Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman
The List Challenges website depicts “A List of 100 Common (And Not So Common) Fears. Maybe some of yours are on it. A few of mine certainly are!
Among the fears identified on the List Challenges list are the fears of heights, dogs, diseases, dying, spiders, flying, snakes, crowds, elevators, being pregnant, and a lot more.
What scares me?
The uncertainty of life: We are here today and gone tomorrow, but we don't know when “tomorrow” may come.
Being trapped: Despair, followed closely by madness, seems likely to be the end results of being trapped; when there is no way out, there is no hope; when there is not hope, sanity seems certain.
Pain: Each of us has his or her own pain threshold. For some, it is lower than for others but, at some point, we will have had more than enough, more, maybe, than we can handle. When and where the threshold is—well, we wouldn't know that until we'd passed it.
Torture: To be tortured implies that one is bound or caged, as no one would suffer torture willingly, and if we are immobilized or confined, we have neither freedom nor control; we are helpless at the hands (literally) of a sadist. Watching another person being tortured might not frighten as much as horrify.
Heights: A height reminds us of the precariousness of our existence, of how quickly, completely, and irrevocably our existence—our minds, hearts, dreams, and intentions—can be wiped out within seconds, should we fall.
Now, what about you?
What sacres you? Make a list. Then, ask yourself what the fear is about. For example, if you fear darkness, why? What does darkness imply, or represent, to you? Blindness? Vulnerability? Loss of control? Helplessness? All of the above?
Once you have your list and you have identified what each specific fear may “mean” to you, ask yourself how you could visually represent the fear and its “meaning” to an audience. What images would you choose? How would you convey them?
Here's how I would visualize my own:
The uncertainty of life: A patient lies in bed, on his back. He turns onto his left side. A patient nutrition representative enters the room, picks up the patient's tray, on which the meal delivered earlier remains untouched. It is a meal that could be served for lunch or dinner. The representative shakes his head, looking with pity upon the sleeping patient, the leaves, removing the tray. The patient rolls onto his right side. The vital signs monitor's alarms sound, the numbers on the multiple displays spinning impossibly fast, as various lights flash. The monitor shows flat lines. In bed, the patient twists, sits rigidly upright, collapses, writhes, frothing at the mouth, his eyes bulging. The vital signs monitor melts, catching fire. A clock shows a second hand sweep past noon or, perhaps, midnight: the lighting of the room makes it impossible to tell which. The patient's body relaxes, goes limp; his eyes stare at nothing.
Being trapped: A mine collapses. Inside, pinned beneath fallen rock, a miner struggles to free himself. After a strenuous struggle, he quits, out of breath and weak. He sees a saw just out of reach. The mine remains unstable. A fall of rock shoves the saw within the miner's reach. Grimacing, he cuts off the leg beneath the rock, ties a tourniquet around his amputated calf, and crawls down the tunnel of the mine. He passes out. Awakening later, he is weaker from blood loss, but he manages to crawl toward a shaft of sunlight, hopeful that he has found a means of escape. As he continues to crawl, another collapse of the mine occurs, burying him and crushing him to death.
Pain: A surgeon tells a missionary who preaches at a remote African mission that his injury has become infected with gangrene and that his leg must be amputated. Fortunately, medical supplies are available, and the surgeon has everything he needs—except an anesthetic. The surgeon tells four men he has recruited as assistants to “hold him down.” To the missionary, the surgeon says, “Star praying, padre.”
Torture: A Chinese soldier is assigned the task of filming the torture of a Chinese man who tried to assassinate a politician. The failed assassin has been condemned to die the death of a thousand cuts. The soldier photographing the horrific torture wants desperately to avert his eyes but cannot. He winces as the first cut to the condemned man's body is made.
Heights: A woman taking a selfie poses at the edge of a 2,000-foot cliff. Unnoticed to her, a rat scampers over nearby rocks. “It's funny,” she says aloud, “how we fear one thing and not another. I mean, I'm terrified of rats, but heights mean nothing to me.” She adjusts her stance, moves her camera in and out, adjusting the range. The rat dashes forth from a crevice. Seeing it, she jumps backward and falls to her death, her body tumbling down the jagged face of the cliff.
Now, ask yourself what to change, if anything. Add details? Delete details? Change an angle? Show blood? Viscera? Switch between everyday incidents and the building horror you are showing? Have two people trapped in different ways? Two people experiencing different kinds of pain? Two people being tortured at the same time but in different ways? Two people climbing a cliff, one of whom falls? Change the character's age, sex, or social class? Change the setting so that, perhaps, torture occurs in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel or the fall from a height involves a helicopter instead of a cliff? Change the time that the horrific incident takes place? It's not a mine, but one's own mind, in which the character is trapped? Work up several scenes before deciding on which is most horrific. Then, change your description into a full, dramatic scene and use it in your novel, short story, or film script.