Five Frightful Factoids About Horror Author R.L. Stine

During the pandemic I’ve been hosting Friday Night Fright Club – an Instagram Live stream in which I read from a choose your own adventure Goosebumps book and let the audience vote on the decisions by texting in keywords. It’s a virtual expansion of an old pastime my brother and our friend Starr used to do when the power would go out in our St. James Town apartment. The virtual version started March 20, 2020, and since then not one week has passed without a spooky reading. We’ve voted through every Give Yourself Goosebumps CYOA book at least once (which means my partner and I have collected the whole series), and on Christmas and New Year’s Day, I marathon read Stine’s holiday novels The Twelve Screams of Christmas and Slappy New Year instead.

I can’t count the ways this weekly event has improved my life and enhanced my love of children’s horror. But one thing that is quantifiable is how much I’ve learned about R.L. Stine – a person I am beginning to suspect is the most significant force behind the current horror renaissance by virtue of his role in getting millennials and gen Z addicted to reading.

While Friday Night Fright Clubbers are casting their votes, in order to fill the dead air, I read about R.L. Stine. It started out with FAQ answers from R.L. Stine’s official website, then I read Wikipedia synopses of Stine’s books, and when we ran out of those, I started reading R.L. Stine interviews (there was also a short, dark period when I read from the Jovial Bob Stine joke books). Over 60 weeks into Friday Night Fright Club, I know a lot about the children’s horror author that got me hooked on scary words. And now I want to share some of my favourite R.L Stine facts as uncovered by some of my favourite interviews (some of which were conducted by some of my favourite pop culture writers).

Here are the top five R.L. Stine factoids, as learned through his interviews with other people:

1. R.L. Stine Used to Invent Celebrity Interviews

“My very first job in New York was making up interviews with the stars for fan magazines. This woman had six movie magazines that she had to fill up every month. I would go in every morning, and she would say, “Do an interview with Diana Ross. Do an interview with The Beatles.” And I would sit down and just make it all up. I would do three or four interviews a day for these magazines. It was a great job.” - From Q-and-A with R.L. Stine by Lary Getlen for Bankrate

2. At His Prolific Peak, R.L. Stine Wrote a Book Every Two Weeks

“At one point I was doing a novel every two weeks. I had two series going. I don’t know how I did it. Goosebumps and Fear Street, the teen novels: I did one a month of each of them. I never went out for lunch. I would do 20 pages a day. Now, I don’t know how I did that. The success was so exhilarating, it kept me going.” - From R.L. Stine: The Lost Interview by Jen Doll for The Village Voice

3. Despite Numerous Claims of Never Getting Writer’s Block, Stine Admits To Struggling With Outlines

“I can do a Goosebumps outline, which is 25 to 30 chapters, in three or four days. But if it’s not going well, it might take me two weeks. My editor is my wife, Jane, and I never get a book through without revising. It’s the main thing we fight about—plots.” - From 21 Bone-Chilling Secrets About R.L. Stine by Jen Doll for Mental Floss

4. R.L. Stine Believes Violence Has Value

“I believe in violence. I love violence in movies and stories and everything. I think it's good for kids because it gets that out of them. Kids are very smart, and if they see a movie in which people are punching each other and it's very violent, they know it's movie violence. If they walk down the street and two people are fighting, punching each other, it's a totally different reaction from real violence.

So the whole thing about violence for kids is I’m on the other side. I think it's a really good thing for kids.” - From: I NEVER WANTED TO BE SCARY': AN INTERVIEW WITH R. L. STINE, conducted by Chris Plante for The Verge

5. My hero, R.L. Stine, Once Had Dinner With His Hero Kurt Vonnegut

“Well, Kurt Vonnegut’s daughter was a big Goosebumps fan. I got invited over to their house in the city for dinner one night and we had a great time.” - From: R.L. Stine’s enemies would describe the Goosebumps author as “too nice” by Erik Adams for The A.V. Club

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