think

I'm just lucky. I can always sit down

and write always. Sometimes I know the

writing isn't any good. Sometimes I feel

like I'm riding uphill and it's just

it's not right. It's not right. But I

keep going because I know I'm going to

go back and fix it. I can always go

back, but you have to just keep going

forward. I think what I do to make

writing easier is I divide things up. I

don't sit down and I don't I'm not

writing and I have to figure out what my

characters look like or figure out their

personality while I'm in the middle of

the plot. I start out with a complete

list of my characters, what they look

like, what their basic personalities

are. Then I have my outline. The outline

has the beginning of the book, the

middle, it's got the ending. I know

where I'm going to go. If you have an

outline, it's very hard to have writer's

block because you know where to go next.

And if you're having trouble with one

chapter, it's not coming, it's not

coming, go on to the next chapter and

write that one and then go back. But I I

think the real key and I worry about

writers who don't plan ahead. They don't

want to know. They want to they want to

write spontaneously. And there are a lot

of them. But I worry about them in

writer's block because you can reach a

point if you haven't planned it out, you

can reach a point where you don't know

where to go next. But that never happens

to me because of the outline. So I would

say the more complete your preparation

is, the easier it is to finish the book

and the harder it is to get writer's

block. The more preparation you do, the

more you're going to be fine when you

write the book.

I'm like a machine when it comes to

writing. I don't know. And I I would

hope that other people have the same

feeling and the same. I I I'll tell you

my routine. And I really recommend this

kind maybe not the hours that I do but

to be able to

stick to it every day and to keep at it

and to like it's make it almost like

factory work where you're there you're

you're doing peace work you're doing it

you're getting it done you're getting it

done and I would hope uh people who want

to be writers I it's a good thing to aim

for that kind of discipline I think or

maybe It's crazy. I mean, you'd have to

be really crazy to write 300 books,

right? I don't know. But I'm there every

day and I I I still, you know, after 25

years of Goosebumps, whatever, I sit

down maybe 9:30 in the morning and I

start to write. I have my outline. I'm

all set. I have the outline of the book.

I'm I write this book. I every day I

write 2,000 words, which is about 10

pages. Everyone used to go by pages. Now

in publishing, because of the computer

tells you the words, everyone goes by

words. And so Goosebumps books have to

be 23,000 words. But I set a goal for

myself every morning. Today I'm going to

write 2500 words. And then I don't get

up till I've done it. I maybe I'll take

15 minutes to have a sandwich, but then

I'm back at it. And when I hit my 2,000

words, I quit. Doesn't matter where I

am, where I am in the story. I hit 2,000

words, I quit. And it's kind of a trick

that I use because it makes it so much

easier to start up again the next day. I

haven't finished a chapter. I'm not at

the end of a chapter. I'm in the middle

of something. So when I sit down the

next day, I don't have to start all over

again.

I don't have to do much thinking. I'm in

the middle of something already. And you

know, we talk about writer's block. You

can't have writer's block if you're

already in the middle of a scene. And

that so just about every morning I'll

come in and I'll be in the middle of

something. So I can keep writing. And I

write till about it takes me

till 2:30, 3:00 in the afternoon. Not

bad hours, right? And then I can feel my

brain start to just fade away. And so I

know I four hours is like a good time

for me. And you have to kind of figure

out you you it's pretty easy to figure

out what you know when you're finished.

I get a lot of letters from parents now

and a lot of tweets saying, "Oh, my son

loved the Goosebumps movie and they saw

you writing on a typewriter, so I had to

buy them a typewriter." And they send me

picture and there's their kids. They're

writing on a typewriter. I can't It's

hard to believe. It's actually It's very

funny, but yeah, you know, I I can't

believe I wrote maybe a hundred books on

typewriter. I don't know how how did we

ever revise? How did anyone revise on a

typewriter?

So, I work on a a laptop and work I

write all my story all all my books on

um

MacBook Pro and um except for my

outlines

which I cannot do on a computer. I this

is very mysterious. Very mysterious. I

something in the brain. But I have to

plot on a yellow pad. I have to use a

yellow pad. Everyone has these kind of

idiosyncrasies, I think. And I think if

you decide that you want to outline, you

should try both ways and see which way.

Maybe when you're writing it yourself,

you're closer to the story and it's

slower, so you have more time to think

cuz writing is so much slower than

typing. You know, I um

I started typing when I was 9 years old.

