R.L. Stine’s Top 13 Writing Tips
R.L. Stine made himself a household name with his Goosebumps and Fear Street horror series for kids and teens. He’s now written over 300 books and sold over 400 million copies in his career.
Stine recently recorded a MasterClass to share his best writing advice. His class focuses on how to write for a young audience, but many of his tips apply to all target audiences. If you haven’t yet spent the $180/year for a MasterClass subscription, you can find Stine’s top 13 tips below. (All quotes are from his MasterClass.)
1. Say “yes” to everything
Stine’s horror career launched unexpectedly when he was eating lunch with a friend, the Editorial Director at Scholastic Books. She’d just had a fight with one of her authors, someone who wrote young adult (YA) horror books. Upset over the disagreement, she vented to Stine.
As he recalls it, “She sat down to lunch and she said, ‘I’m never working with him again. You could write a good teen horror novel. Go home, write a book called Blind Date.’ She gave me the title — everything! And I didn’t know what she was talking about. What did she mean ‘teen horror novel’? I said, ‘Yes, sure!’ I always say yes. Yes, sure, no problem.”
Stine says nearly every good thing that’s happened in his career happened by accident. By saying yes to random opportunities, he stumbled into success.
2. Don’t make writing more complicated than it is
It’s easy to be fearful of writing. This fear is compounded by the fact that many authors talk about the pain and agony of the writing process.
Stine says, “You don’t have to be afraid of writing. It’s not scary. Don’t listen to all these people who talk about how hard writing is. It’s not hard. You don’t want to make it seem like it’s something that’s complicated…You can just write for fun.”
He clearly lives by his own advice. He still enjoys the process, even after 300 books.
3. Stay alert for ideas
The most common question authors receive is “Where do you get your ideas?” When Stine receives that trite question, he often jokes that he gets his ideas from the “Idea Store.”
He says there are three departments in the Idea Store:
- Experience
- Memory
- Imagination
You can find ideas in any of these departments; you just need to stay alert to what’s going on around you. Write about stories from your own life. Write about things you remember from your past. And yes, tap into your imagination to invent new worlds your readers can visit inside your pages.
4. Snoop on others’ conversations
Stine admits that he frequently eavesdrops on what people are saying and doing around him in public places.
In an airport, he once watched two emotional parents drop off their nine- or ten-year-old son for his first solo flight. As the son boarded the plane, the dad gave him a white envelope. But the child was whisked away into the jet bridge before Stine got to see what was in the envelope.
Stine’s curiosity got the better of him, and he couldn’t stop wondering what was in the envelope. He later incorporated a similar scene into his book Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, where he took liberty to invent the envelope’s contents.
5. Start with the title
There’s no one way to write. Every writer’s process is different, and the trick is to find what process works best for YOU — not anyone else.
For Stine, the best process is starting out with the title of a story, then working backward to what the story is about. “All my books now come from titles,” says Stine. “I just think of the title and then work out the story from there.”
Once he has the title, he asks a lot of “What if…” and “How…” questions to build on the germ of the idea and flesh out more details.
6. Study your target audience
Stine’s two longest-running, most popular series are Fear Street and Goosebumps. The two series cater to different young audiences, so Stine has different standards for each:
- Fear Street — Young adult readers (teenagers), books feel real (otherwise teens wouldn’t believe them), lots of people die in the books
- Goosebumps — Middle-grade readers (7–12 years old), books feel fantastical (otherwise they’d be too scary), no one dies
Stine has spent years studying the vocabulary, social behavior, and reading preferences of each target audience. He also reads many books written for both age groups so he can get a sense of what else his readers are learning.
7. Picture your reader
In addition to studying his target audiences, Stine actively tries to visualize his readers while he writes.
“If I’m writing a young adult [book], I try to see a 17-, 18-year-old person or younger…,” says Stine. “I try to picture those kids, and it helps me when I’m writing.”
Stine knows from practice that kids enjoy reading about characters who are their own age or just a bit older than them, and he keeps that in mind when writing both Fear Street and Goosebumps. He jokes that “every character” in Goosebumps is 12 years old because that’s the top of his age range for those books.
8. Tap into your own emotions and fears
Stine grew up as a fearful kid, and he says he’s thankful for that because it helps him relate to his readers. When he was growing up, he was afraid of the dark, monsters, etc. and he taps into those fears for inspiration.
“I can remember that feeling of panic, that feeling of being a kid and being afraid, and I can bring it back,” says Stine. “I can remember it, and I try to put it into my books.”
9. Write a character list
Before he begins to write any novel, Stine first creates a comprehensive outline and then “populates” his story with characters. He creates a cheat sheet of characters along with descriptions of what each person is like, including physical qualities and personality traits.
Stein says once he’s created that type of character map, he finds it much easier to write the actual story. The character cheat sheet is his head start.
10. Put your protagonist through hell
Many authors talk about how the strength of a story is dependent upon how much conflict you can create. Stine takes it a step further…
“You have to be careful as an author,” says Stine. “You have to remember that you are not the protagonist’s friend…You are actually the enemy of the protagonist…The idea is to get the protagonist in as much trouble as possible and then finally get them out at the end.”
11. Enjoy the first draft
“Don’t worry about the first draft,” advises Stine. “Just write it, get it down. Enjoy it. Just have fun with the first draft. And then, you can do the harder work later on the other drafts and shape it up.”
He says once you’ve finished the first draft, you’ve proven to yourself that you can do it. It’s a massive confidence booster that sets you up for the difficult work of finishing your story.
12. Add retroactive breadcrumbs
Sometimes you reach the end of a story and realize that the ending could be even more satisfying if you set it up better in the earlier chapters. That happens to Stine all the time, so he frequently goes back to add more breadcrumbs.
“I’d say don’t be afraid to go back — even though you’re two-thirds of the way through the book — go back and put in what’s going to help you later on,” says Stine.
13. Revise, revise, revise
Just like most authors, Stine’s revision process is extensive. While revising his story, Stine looks for things like the following:
- Scenes that seem to drag
- Scenes that don’t go far enough (he can make them more scary or intense)
- Simple mistakes (consistency errors, misspelled names, typos, etc.)
He encourages every writer to give your story to friends who can provide feedback about which characters are likable, which scenes seemed unbelievable, and which chapters need faster pacing.
If you enjoyed this article, I encourage you to check out the rest of my writing tips series and support R.L. Stine by purchasing one of his many books for any of the book-loving kids in your life.
Happy writing!
Can you help me with this new film Horror ideas I found tow have you got some