Writing Monsters: How to Craft Believably Terrifying Creatures to Enhance Your Horror, Fantasy, an d Science Fiction

Not many books on this subject, and this one is the best I have read so far. It is very informative and throughly enjoyable read. Honestly, I wish it was longer with even more details.The only problem I had was that after the content of the book is over the extra material was very heavy on Lovecraft writing, which I can understand as it is very relevant, but as dyslectic person Lovecraft’s writing style is very hard to read. So that was not as enjoyable, but I felt compelled to read it all for completion’s sake. Obviously the book can’t be faulted for that.

This is a wonderful book about how to think about and develop the monsters for your science fiction, fantasy, or horror stories. There are countless books out there that list and describe monsters. This is much more useful, because it talks about monsters conceptually – what role do the monsters play in your story and what specifically makes them scary and dangerous? Beyond that, the last section deals with how to introduce and describe your monsters for maximum impact.Athans uses a wide range of examples to help illustrate the issues, from Alien to Jaws to scary little creepy crawlies, with a great deal of Lovecraft in between. I appreciated the variety: not just the lone huge monster (like Godzilla) but packs of monsters, swarms of insects and tiny invasive species monsters, and monsters that are agents of the antagonist (think: the Wicked Witch's flying monkeys).This book got me to think about the monsters in my world at a deeper level, and inspired ideas for monsters that I hadn't imagined. I'll go back to this book over and over as I think up new monsters for future stories. I highly recommend this to any SFFH writer!

Good suggestions and guidelines, and it never hurts to seek out further information if you want to become a writer.

If you need a monster in your story, this book can help you with everything from the psychology of monster creation (what makes us scared, etc.) to whether references to your beast should be capitalized or not. Monsters can run the gamut from monstrous human beings to Lovecraftian indescribables. Where do they come from? What are their weaknesses and limitations (those aren’t the same thing)? Are your monsters metaphors, agents of evil, or sources of pity? An archetype, something original, or somewhere between the two? Are they creatures, places (e.g. a haunted house) or things (e.g., a ghost ship)? How do you write about them? The book is easy to read, covers the ground well, and helped me design a monster in my own efforts. If you write fantasy, science fiction, or horror, this book is a great aid.

If you want to write, and you want your novel to have monsters in it, this is the book I highly suggest you purchase and read. I’ve taken an online class called, “Horror Writing Intensive: Analyzing the Work of Genre Master Stephen King”, taught by this great author, Philip Athans. Not only was his book great but so was his class. In the book, he has a link to a “Monster Writing Form” that will be of tremendous help when developing a monster for your story. This book has many helpful tips and suggestions, as well as the link I mentioned earlier. The book and the monster writing form have been very helpful to me while writing my Sci-Fi novel, “Deep Light”, which will be finished before December 2017.

Enjoyed this immensely. Great insights into the subject of monsters in fiction, their roles, suggestions on monster design, how to handle strengths vs. weaknesses, etc. I dislike zombies as monster du jure but I benefitted from the observations offered by the author who visualizes zombies as a force-of-nature, like Godzilla, with the real conflict of a zombie story between the people involved. Monsters, of course, figure into horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Notwithstanding frequent references to science fiction monsters, I believe science fiction requires some more in-depth examination of creature creation than this book can provide, however useful it may be, especially when aliens are involved. That's just a whole separate topic.. But an excellent book, I can't recommend it enough.

Fantastic book. Really helps one dig deep into creating compelling and "realistic" monsters. Uses movies and books to further points about how to write them. Great book for any sci-fi, fantasy, and horror (me!) author.

ok it was a gift but nice quality

great customer care

This book scan be the best tool to create monsters for horror roleplaying games and stories.

Un libro súper accesible y muy completo. Una maravilla para quien quiera ampliar conocimientos o empezar en este mundillo.

If you're writing horror, add this to your list of minions. Just the first few pages prompted me into writing another short story. Gold!

super !