I had this old Remington typewriter in

my room and I typing away, but I never

learned how to type. And I'm totally

left-handed

and I don't use my right hand for

anything. Now, I use my right hand for

the mouse, but I never learned how to

type. And I only use one finger, not

even two fingers. And I have written,

this is true, I've written 300 books

with this finger. And look, look at it.

Look, it's totally bent. It's totally

cur. This is what I sacrificed for my

art. The finger is totally ruined. It's

my typing finger.

300 books with that finger.

The finger goes, that's the career.

That's it.

I had a a friend who wrote teen horror

back in the '9s. She was quite popular.

And to write her teen horror, she had

have very creepy music playing. She had

candles lit all over the room

and she wrote on a haunted desk.

She's claimed her desk was haunted. She

had to write on a haunted desk. She

needed eerie music and the wrote by

candle light.

And I can write anywhere really. I don't

need any of that. I have a a room in my

apartment in New York that I share with

my dog and um I come in and I sit down

and I do need quiet. I can't write with

music on. I don't I you know it's a

shame but I I don't I need quiet and I

don't need anything else and I really

can write anywhere. I'm not I can write

I used to write on an airplane or write

in a hotel room. I um I I don't have any

problems with that that but that's I

don't need any atmosphere. I don't need

anything I don't need anything special.

Now I have to say all all that I've said

about writing and planning and enjoying

it and if you want to be a writer you've

really got to love writing and

everything there. There are a lot of

really successful authors who would

totally disagree with me and totally the

opposite of me.

Uh the great thriller writer Harlon

Cobin is a friend of mine. And Harlon,

but we never talk about writing. We

just, you know, we talk about the kids

and everything. And uh one evening

Harlon and I did an evening at Barnes &

Noble in New York City. And it was an

author conversation, just the two of us.

And we talked about writing. And in that

conversation, we discovered that we have

nothing in common at all. That

everything that we do is completely

different. I I sit down every day. I

love to write. I sit down and write

every morning. Harlon has to force

himself to write. He has to scream at

himself. He says he has to berate

himself. He has to call himself all

kinds of names so that he to get himself

to write. I have an office. I have a

room in my apartment where I work.

Harlon can't work at home. He has to go

out to a coffee shop somewhere. He has

to be out with people. I have to have

like quiet. I'm, you know, I'm quiet.

I'm in my room with the dog. I'm sitting

there. Harlon has to have music going.

He has to have this Har I outline every

book I write. I do a complete outline

chapter by Harlon never plans, never

does an outline, never every single

thing we noticed as we were talking that

we are exactly the opposite. So I what

does that mean? I don't know. I you know

I I can only tell you what I can tell

you what works for me.

Here's something a little extra for you.

And I put this up on the masterclass

resources page and you can download it

and print it out and look at it and

think about it or not or whatever. I put

down 20 scary story ideas that you can

use for kids. You can feel free take any

one of them. Use them all. Put them

whatever you want to do. These are 20

ideas. A lot of them I've done. A lot of

them you can take and do in different

ways. You can do whatever you want. I

said earlier that I really I can't

really I can't I can tell you how to go

about finding ideas, but I can't really

tell you how to get an idea your own.

But here are 20 ideas you can use and

see if if anything strikes you as as

interesting or useful. Okay, here we

are. One, a creepy doll comes to life.

Two, a scene from a nightmare comes true

the next day. Three, days go by and your

parents don't come home.

Four, you feel yourself slowly becoming

a monster.

Five, your friends start to disappear

and no one else notices.

Six, you are lost in the woods and don't

know how you got there.

Seven, you are inhabited by a ghost that

controls you and makes you do crazy

things. I like that one.

I've written it about six times.

Um, eight. You have no reflection in the

mirror. Nine. The teacher is a monster,

but no one will believe you. 10. You

hypnotize your brother and you can't

snap him out of it.

Wishful thinking. 11. A fortune teller

reveals that you are evil.

12. Someone follows you home and it's

your exact double.

13. You find a diary that tells the

future. 14. Every time you wake up,

you're a different person.

15. Your parents explain that you are

actually an alien from another planet.

16.

You know someone is watching you day and

night from the house across the street.

17. You realize you are shrinking.

18. While reading a scary book, you

discover that you're a character in it.

19. Someone is living in your mirror.

And finally, 20. Everyone knows your new

neighbors are vampires and the kids

invite you over for a sleepover.

