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I recently conducted another Authorhouse Writing Review with a group of writers who are aspiring authors. I thought I would continue to create articles out of these sessions in the hope that they will help other writers achieve their goals of becoming published authors. This AuthorHouse Review is based on two writers in the horror genre. Here’s a quote that introduces both authors extremely well. "Well, I was writing for a while and getting published already, but it was Stephen King who actually helped me be where I am at this moment. Stephen read some of my work and said: "I`ve seen the future of horror, and his name is Clive Barker."
And from that moment on, my carrier really took off.
That is the most unselfish act and the best help that a writer can give to a fellow writer, and I am deeply grateful to Stephen King. " Stephen King has long been the standard for horror writers to emulate. You must be pretty good to get such a glowing review from him. He has written so many classics, many of which have been turned into movies. There are probably some movies you really loved that you may not have realized are based on books by Stephen King. A couple of movies that rank high on many all time favourites lists are The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Both are based on Stephen king stories. Clive Barker is also very well established horror writer and his books have also been turned into movies. The most recognizable would be the Hellraiser series of books and movies. Pinhead has been an iconic figure in the horror genre. It would probably be safe to say that Barker is the more macabre of the two. Naturally comparisons are often drawn between the two; the master and the heir to the throne. Who is better? Personally I like them both and wouldn’t really compare them as they write very different books. Instead, let’s look and see what we can learn from each of them as writers. Whoever you might think is better, they are both great writers in their own right and can teach any aspiring horror writer a thing or three. 1.Ideas
Stephen King and Clive Barker possess the most fertile minds in writing today. They come up with the most shocking storylines and concepts. Let’s take some examples from their books that I have most recently read. I read Stephen King’s Under the Dome and Desperation over the last few months. I enjoyed Desperation, but I really, really enjoyed the epic Under the Dome. It was interesting to read about two different towns overpowered by some evil force. The town of Desperation is subject to an evil spirit released from the local mine after a hundred years, whereas some alien has decided to imprison the city of Chester’s Mill under a glass jar to observe the population as a human would with an ant’s nest. Admittedly I have watched more Clive Barker movies (Midnight Meat Train, Books of Blood) than read his books of late. I will always remember reading Imajica, however, and being simply blown away by the fantastical worlds Barker creates and intertwines through the story. In my summation of where King and Barker get their ideas from, I concluded that King focuses on real, commonly shared, experiential human fears, whereas Barker’s horror is more otherworldly, born of his own fantastical imagination. 2.Movies
Both Barker and King prove the old adage that the book is always better than the movie. There have been some exceptional movies made from their books and a number of them are found in many a fovorites list (as I have described above). Carrie, Misery and The Green Mile and they are all fantastic movies. But the books are way better. The Shining is an amazing movie, but read the book. The storyline is very different and you better believe it is even better! If you haven’t heard of Clive Barker, you must have heard of Hellraiser. This is a great horror movie. Barker’s book, the Hellbound Heart, the book it is based on is much scarier. AuthorHouse considers Stephen King and Clive Barker to be the standard bearers of the horror genre. Their concepts are derived from different origins, but the results and fantasies they create are beyond compare. AuthorHouse ranks them in the league of horror classics along with writers such as Robert Bloch.
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AuthorHouse, horror writing, Clive Barker, Stephen King,
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