- [narrator] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, and by klru's producers circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas, community. - i'm evan smith. he's one of the best-selling children's author's in history and one of the most prolific. with more than 300 books to his credit, including the goosebumps and fear street series. his latest is young scrooge: a very scary christmas story. he's r. l. stine, this is overheard. let's be honest. is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa-- you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. no, you saw a problem and over time took it on. let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak.

are you gonna run for president? i think i just got an f from you actually. (audience applauding) r. l. stine, welcome. - thank you. - very nice to meet you. - so nice to be here. - i seem to remember the actual christmas carol being scary. why is it necessary to write a scary version of this? - i know, and nothing like stealing from the best, right? - right, well, but you understand it's like when i hear that we're gonna do a scary version of a christmas carol, that's like a musical version of rent. i thought it was a musical. - no, you're totally right. - why this now? - i had never written a christmas book before. - [evan] oh is that right? - yeah. - [evan] in all the books you're written, hundreds of books. - i thought no, this is inappropriate for christmas i thought, and then i realized the most popular christmas story ever was a ghost story. - that's true. - yeah. - multiple ghosts. - then i had this idea, well what if there was a 12-year-old scrooge, or what was scrooge like when he was 12? - [evan] right. - and i wrote this book about this kid who's the meanest kid in school.

- right, and in fact that's one of the things i found most remarkable about this book is not the point at which the ghosts materialize, but the character of this kid at a time when we talk about bullying in this world. i hope that people understand this is fiction, right? - well i love writing bullies. - you do? - yeah. - you're pro-bully? - yeah, i think i was a bully. - do you? - yeah, especially to my brother, my kid brother. i always knew how to make him cry. - are there elements in this book of your own experience? - well you can't help but do that i think when you write. not intentionally. i just like writing bullies. i think he's a very funny character. he does horrible things to all the other kids and he thinks it's funny. he says they have no sense of humor. - [evan] right, it's all on them, it's their problem. - they're losers. - [evan] right. - he's just a horrible kid. my favorite scene in the book, if you want to talk about the book.

- i wish you would, please. - is the principal calls him in and shows him a film about a horrible school bully, and then says to him, his name's rick scroogeman. - [evan] rick scroogeman. - yes. he says, what do you think of that guy in the film? he said, he's awesome. - right, he loves him. it's a role model. - yeah, and he's awesome. - right. - so i love that part. you write things, there are parts you like. - it's a great book, and let me offer you a back-handed compliment, for somebody who produces so many books over a period of years, just churns them out, they don't read like you're just checking a box. they don't read as some authors who produce a lot do, that they're just basically formulaic, or that no thought went into it. every one of your books individually feels like, and i know this is your process, that you actually line out the characters, and you know the ending always when you sit down and write a book. - i outline every book. - you're very explicit about your intentions before you sit down. every book feels like time and preparation

went into it, which shouldn't be surprising. - what a nice compliment, thank you. - but i'm not sure that most people appreciate that. - well i think every author, when you sit down to write, you don't say, well i'm going to write a mediocre book today. - no. - i'm going to knock one out, i've got another one, let me knock it out. - right. - i don't think any author ever does that. - where's my paycheck? - i try to write every book and make it as good as i can, whatever my talent is. - at the same time though, i think one difference is, while nobody sets out to write a mediocre book, not everybody sits down knowing the fullness of the story in advance. - well i always tell kids this, and kids hate this advice. everyone hates to outline, and i think most kids think if you write a book, you sit down, you start writing. - [evan] and it will come out of you, right? - yeah, and a lot of kids say, i get bogged down in the middle, what do i do? i never quite get to the end. then i say well i figure out the end first. i can always get to the end. - isn't that right? you do, you know the ending first. - yes. - right, and you in some ways work backwards.

