1. How did you get started writing fiction?

My background is in IT and tabletop games design, but I’ve been writing my whole life. Back at school, I got a few merit badges and once signed the effort book for it.

I carried on writing when I was still employed full time. One of my first stories came from reading BBC News articles when I probably should have been concentrating on my actual job.

What really started me on my journey as a horror author was a now defunct writing challenge where you had to write 30 stories in 30 days. Those stories eventually became part of Tales of the Macabre and utterly derailed my efforts to become a sci-fi author by establishing me as a full-time horror author.

I couldn’t handle the office any more. That’s a level of horror that far surpasses the likes of me.

2. What kind of fiction do you enjoy writing?

Horror. I move between psychological, supernatural, Gothic, folk and historical horror. Mostly, I play with the human element, but I can’t help splashing my tales with a generous helping of gore.

A creature or supernatural entity can provide the threat, but humans can be greedy, cruel, obsessive and domineering. Isn’t that more fun to read? To break up my rather bleak, moralistic worldview, I try to add a bit of humour to my stories as a palate cleanser.

3. What was it about writing short stories that just seemed to “click” with your writing career?

The variety. It appeals to my short attention span. I can grab an idea, set it somewhere ghastly, fill it with interesting characters and formulate some kind of twist without committing to an entire novel.

I have written five novels in my time. Only one of them, Nestor Lynch, was good enough to publish. It cost a fortune. The cover alone was just under a grand. It took two and a half years to write and received strong reviews, so discovering it was my worst-selling book was bruising.

Short fiction also suits the kind of horror I enjoy. You can introduce the ordinary, then corrupt it, leaving the reader with nasty thoughts to follow them into bed.

There’s a ton of satisfaction in being able to achieve that in just a few thousand words.

4. Is there a type of short story that you enjoy writing most? Please explain.

Creeping horror, particularly with historical or folk horror elements. I enjoy establishing a believable place and recognisable people, then introducing the uncanny to mess with my readers’ perceptions.

There’s often a moral thread running through my work. Someone wants something, makes a poor decision and discovers that the consequences are dire. The supernatural can be involved, but human motivation holds a good story together.

5. What was it like when you sold your first short story?

My publishing route has mainly been independent, through individual releases and my Tales of the Macabre collections. For example, The Black Fog appeared as a standalone story on Amazon before being collected in the first volume.

I’ve spent almost all of my author career publishing directly and building a readership through Substack and BookFunnel for short horror.

So the closest thing to your question would be my first hit, albeit self-published. Tales of the Macabre represents most of my revenue and is what first got me noticed on the horror scene. It was what enabled me to start writing full-time and was when I knew I could do this as a career. My favourites in the series are the second and fifth volumes (am I supposed to admit to having favourites?).

6. Where do you find short story markets to submit to?

A lot of authors cut their teeth on the short story markets, but I prefer to publish the stories myself. Rather than taking a one-off fee, I can expand my back catalogue and keep growing my collection.

Short story anthologies can be a wonderful opportunity to work with other established authors, and I know some veteran authors who love them. But I struggle with giving up control of my work.

7. What is one lesson you have learned as a writer when it comes to writing short fiction?

A twist cannot do all the work, nor can a setting.

The characters and their predicament need to hold the reader’s attention before the final revelation arrives. You must find a way to make readers care so the ending can land with a gut punch.

A good ending should change what the reader expected in the opening. But you have to lead them on the journey. The clues should be there, woven into the text, even if their significance only becomes clear afterwards. Otherwise, you are cheating, and the reader won’t respect you if you don’t lay the groundwork.

8. How is writing short fiction different from your work as a writer of longer fiction?

You have much less room for manoeuvre. You have to viciously slash the flab from your work. You need to make sure you provide a complete story in a few words. You can’t create a vignette or a trailer and call it a day.

Longer fiction gives me more space to develop relationships, explore consequences and drip-feed personalities. Whereas in a short story, I am forced to establish the character, situation and threat quickly, without rushing the reader.

9. What is some of the best advice you have received from other writers or editors when it comes to writing short fiction?

I was discussing writing with David Sodergren when I was chair of the Horror Writers Association UK chapter. One of the best pieces of advice he gave me was to review all your chapters or scenes to sharpen the endings. A flaccid ending is a wonderful place to put down the book and go to sleep, but we want our readers to feel compelled to continue. We aren’t selling comfort. Our books need to be drugs that keep our readers hooked.

Ash Ericmore gave me some excellent pointers on villains. To make a truly compelling villain, you need to put yourself in their head and find out how and why they justify their actions. Good villains don’t wake up one morning, twirl a moustache, and decide to commit evil for its own sake.

10. Do you have any advice of your own to share with other writers?

Firstly, finish things. You learn something from taking a story through drafting, revision, and completion that you cannot learn from endlessly polishing its opening paragraph.

Read widely, including outside your usual genre. Books are fuel. Find readers who will tell you when something doesn’t work and listen without immediately preparing your defence.

Allow yourself to write a bad first draft. You can edit a bad sentence. You can’t fix a blank page. Expect your first stories to be tosh. You need to learn to write poorly before you can write well in this business.

Finally, read your work aloud.

It exposes repeated words, awkward sentences, and dialogue that looked perfectly reasonable on the screen. Your eyes become remarkably forgiving once you know in your own mind what a sentence is supposed to say. Your ears are far more critical.

The read-aloud pass is the most important and most tedious part of my editing process. Unfortunately, it has the ghastly consequence of revealing more work just when I thought I’d finished.

ABOUT NEWTON:

Newton Webb is a British horror author whose internationally bestselling Tales of the Macabre collections combine psychological tension, Gothic horror, and splatterpunk. A former computer programmer and tabletop games designer, he now writes full-time. He is chairman and co-founder of the British Horror Authors Guild and hosts its HAG Chat author interviews. Away from writing, he keeps fish, collects Venus flytraps, has a precocious collie lurcher called Buddy, and answers to a perpetually grumpy tortoise called Gill. His fiction is available at newtonwebb.com.