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Daniel Torday on The Monster Scale

daniel-tordayDaniel Torday, Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College, shares his insight on writing monsters: “A number of years ago I encountered a workshop where, all at once, every one of the very talented writers I was working with seemed to want to write only fantastical short stories about monsters. Story after story came into workshop containing not just monsters, but the most fantastical of monsters: vampires who could fly and suck blood and seduce. Wolfmen who were as hirsute as the hirsutest of all wolves. Dragons that breathed fire and stole princesses and encountered hobbits. It was in a moment of desperation that, together with the most self-searching writers in that group, finding their stories needed something—but what?—we came up with a tool we called “The Monster Scale.'”

Read the rest in Glimmer Train Bulletin #98, a free monthly of craft essays.

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