Horror Screenplay Writing is a 4-week live online class on writing horror screenplays that can be made on a small budget. It costs $249 for the full course or $69 for a single class. It meets Thursdays 6–8pm PT and is capped at 8 students. The next course starts Thu, Nov 19.
Horror is the genre where a small budget is often an advantage. Some of the most successful horror films of the last twenty years were shot with a handful of actors in a single location, and audiences didn't care because the script was scary. This four-week live online class is about writing horror like that.
We cover what makes horror work on the page: building dread, pacing scares, and making sure the monster, the haunting or the killer means something. Then we look at what makes a horror script producible: limited locations, small casts, practical effects, and ideas that come from character and atmosphere, not expensive set pieces.
Each week the group shares pages and gets notes on what's scary, what's working and what would cost too much to shoot. You leave with a stronger horror script and a clear idea of how to pitch it to producers looking for low-budget genre projects.
Classes are capped at eight writers, so everyone gets detailed notes on their pages during the course.
Horror writer & director
Nick McCarthy is a Los Angeles-based writer and director of horror films. Three of his short films played at the Sundance Film Festival. His feature debut, The Pact (2012), premiered at Sundance and was released by IFC Midnight; made for about $400,000, it took $7.2 million at the box office. He went on to direct At the Devil’s Door (2014) and The Prodigy (2019).