Director and writer Paul Bryers gives an illustrated talk on the ingredients of a successful ghost or horror story, with examples from his own work and that of Stephen King, Bram Stoker, Thomas Harris, Angela Carter and Charles Perrault – master, or manipulator, of the fairy tale.
“Why are we, and our children, so keen on being scared out of our minds? Why are we so fascinated by horror – and the supernatural? What’s behind the apparently insatiable vampire craze? Is it as one writer recently put it – porn for tweenagers – or is it some kind of substitution for religious belief? Does horror have a purpose, besides that of scaring people? And – the thing that fascinates me most as a writer – what’s the origin of this hunger for mystery, myth and magic? And – from a more professional point of view – what can we learn from fairy tales, and how can we use them to construct our own plots? Many of my own plots, and the techniques I use for making films, are based on fairy tales – in particular Little Red Riding Hood. Deconstruct this story and you learn some of the basic tricks of the trade”.
Paul Bryers is a prize-winning novelist, screenwriter and director whose latest novel ‘Spooked: The Haunting of Kit Connelly’ was published by Hodder Children’s Books in August this year. He also writes adult fiction and a historical maritime series under the name Seth Hunter.
His docudramas have been nominated for Emmy, BAFTA and Grierson awards and his series, Queen Victoria’s Empire, won an outstanding achievement award at the New York Film Festival. Feature length dramas for BBC 2 and Channel Four include Incident in Judea with Mark Rylance, Jim Carter and John Woodvine, The Golden Years, by Arthur Miller, with Ronald Pickup, Robert Powell and Kathy Tyson, Murder at Canterbury with Larry Lamb, A Vote for Hitler and A Strike Out Of Time.
