What exactly does it mean to be afraid of a film? How do horror films manage to thrill, disgust and terrify their audiences? Why is it we are scared of run-down hospitals when they show up in film after film? Where can we see the evolutionary roots of horror in action?

Creator of the horror screenwriting site Scriptophobic, author Zack Long sets out to answer these questions and more in Scream Writing: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing the Horror Screenplay. Breaking the genre down into the parts that make it unique, Long uses evolutionary history, psychoanalysis and linguistics to explore what the monsters, scares, settings and plots of the horror film say about us and how we can use this knowledge to build our own tales of terror.

* Discover how plots are divided into the seven struggles of horror* Explore how psychological baggage and mental frameworks color our experience of cinematic settings* Use abjection and biology to craft terrifyingly real monsters* Learn what separates fear, disgust, anxiety, shock and tension from each other and how they work together to produce a cognitive effect within the audience* And so much more