And there's 20 good scary ideas that

you're welcome to use for writing kids

horror.

After taking my master class, I hope

you'll be better prepared and ready to

go, ready to write a short story or a

novel. Um, I came up with some exercises

maybe to help get you going. Um, they're

in the workbook. You can check them out

anytime.

And the first one of course is write

down three times you remember feeling

truly truly scared. Just make a list.

Think back. Try to remember something

that was scary. Make a list of those

kind of things and and see what you can

write.

Also, I talked a lot about titles. Make

a list of funny horror titles or book

titles. Titles that you would be think

you would be interested in reading. Make

a list. Write down two titles, three

titles. See how you do with titles.

It says, "Spend an hour in an average

place with lots of people. Just go to

the park or a grocery store. Just watch

them. Write down whatever sparks your

imagination. Just watch people. Get get

in the habit of observing people and

then see where your thoughts lead. See

what directions you can think. just

watching in a normal situation.

Try out developing a plot. Take an idea

of your own or try using one of the

horror story plots that I gave you

that's in the workbook. Develop it until

you have an idea of your basic plot.

Start with just a couple of scenes.

Build from there. Then if you love the

idea, take it further. See how far this

idea will take you.

Play around with point of view. And this

is a a useful exercise and it's

something sometimes I do. I maybe

sometimes I'll start a book third person

and say, "Well, I can make this much

better first person." And I'll go back

and write the chapter and do it. Or you

try write something third person, write

the same scene first person. See what

happens. See if it helps you out. Um,

pro style. Choose an author you like.

Write a scene totally mimicking that

author's style. I think I talked about

when I was a kid there were I mimic

author styles all the time to this day.

Take some author that you really like

and see if you can write in that

author's style. It really does help.

It's not just copying. Take a scene

you've already written or write one

based on those 20 ideas on my list. Then

revise the scene. Force yourself to make

it all dialogue. See if you can tell the

whole scene just in dialogue. I think

that's a really good exercise and really

good for helping you figure out how to

tell a story in dialogue and not have to

slow the book down with a whole lot of

description.

Write a scary scene. Take one of my 20

horror ideas and write a scary scene.

Make sure to slow it down. Slow it.

Write it slowly so that the reader gets

every bit of fear, every tingle, every

bit of fright in the character. Make

sure you write it very slowly. Don't

skip over anything.

Uh don't forget to think about all the

senses. What what is the character

seeing, smelling? What does it what does

she hear? What does what sounds are in

the background? Try to include all of

that. All of it adds up to make a scene

really scary. Try making a character

cheat sheet like the one that I gave

you. Think about what your character

looks like and what they want most. Try

making a list of of how you would

populate a book. Who who would you put

in it? And then what are they like? And

this helps me a lot. And I do it before

every book I write. Just a list of the

characters. Who's in it? And what are

they about?

Uh, scary monsters. Take take the most

innane object you can think of and think

of a way to turn it into a monster. I I

wrote that book. It came from beneath

the sink. It was about a sponge. You

don't get any more mundane than a sponge

and it turned into a horrifying monster.

Or a Halloween mask. A simple mask can

turn into something absolutely

horrifying. Take an object. Take an egg.

Take a take take an animal. Take a

canary. Take anything and see what you

can do. How would you make it scary?

Well, I think I've shared all my secrets

with you. It's over 40 years of writing

for kids. And I think I've pretty much

told you everything I know. I think

you've gotten it all. And I what I tried

to do for you is to break it down into

little pieces. break it down into short

lessons, short tricks, just short ideas

so that you would be able to get one

after the other and then put them all

together. And I hope that's what I've

achieved. I hope you've enjoyed this

master class and I hope you've learned a

lot from it and I hope you feel that

you're ready to write. I hope you

remember a lot about what we said about

knowing your audience and choosing your

audience and getting started. What we

said about outlining and mainly what we

talked about forgetting ideas, finding

ideas wherever we can um and the other

big issue of avoiding writer's block. I

hope you remember all that and I hope

that was really useful to you and I do

hope that you are encouraged now that

you finished the course to sit down and

write and try something. Try some of the

things we did. I've put exercises in

your workbook. I put in all kinds of

clues. I've given you 20 story ideas to

try out. Try them. I hope you will sit

down, write a story, write, start a

novel, see how you do, and mainly just

have fun with it, enjoy it, have have a

good time writing.