It’s been a frantic year for selling short stories, especially of the horror kind to adapt them into films and television shows. Some have even sold for six-figure amounts during fervent bidding wars between studios. This is a refreshing departure from studios sourcing IP mainly from the New York Best Sellers list and popular comic books.
Sam Raimi recently optioned an entire collection of short stories called Every House Is Haunted by short story and novel author Ian Rogers. The development deal finally came together when Raimi read The House On Ashley Avenue and saw its cinematic potential. It is being produced by Sam Raimi and Roy Lee.
Rogers spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about the decade-long runway to get his short story to this point. He describes the genre of The House On Ashley Avenue as “supernatural noir.” “I’m an equal opportunity horror writer and fan.” says Rogers. “The type of horror that I tend to write is more of an accessible horror where it’s a take on every day events and then tweak them for supernatural.”
Rogers states that his key influencer is Stephen King because both his monsters and his characters feel so real. “Even though we know vampires and killer clowns in sewers don’t exist, the characters and the sets are familiar enough that we’re able to suspend that disbelief so they seem possible in this world.” It’s the same reason people look under the bed when they hear grunts even though they know ghosts don’t really exist.
Ian Rogers
Horror a way humans process irrational fears. Rogers believes writing horror stories is a matter of managing those fears and introducing them in a believable and entertaining way.
Short Stories, Novelettes & Novels
Ian Rogers generally writes in three literary formats – short stories, novelettes, and novels. Short stories typically come in at around four to five thousand words, or roughly twenty pages (The House On Ashley Avenue is twenty-four pages long) and have the shortest page count of the three. These may be also considered the hardest to write because you a very limited amount of time and number of words to get your point across.
Short stories are all killer, no filler
“It’s more concentrated horror. Short stories are the literary equivalent of a jump scare which is very fast and very potent.” In longer narratives such as novelettes and novels, you can still scare people, but you have more time to set up your scares. Rogers argues that short stories are the purest form of horror. “You don’t have the luxury of letting them meander in the way that you can with a novel.”
“Once you go beyond around ten thousand words, you’re going into novelette territory which is about ten to twenty-five thousand words long. A novella is about twenty-five to fifty thousand words in length. Once you go over fifty thousand words, you’re in novel country.” Rogers advises writers to consider any of these avenue to tell their stories organically. “Short stories are a flare in the sky to remind people that you still write.” A short story can be written in a matter of weeks, while a novel may take months or years to write.
Although Ian Rogers cherishes the shorter medium, he concedes that there are very few outlets that accept longer horror stories because publishers want to publish as many stories as they can. Furthermore, the demand and compensation is relatively low. Readers also generally prefer to buy and read novels which area also more likely to be adapted into films and TV series. That said, short stories are faster to write and they can help you hone your story and writing craft to decide the best format for your story. Rogers writes a few short stories to flex his creative muscles in between novels.
Roger looks at the main tropes of horror stories – haunted house, premature burial, vampires, ghosts and monsters. Haunted houses are Rogers’ trope of choice. He infuses those with a parapsychological and supernatural twist to personalize them. X-Files and Twin Peaks are TV shows that greatly inform his writing.
The unifying thread of Every House Is Haunted is an insurance company that owns a collection of empty haunted houses. One was a regular house, one was a decommissioned fish processing plant, and one was an art gallery. “They’re all paranormally polluted and too dangerous for human habitation.” Rogers believes The House On Ashley Avenue is a good introduction to the collection of short stories and that’s why the book’s editor selected it to circulate in the industry. “Let’s start a traditional haunted house story and then just completely throw people off the kilter. The characters are different as is the purpose of the story.”
More recently, Sam Raimi optioned the entire collection of short stories presented Ashley Avenue to Netflix to develop as a feature, knowing that the remaining stories had adaptation potential. The producers also hired Ian Rogers as a consultant on these projects because he can add something to the adaptation process. He also wrote a bible for the series.
Lee unsuccessfully tried to set up the project for many years as a TV series at NBC Universal before asking Raimi if he saw it as a film. Rogers’ representation at Story Driven also saw the potential in the book.
After reading the TV pilot, Rogers informed Raimi that it was one of twenty-two stories, so Raimi optioned the entire collection. Rogers has also written several film treatments for other projects. He describes treatments as “the situation of your story. It’s one part short story, one part pitch, and one part ‘scriptment.’ It’s a document that stands on its own when I’m not in the room. I’m not really trying to sell myself or an idea. I’m trying to sell my own excitement.”
In conclusion, Ian Rogers doesn’t have a preference for one medium over another. He suggests studying the form and structure of the medium you want to write in rather than using it as a springboard to getting it adapted. “Short stories don’t all have a four act structure the same way that a film or a television screenplay might.” In any case, study the types of stories told in your preferred medium and which resonate most with you. “Use that to make your own magic.“
