RM: Any advice for hungry writers?

Write. Then write more. Then keep writing until you write “The End” on something. Write not because of all the money you’re gonna make, but because you NEED to write, it would physically impair you not to. Write because you have something to tell the world. And get the entire book, script or whatever out of your system entirely and down on paper. Don’t go back and edit until you are done. If you keep tinkering with stuff as you go along, you may have a perfect fifteen pages and never finish the other 200 or so that would make it a publishable book. Writing is re-writing so just expect as part of the process you will need to overhaul what you’re written. Once you’ve done so, and are ready to submit it to a publisher or agent, expect to be judged, expect for others not to share your vision or even like it too much. Some may be right, but not everyone will be; there are so many factors that go into whether an agent or editor likes a book besides the basic technical aspects of the writing, the book might be wrong for a particular publisher in terms of their market (like trying to pitch a horror novel to a romance publisher), timing might not be right in the marketplace for the genre of book written, and on down to the editor/agent having a bad day or just not liking a particular genre. Just be prepared—listen to constructive comments, if people are kind enough to give them, which they aren’t always, but don’t let it derail you if you get a negative response”submit it elsewhere, write another book, keep going if your goal is to be a writer. If you do have a manuscript and are not sure what to do next, I’d suggest getting the Writer’s Market books, found at book stores. It contains advice on query letters and manuscript formats, as well as lists of agents, publishers and the types of works they represent or publish so you are targeting the right people with the right material presented in the proper fashion. Creative writing classes are also good because usually the teacher is some sort of published author, so you can get day-to-day feedback on the writing of your book and when it’s all over, he may have recommendations for you as to where to send your manuscript. One important fact of life to keep in mind is that you will very rarely (I’d say never, but I got lucky in this regard, so there are always exceptions) sell a fiction novel based on any less than the full manuscript. Publishers want to know you can actually finish a book and most people, even those who claim they are writers, don’t have the patience to actually write two-hundred plus pages, let alone write them well. So only approach publishers and agents with complete novels, not just the first few chapters. You can, however, submit a few chapters and an outline if the book is non-fiction, as my unpublished Friday the 13th book was. It followed a format that was duplicated in each chapter, so writing the first half of the book was enough to get people to look at it. The only reason I got hired for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare without ever having written a complete fictional novel was because half of my Friday the 13th book alone was over 400 pages! Plus, it was a novelization and not my own original idea because it would be based on the script, no one had to wonder what would happen in the end, even with my pseudo-documentary embellishments. So I got lucky in that regard, but I still had demonstrated my writing ability and my ability to follow through, inasmuch as I pursued trying to get the Friday the 13th book published for two years and found the right people to talk to in order to do it. So in short. Write. Finish what you are writing. Rewrite it. Research the submission process and the proper places to submit it. And be prepared for rejection. Also be prepared for things to work out in ways you didn’t expect, despite all your research and planning. Then, enjoy the success when it happens!

Exclusive Interview

NOES Companion: Were you a fan of the Nightmare series before you began work on the novels? Do you have a favorite film?

David Bergantino: Oh yeah. After seeing the first movie at a midnight showing, I saw each subsequent movie opening weekend. As I did with every other major horror series, like Friday the 13th and Halloween, and just about any other scary movie that was released. Well, as you might expect, the first one is my favorite and stands apart from the rest of the series, as most first movies stand apart from sequels. It was purely conceived, not as a franchise, but as this supremely creepy tale where the boogeyman had a voice for the first time. But of the sequels, I’d probably go with The Dream Master. It took the idea of the Dream Warriors, which never quite fulfilled its potential of being something like The X-Men vs. Freddy, concentrated all the superpowers into one character and had the satisfying big battle ending the previous film lacked. Dream Child is pretty good, too. I’m not a big fan of the second film or Freddy’s Dead.

Did you try to incorporate any of your personal dreams/nightmares or real life events when writing the Tales of Terror novels?

Er, no. I have dreams that would scare Freddy Krueger! Although I guess at the time, the core idea behind Virtual Terror came from my fascination with those Magic Eye posters and the idea of what if you saw images that were premonitions, rather than what the designers intended. Other than that, I just make stuff up. In all, while I don’t exactly base my stories or even scenes on specific real-life events, I am usually incorporating some theme or perspective I think is important for readers to learn or consider. My Bards Blood series was like that. While they were horror tales based on Shakespeare, they had an interesting feminist angle because, particularly in Hamlet, women were treated rather shabbily. What if Shakespeare had an appreciation for the modern role of women in society, how would that affect his plays? So, ideas like that are embedded in everything I write.

Any guidelines you had to follow when writing Tales of Terror?

There were a few. Because they were teen novels, I couldn’t do graphic sex. Not that I would have. I had to keep the language relatively tame, but again, that’s kinda natural—I use the f-word once (or twice) in the Bards Blood series, and it felt awkward to do so, to be honest (and really made an Amazon.com reviewer very angry! ). Guess I had to prove I wasn’t doing another set of teen novels (which they pretty much were). I also couldn’t make the situations too realistically frightening or disturbing. All the horror had to come from fantasy elements (violent deaths notwithstanding).

For example, and I think this will be the first time this will be publicly revealed, in the first draft of Virtual Terror (written in six days), Keith’s original vision in the poster was that of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding! And the name of the poster was originally called the Challenger, meaning the image on the poster was very difficult to resolve. My editor loved it—and this image figured prominently throughout the first draft of the novel. Well, at some point, someone ELSE at Tor read the novel and said, “No way! ” Apparently, I’d crossed a line of taste and realism, so I had gut the book of Challengerreferences and change it to “Mysteria.” I think it worked, ultimately, especially if you didn’t know what was there originally. However, if you’ve read the book, you’ll remember the climactic scene where a trailer explodes because it’s been filled with gas. Well, that was meant to recall the Challenger exploding. Now, it’s just… an explosion with no obvious resonance. They publisher was probably right to make me change it. Unless I was writing a truly adult novel, I’d probably be more sensitive and avoid such a reference. I can sometimes be insensitive like that. (For example, there are far too many parenthetical phrases in this section, which is insensitive of me, if not downright annoying.)

Meanwhile, the most interesting guideline for writing the Tales of Terror series was… Freddy Krueger couldn’t be in them! It was a guideline from New Line. I believe it was because the more he would be in a novel, the more chances one might have to violate his mythology. So… I was only allowed to have him bookend the story like the Crypt Keeper. He could also appear briefly at the very end of the main story for the big reveal of which character he was possessing, as he did in each story.

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