- then i know how to fool the kids and keep them from guessing the ending. the hardest part of a book to write is the middle. it's impossible, middles. - [evan] it's where all books die, or many books die. - so if you have an outline, if it's all planned, you don't have to worry about it. kids hate this advice. (audience laughing) they hate it, no they just hate it. - kids hate a lot of advice, right? - well yeah. - newsflash, right? - right. - this is not as far as it goes, no disrespect, a scary story, but in fact it's in the same vein as many of your books, and in fact almost all your books. it has that sort of scary/horror edge to it. - i added the scary. it's basically a funny book. - why horror? i know that you started out actually as a humor writer. - writing joke books. - you eventually moved into doing this. i'm interested in why horror is so interesting to you and how over time your notion of what is horror, and how horror itself is effective

and not effective, has changed. because we live in a different world than when you started. - yeah, to answer that part first. - yeah, sure. - but our fears don't change. only the technology has changed. - how's that? - well for one thing, cell phones have ruined every story. - [evan] because? - they've ruined every plot i have. a girl is getting frightening phone calls. who's calling me, who's doing this? now she looks down, oh that's who it is. - right. - story's ruined, it's over. - called i.d. has ruined everything. - trapped in a cabin and there's a killer there. what do we do? oh, pick up the phone, call for help, story's over. (audience laughing) you have to get rid of the cell phones. - what i'm thinking though is that kids today, i have a 16 year old, my youngest is 16. so if i think about my 16 year old and how he reacts to scary things, he'll say i'm going with my friends to see the purge, or we're going to see saw, or something like that, right?

- saw. - these movies, and they're totally desensitized. kids that age are desensitized to this stuff. it's harder to scare kids of that age today than it was say 25 or 30 years ago. i wonder if that's because technology has sped up things to the point that 16 is the new 25. - they see more. - right. - they see more sooner. - yeah. doesn't that make it harder on you, as you're trying to craft? - my stuff is all the same, it's the same. we're all afraid, afraid of the dark, afraid of being in a strange place, afraid of finding yourself somewhere you don't know where it is, afraid that something is under your bed and is gonna grab your ankles, that's all the same. i was a kid in the 50's, and my brother and i used to go to horror movies, scary movies every saturday. - what do you remember? what horror movies scared you? - oh creature from the black lagoon. it came from outer space. the brain that wouldn't die. we saw them all, and i think, like goosebumps,

that's what goosebumps is, they're 50's horror stories. - just updated, or presented in a more modern way. - not even updated that much. (audience laughing) - it's basically the same thing. - it could have been written when i was a kid. but no one did it. - but people who do horror as entertainment today feel the need most definitely, unlike what you're saying, to come up with all these-- - well they want to go farther and farther but i don't do that because i don't really want to terrify kids. see i like books like young scrooge that are basically funny. my main goal, to be serious, is to get kids to read. - and this just happens to be the magnet. it's the plots, the narratives happen to be the magnet. - it's really motivation. the books are very easy to read, the chapters are short, the reading level is fourth or fifth grade. i learned all about reading level and how to write to different levels, and i keep it simple, and the idea, they like scary stuff, so i do scary stuff, but the main idea is to get them to read. when people say to me, i learned to read

on your books, my kid learned to read, that's just thrilling to me. - happiest moment for you. - it is, it's wonderful, and never get tired of hearing it. - i guess it occurs to me that the people who are doing horror as entertainment today, when they say they feel the need to change it up, they make it more gross, graphic, disgusting. the more gross, and the more graphic, the better, and that actually might be a disincentive. if a kid encounters a book that is ostensibly for them but it's got the kind of stuff that legitimately keeps them up at night, then they might not come back and read the next book. - right. - right? - right. i think one reason kids like my books is they know how far they're going to go, they know they're not going to go too far, and they're all going to have happy endings, which is really important. once i wrote a fear street book with an unhappy ending, just for fun, just for me, and in the end, the murderer gets off scot-free, and an innocent girl is taken off to prison, and that's the end of the book.

that's the only unhappy ending i ever wrote, and the kids turned on me immediately. - [evan] did they really? (audience laughing) - yeah, and i got letters, immediately. "dear r.l. stine, you moron." (audience laughing) "how could you write that?" "r.l. stine, you idiot." "are you going to write a sequel to finish the story?" - they couldn't believe that was the ending? - they couldn't take it. i had to write a sequel. - is that right? - finish the story, yes. - it seems like any possible plot that exists out there, i'm not ending your career as we sit here. - it's pretty much over. - you're getting close? (audience laughing) - yeah. (laughing) - the number, i think it's more than 300 books. - i know, that's why i look like this, 300 books. i'm 35 years old, look at me, look at me. - speaking of horror. - yeah. - you've written how many goosebumps books alone with various permutations? - next year is the 25th anniversary of goosebumps. that's a lot of scary stories. over 100. - but it's well over 100, right?

