The Most Frightening Story We Ever Wrote

You want fear? Try facing two dozen writers every week, and having them challenge you to write a story in a month, based on THEIR prompts, letting them watch every step of the process. Tananarive thought I was crazy, but I knew we could pull it off together.

At least, I hoped we could.

##

Last September, I was asking myself “what is the greatest benefit I can be to young writers?” And I thought: break down the process until it is so simple that anyone can take the steps. I’d already formalized the “Sentence a Day” method, but knew that even if I broke it down that far, barriers remained.

1. People might wonder if it actually worked. What was the QUALITY of the work produced?’
2. They would have a tendency to say: “Yeah, well that works for you. But I’m dealing with fear. I’m not a `martial arts master’.

What could I do? That’s what I wake up every day thinking: who needs me? What need is there? What can I do that would be of greatest help to a younger version of myself?

And the decision was to use my own methodology to create “A Halloween Story in a Month” with “a sentence a day.”

By letting the students themselves choose the idea, I could remove any suspicion that we were stacking the deck, pulling out a story we’d already worked or at at least “broken.” The most important part IMO was that this was FRIGHTENING. It wasn’t as bad as Harlan sitting in a book store window…