‹ Back

The Horror Guru’s Advice: Write Nightmares, Not Formulas

By. Sexy Goblin

Published with permission. Original article is posted HERE

 

At SXSW, C. Robert Cargill explained why horror survives a broken Hollywood and why a good jump scare begins long before something leaps out of the dark.

On the penultimate day of SXSW, instead of another sprint between screenings, I chose the workshop "How To Break Into a Broken Hollywood: Writing Horror in 2026".

 

At SXSW, C. Robert Cargill spoke from the position of someone who knows horror as a screenwriter, producer, and as someone who watches what actually works in Hollywood today. He talked about an industry after a major shake-up, the decline in television production, people losing work, and why horror has become one of the few genres Hollywood is turning back to.

 

According to him, between 2023 and 2024, the number of television shows being produced dropped by 33%. That does not just mean fewer series on the schedule. It means less work for writers, directors, sound people, assistants, and all the other professionals who keep productions running. He even mentioned an Oscar-winning sound professional, someone at the very top of the field, who had recently worked on major films but suddenly struggled to find enough jobs.

 

And when the industry starts shrinking like that, everyone begins looking for a genre that can be made more cheaply, still has an audience, and does not need stars on the poster.

 

That genre is horror.

 

Why? Because it still works in theaters. Some kinds of films have moved home to the couch. People are happy to watch romantic comedies at home, under a blanket, with someone next to them. Horror still needs darkness, a big screen, and a room full of strangers who freeze, scream, or laugh at their own jump scare at the same time.

 

We like to pretend that we analyze films with our heads, but horror works mainly through the body. It raises your heart rate, builds tension, plays with sound, rhythm, and expectation. The viewer is not supposed to simply understand that they should be scared. They have to feel it.

 

Cult films often do not age through opening-weekend numbers, but through the fact that people return to them, buy new editions, argue about them, and make them part of their own identity.

 

Cargill gradually broke down where fear comes from, why the audience has to believe in the characters first, how important rhythm is, and why horror cannot invent its rules only when it suddenly needs them.

 

Out of that workshop came a simple manual. These are Cargill’s lessons on how to write horror properly.

 

Write about what gives you nightmares

 

Write what scares you. Not what looks “cool.” Not what you have never seen before. A new idea is not automatically a frightening idea. Horror begins when something gets stuck in your head and refuses to leave.

 

Cargill returned to the origin of his cult film Sinister. After almost twenty-four hours without sleep, he watched The Ring, fell asleep, and during a short rest had a nightmare about an attic, an 8mm projector, and a film he could not get out of his head.

 

That disturbing image later became the opening scene of Sinister.

 

Lesson: Do not look for the cleverest horror concept. Look for the image that unsettles you.

 

 

We have to care who is going to die

The audience is not scared for someone they do not care about. If a character is written only as an annoying piece of meat waiting to be slaughtered, their death will not create horror, but relief. At that point, we are not rooting for the victim. We are rooting for the monster.

 

That is why horror needs a character the audience can connect with. They do not have to be saintly. They do not even have to be especially likable. But they have to interest us. A sympathetic character wins us over through action. An interesting character fascinates us, even if they are morally questionable. And an empathetic character pulls us in because we understand them.

 

According to Cargill, The Black Phone works through that third option. First we watch a boy crushed by school, bullying, his home life, and his own insecurity. Only then does he end up in the basement. Because we have spent time with him before the kidnapping, it is no longer just a horror situation. We want him to survive.

 

A concept can get people into the theater. A character keeps them in the story.

 

Lesson: Write a person first. Then lock them in the basement.

 

 

Timing is everything. Ethan Hawke knows it.

The famous actor Ethan Hawke apparently did not fully respect horror at the time and did not see it as a genre he deeply understood. But the script affected him so strongly that he had trouble sleeping for several days after reading it. That was what finally convinced him there was something in the material.

 

The turning point came while shooting a scene in which his character walks through the house with a baseball bat. Director Scott Derrickson gave him the exact rhythm: one step, pause, two steps, pause, another step. No big action. No monster.

 

Hawke remembered an old acting lesson from Jack Lemmon: comedy is performance plus timing. On the set of Sinister, he realized the same thing applies to horror. Horror is not just a dark house. It is also the precise timing of when an actor moves and when the audience reacts.

 

Lesson: Horror is rhythm. Fear is not only about what happens. It is about when it happens.

Write one hundred pages and stop

Horror reads differently on the page than it plays on the screen. In most genres, people often say that one page of screenplay equals roughly one minute of screen time. In horror, according to Cargill, that is not quite true.

 

The sentence “Ethan Hawke walks through the house with a baseball bat” takes up one line in a script. On screen, it can become a long scene built around steps, pauses, and tension. Write twenty or thirty moments like that, and the screenplay starts expanding once it reaches the screen.

 

That is why Cargill advised keeping horror scripts closer to one hundred pages. A standard 120-page script can easily turn into a two-and-a-half-hour horror film. Sinister, according to him, was 105 pages, and the first cut still ran over two hours, so it had to be trimmed down.