- oh yeah. - have you run out of plots? - yes. - are you exhausted? - oh years ago. - you have? - look at me, i'm stealing from dickens. - right, exactly. (audience laughing) - i'm weighed, yeah i know. - young hamlet. - young hamlet. that, by the way, is my favorite movie title, for real, of all the movie titles in history, this movie title is my favorite, hamlet two. (audience laughing) did you see that? - i did not, no i was not aware of that. - steve coogan. - that's very funny. - hamlet two, a great title. - so i want to know how you originally decided-- - i haven't run out of plots. somehow not. i'm real lucky, but you know what? people always say, every question, if we ask for questions, someone will say, where do you get your inspiration? where do you get your ideas? i never try to think of ideas now. i only think of titles, i don't try to think of ideas. i was walking my dog in the park and these words popped into my head, little shop of hamsters.

(audience laughing) - [evan] that's a book? - that's it, great title, great title. how do i make hamsters scary? so i'm thinking, do i do a giant hamster? do i do 1,000 hamsters? - so it's literally as simple as something pops in your head, it's a book? - yeah. well come on, you know, they don't all lead to books. sometimes i'll get an idea, and i can't think of a good title, and i throw out the idea. - give me an example of a title you've come up with that you've not been able to do a book, or has that never happened? - [r.l.] i won't remember. - right, but it's rare though? it's the rare time that that's happened? - yeah. because i pretty much know if a title is a good title. - why did you make the transition from humor, to horror? - evan this is an embarrassing story. - tell it. - i shouldn't tell it. - it's pbs, we have all the time in the world, go ahead. (audience laughing) - being scary wasn't my idea. that's embarrassing. i didn't think of it.

- [evan] that's okay. - i did a humor magazine. - called bananas, i remember this growing up. - that was my life's dream, to have my own humor magazine. - it was kind of in the same vein as mad magazine, cracked magazine, it was in that era of those humor magazines. - i wrote the whole thing, i had a great time, for 10 years. - [evan] in fact you wrote under a different name, you were like jolly bob stine? - i was jovial. - jovial bob stine, right, i remember that. - not a good name for a horror writer. i had to change that. - the jovial was a problem. - yeah, that was bad. so i'm writing all this funny stuff and i was writing all kinds of things. i was writing bazooka joe bubble gum jokes, and mighty mouse coloring books, and writing all this stuff. i had lunch with an editor, my friend from scholastic. she was the editorial director. she came in to lunch angry, she just had a fight with another young adult horror writer. she said i'm never working with him again. you could write a good horror novel. go home, write a book called blind date for teenagers, and i wrote this book blind date.

it came out, it was the number-one best seller. - [evan] what was the plot? do you remember the plot? - yeah it was this boy josh who was getting mysterious phone calls from a girl. he doesn't know who it is and she keeps saying, i'm your blind date, josh. - and because there's no cell phones, he can't look at the caller i.d. - that's right. i'm your blind date, it was 1986. i'm your blind date, josh. then he tries to track her down, and he finds that she's been dead for five years. - oh wow. good one. - that was the original plot. - i'm scared now just listening. - i know. i've done that plot about 10 times. - you have. (laughing) - number-one best seller. i thought wait a minute, what's going on? then i wrote a second one, number-one best seller. - blind third date? (laughing) - yeah, hamlet two. - [evan] what was that called? - it was called twisted. - [evan] twisted, yeah. - and i said forget the funny stuff. - [evan] i can do this, and i can make money at it probably too, right? - kids like to be scared, they liked it much better. - you said as a kid, you and your brother used to

go to horror movies. i want to go a step to the side of that and ask how you decided you wanted to write? because even if it was humor writing, the lore is there was a typewriter up in your attic? - it's pretty much true. - tell the story. - it's pretty much true. - that you discovered. - i dragged a typewriter into my room. i have no idea why i liked it so much. i was a weird kid, i would just stay in my room. - hard to imagine. (audience laughing) - i'm in columbus, ohio, in a nice suburb, quiet. i had a very nice childhood. but i'm in my room typing stories, typing jokes, making little joke books, typing, typing. - and your parents were not in the business, as they say? - no my dad was a blue collar worker, we were very poor. they didn't understand at all. my mother would be outside my door, and i later realized this was the worst advice anyone ever gave me in my life. she would say, stop typing, go outside and play. (audience laughing) horrible advice, right? - honestly, she was doing her part. - yeah.

she would say go outside, and i would say it's boring out there, type, type, type. - type, type, type. - except i only type with one finger. i never learned how to type. - still? - yeah. i never learned how. - you still type all these years later with one finger? - i'll show you the finger. (audience laughing) - which? - no, i've written 300 books with this finger, but look at it, look, it's totally bent. it's ruined. - that's a pretty successful finger, honestly. (laughing) - this is what i sacrificed for my art. (audience laughing) the finger is wrecked. - [evan] is that it? - any way, i don't know, i just knew when i was nine years old that i wanted to write. that's all i've ever done. - isn't that amazing? - it is amazing. i'm very lucky. - do you read other people's horror writing? - yeah i do. - ya-young adult or kids? - there isn't that much ya horror, there is some. - and goosebumps, just so we're clear on the delineation here, goosebumps is for a younger subset, right? - it's middle grade, it's seven to 12.

- and fear street was? - it's like 10 to 15, really, 12 to 15. - is there a difference in writing for those two? - oh yeah. - talk about that. - well one is i get to kill off teenagers. (audience laughing) fear street, i get to kill. - [evan] couldn't kill off teenagers in goosebumps? - no one dies in goosebumps. no one ever dies in goosebumps. - [evan] that was a decision you made in the beginning? - if you were a ghost, you were a ghost like 100 years ago. - did you consciously make that decision? - yeah. - [evan] because that would be too much? - yeah. i keep all reality out of goosebumps. parents don't get divorced. - am i correct that fear street preceded goosebumps sequentially, right? - yeah it did. - so fear street came first? - fear street came first, and it was teens in terror. it was doing really well. my editors came to me and said, why don't we try a younger series? why don't we try a scary series for seven to 12 year olds? i said no. - you said no? - yeah, that's the kind of businessman i am. (audience laughing) i didn't want to do goosebumps.

- well you didn't know if it would work. - i thought it would mess up fear street, the younger audience, and they kept after me, and kept after me, and finally i said all right we can try two or three, let's try, if i can think of a good name for the series. - who came up with goosebumps, you did? - yeah i did. i'm reading tv guide, and in those days, they had all the tv listings in the middle. - in the old days, right. - and i'm reading through, and there's a little ad on the bottom, i'm in new york, and it says, it's goosebumps week on channel 11. - goosebumps week? - yeah. - and you went, that's it? - i just started at it. it's perfect. - you knew it? - it's perfect. it's funny and it's scary. - what i love about how you're describing your work and the journey you've been on, which doesn't seem to have taken you to a ton of different, i mean you've sort of been on one path, is that you don't get too complicated or caught up in all, oh i'm agonizing about this or that. you just basically do it. sometimes the simplest approach is the right approach.

- yeah, that's the only thing i'm good at. you can ask my wife. (audience laughing) really, it's the only thing that i'm competent at. i'm always confident when i sit down to write. i know i can do it. - but if jonathan franzen were here, or a novelist who writes fewer books, and writes them at greater length, with more complexity in the narratives, they might say it's the only thing i'm good at also. but the difference between a jonathan franzen and r.l. stine, is that r.l. stine doesn't make it more complicated than it needs to be. he knows what the task in front of him is, he sits down, and he does it. doesn't mean that the product is any less valuable or less embraceable. - i'm a good commercial writer. - relatively straightforward, but not commercial in the sense, i come back to what i said in the beginning, these are not books that you're just churning out of the assembly line. - most writers, i'm on panels all the time with authors, and most writers talk about how hard it is to write. - [evan] yes, they do, right. - 90 percent of them. - that's how you know i'm a writer, the hardest thing in the world

there is for me to do is write. - it's so hard, i tell the kids to stay out of the room, i go up in a tower and i write in the dark with a candle, and it's so hard. i always said that's ridiculous. - what scares you after all these years? - i have no good answer to that question. - [evan] nothing scares you? - i have normal human scares, but something because when i read a scary stephen king, terrifying novel or go to a scary movie, i always laugh. (audience laughing) - you think it's funny? - i think horror is funny. - yeah i don't understand that. - when i write these books it's with punch lines. - let me ask the question in a different way. so there's a hierarchy of things that might be interesting or scary to you. so there is audio fear, things that you hear. like i actually have a memory when i was a kid of the first, is it john carpenter that did the halloween movies? - yes. - the music in that movie, i remember for years and years just absolutely scaring the stuffing out of me. just the sound of it, i didn't have to see anything.