 

This is not just a technical note for screenwriters. Horror needs momentum. It can be slow, atmospheric, and dark, but it cannot feel bloated just because the writer did not realize how much screen time tension takes.

 

Lesson: In horror, even one line can become a minute. Write a shorter script than you think you need.

Jump scares are not the problem. Bad jump scares are the problem.

Cargill also tackled something critics often use as an insult: jump scares. According to him, people mostly hate bad jump scares. A cheap loud noise, a false alarm, a hand on someone’s shoulder, or a cat jumping out of a closet just to make the audience flinch.

 

A good jump scare is different. It is a moment the film prepares the viewer for, stretches the expectation, and then releases it with precision. The audience jumps, laughs, exhales, and feels like they got what they came to the theater for.

 

At the same time, not every horror film has to be a string of jump scares. Slower, more demanding, or more arthouse horror films may not crush the opening weekend box office, but they can have long lives. People return to them, discuss them, and gradually turn them into cult objects.

 

Lesson: A jump scare is not a sin. A cheap jump scare that cheats the tension is.

Every ten pages, remind us we are in a horror film

Another piece of advice sounded almost like a horror cookbook rule: every ten pages, something scary should happen. That does not mean there has to be a death, a bloody scene, or a major jump scare. The point is that the audience should never forget what kind of film they are watching.

 

The first act can take its time. You are introducing the world, the characters, the rules, and the atmosphere. But once the horror gets moving, too long a pause without tension can knock the viewer out of the experience. It is like a roller coaster. You need the climb, the drop, the turn, the brief release, and the next hit. Not a straight track where nothing happens for too long.

 

According to Cargill, even a short stretch of boredom in the middle of a film can leave the viewer with the feeling that the movie dragged. That is why the screenwriter has to keep tracking where the audience is. Are they tense? Curious? Tired? Too comfortable? And the moment they start to feel safe, there should be another reminder that something is wrong in this world.

 

Lesson: Not every horror scene has to terrify. But the film must always breathe like horror.

 

 

The world needs iron logic

Horror audiences are not passive sheep waiting for the next scream in the dark. They are constantly thinking, looking for escape routes, and trying to outsmart the film. If the horror is built on a realistic threat or sci-fi rules, they will watch the logic even more closely. They will ask how the world works, why the characters make certain choices, and whether the film breaks the rules it has set for itself.

 

With magic, the supernatural, or dream logic like Suspiria, the writer has more freedom, but even then, the film cannot change the rules whenever it becomes convenient. It has to establish them early and stick to them.

 

That is why the screenwriter has to hear the audience’s questions before they are asked in the theater. “Why doesn’t he run?” “Why did they split up?” “Why is she going into that house?” “Why doesn’t he just grab the knife?” If a character is in a kitchen and the camera shows a knife block, the audience will notice it immediately. If the hero does not take a weapon, it looks stupid. But if the knife block is empty, a logic hole becomes another source of tension. Someone was there before him.

 

Someone took the knives. Someone was thinking ahead. And suddenly the threat is one step ahead.

 

Lesson: If the audience finds an easier solution than your character does, you have a problem.

 

Shoot it. Business cards will not save you.

How do you actually get into all of this? What do you do when you have an idea or a finished script? According to Cargill, handing out business cards at festivals will not save you. What matters more is making something.

 

Horror has the advantage of not needing a huge budget or movie stars. Today, all you need is a phone, a simple lens attachment, a few people around you, and an idea that works in one house or one room. As an example, Cargill mentioned the independent film Good Boy, whose creators spent several years mostly filming their own dog until it eventually became a festival horror film.

 

Make a short film, push it onto genre festival circuits, meet people, go to gatherings, talk to other filmmakers, and do not be an arrogant idiot. According to Cargill, the horror community is tight-knit because many of its people have spent a long time on the margins of the industry. They know what it is like to make a genre that parts of Hollywood used to be almost embarrassed by.

 

Lesson: Do not wait for someone to discover you. Shoot something that scares you and show it to people who love horror.

 

Horror is the last pure genre

 

I left the workshop feeling that horror is not strong in Hollywood only because it can be made cheaply. Horror works because, in theaters, it can still grab an entire room at once. It can raise the heart rate, trigger a scream, create laughter after a jump scare, and then immediately build the next wave of tension.

 

And maybe that is why horror survives even when the rest of the industry acts like it does not know what comes next. While Hollywood counts risks, horror keeps doing one very old thing: it takes a simple idea, the right character, precise timing, and leaves the audience waiting in the dark.

 

C. Robert Cargill is an American screenwriter, producer, novelist, and former film critic who has made his biggest mark in horror. He has a long-running collaboration with director Scott Derrickson, with whom he wrote Sinister, later The Black Phone, and also worked on Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Beyond his own screenwriting, Cargill develops projects, reads scripts by emerging filmmakers, and helps young directors move their genre ideas closer to production.

 

For more SXSW horror coverage check out reviews of READY OR NOT 2  and OBSESSION