then there's the visual scaring, and then there's actually scaring that is neither audio, oral nor visual where it's just a sense, the anticipation of something. like so if you go to one of these like disneyland or one of these amusement parks, and they've got these things where the person is going to jump out at you, in some ways the anticipation, not actually seeing it or hearing it, but just worrying. so there are different ways that you can be scared as a grown up, let alone as a kid. - when you write, you try to use all of those. - which of those is more problematic for you? - here's the scariest moment of my life. a magazine invited me and another guy to tour the haunted houses that pop up at halloween time in new york. i showed up and there were three different haunted houses they wanted us to comment on and go through. the other guy turned out to be the head of the satanist church. (audience laughing) - [evan] the other guy with you? - yeah. - didn't tell you this beforehand?

- he looked just like the devil. he had his eyebrows curled like this, and he had a little goatee, and i thought here i'm a children's author, this is not a good thing here. - [evan] right. - it was the satanist church, and we went through this haunted house, and they had an area where you push through, and you find yourself in total blackness. total darkness. and you don't know how big the room is, you don't know what's ahead of you on the floor, it's being blind. i was scared to death. - well that's anticipation in some ways, right? - scared me to death, but also i didn't know what to do. could i walk straight, could i keep going? - and this has never happened to you before? - no, this was the scariest moment of my life. the head of the satanist church reached out and took my hand, and guided me through. - [evan] wow. - he was such a nice guy. (audience laughing) he was so nice. - a kumbaya moment between you and the satanist, isn't that great?

- right, and that was terrifying to me. - okay well everybody has their thing. so i'm wondering, your books have been translated into i don't know how many languages and they've been available, all the goosebumps books in all kinds of countries. do you think culturally that what is scary works country to country, or culture to culture? - it seems to. there's also a great interest, like goosebumps is hugely popular in china now, is the new mandarin translation. - [evan] why do you think that is? - because there's real interest in our country. - yeah. i mean it's as simple as that. - yeah. they just have a real interest, what is it like there? what are the kids like there? - what's scary in china, is the same as what's scary here, and does it ever cause you to change the way that you approach the writing of these books? - no. - knowing that it's going to be read elsewhere. - i never think about that. it seems to work cause they like it. when i was there, i did a five-city book tour in china which was wonderful. oh i had the best time. the chinese kids, they were great. but they all said, why don't you do a story about dragons? dragons are actually good in china.

they're good. - yeah. - i didn't know that. - so are you going to a dragon book? - maybe. i haven't thought of one yet. - we have about a minute left. i want to ask you about why these books, it's not that they haven't been at all, but why they haven't been more prevalent or more pervasive across other entertainment platforms? why am i unable to see goosebumps the television show, or goosebumps the movie? - it's all on netflix. they did four years of goosebumps tv. - but you've been doing these books for a lot longer than four years and there are many more books. i would have assumed that this was going to be the franchise to end all franchises. (laughing) - well we had the goosebumps movie last year. - [evan] jack black was in that, right? - jack black was me. - [evan] you were in it. - yeah, jack and i are like twins, right? - yes. (audience laughing) indeed. - no but it took them 20 years to do the movie. we had movie deals for 20 years. finally 20 years later, the movie came out. - [evan] what do you think it was that took so long? - they didn't have a script that they liked. no one could figure out what to do. - they should approach it like you approach it.

just sit down and write it. - yes, i have been very lucky though. i've had i think four tv series. i've had the haunting hour was on for four years. - you're satisfied that there's been enough of an extension of these books? - well i would like to see more movies. i haven't had much luck there. i've had a lot of luck, i just feel i'm very lucky. how many children's authors have had four tv series and a movie that's about them? - yeah. (laughing) and how many children's authors have sold as many books quite candidly as you have? maybe none. - no. that's just luck. it really is. - well you say it's luck, i say you got into something that you did exceptionally well, better than anybody else, and you've made something of it. - thank you. - you should get the credit for that. congratulations on this book, good luck with it, and everything else you do. i suspect we're going to be seeing a lot more. - i hope so. - good, r.l. stine, thank you very much, sir. (audience applause) - [announcer] we would love to have you join us in the studio, visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q&a's with our

audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. - parents in goosebumps are useless. (audience laughing) the parents never believe the kids, ever. they never believe what's going on. they're usually totally absent. the idea of a goosebumps book is that the kids have these horrible, terrifying problems and they have to solve them on their own. - [announcer] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, and by klru's producer's circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas, community.