It’s Thriller Time!

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 As bestselling author James Patterson points out, thrillers, which span the whole spectrum of genres, are characterized by “the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill” (Thriller).

To generate thrills, thriller authors pull out all the stops, employing isolated settings, traps, disguises, cover-ups, red herrings, plot twists, unreliable narrators, cliffhangers, situational irony, and dramatic irony. Many thrillers also begin in media res, in the middle of things, so there is little or no context to explain mysterious events until, in due time, they are explained through flashbacks, dialogue, exposition, or other means.

By taking an Aristotelian approach to analyzing thrillers, we can develop a long list of incidents common to thrillers. (By “Aristotelian approach,” I mean studying how established writers of thrillers keep their readers on the edges of their seats.) In doing so, we want to universalize our incidents so that they can apply to any character in any thriller, existing or yet to come. To do so, we dispense with names, and we tend to repeat phrases. The idea is to isolate plot elements (incidents) that can

• occur in any thriller and that can be used in several ways (e. g., as inciting moments, turning points, moments of final suspense);

• be used individually or in groups, sequentially (as per the list) or otherwise;

• be mixed and matched in various combinations.

By way of example, I have assembled a partial list of one that, ideally, would be long enough to fill a book of many pages. I have listed the incidents as they occur in the plots of the films from which they are taken (but, remember, they can be assembled in any fashion, with any number of them being used, and they can be used for several narrative purposes). In addition, at the beginning of each incident, in bold font, I have identified the category that each incident seems to fit, by way of its function. This would be only the beginning of a list that could (and should) be expanded to include many incidents from movies or novels of the same category, or subgenre, of story. As my subgenre, I have used examples of psychological thrillers: Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929) and J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear (1962).

From Blackmail

Vulnerability: A woman is left alone.

Poor judgment; self-endangerment: A woman accompanies a stranger to another location.

False sense of security: A stranger puts (or tries to put) a woman at ease.

Incriminating evidence: Unknowingly, a woman provides evidence that later incriminates (or could incriminate) her.

Attempted sexual assault: A stranger attempts to rape a woman.

Assistance unavailable: A woman’s cries for help go unanswered.

Self-defense: A woman fights for her life.

Fatal encounter: A woman kills her attacker.

Shock: In a daze, a traumatized woman wanders the streets all night.

Discovery of crime: A stranger’s body is found.

Initiation of investigation: A detective is assigned to a murder investigation.

Discovery of incriminating evidence: A detective finds incriminating evidence at a crime scene.

Recognition: A detective recognizes a dead person.

Removal of incriminating evidence: A detective removes incriminating evidence from a crime scene.

Interrogation of suspect: A detective interrogates a suspect.

Sympathetic character: A suspect is too distraught to answer a detective’s questions.

Accommodation: A detective speaks to a suspect in private.

Witness’s observation: An eyewitness sees a woman accompany a man to his quarters.

Recovery of incriminating evidence: An eyewitness recovers incriminating evidence from a crime scene.

Linking of incriminating evidence to suspect: An eyewitness links recovers incriminating evidence he has recovered from a crime scene based on complementary or matching evidence in a detective’s possession.

Blackmail: An eyewitness blackmails a detective and a suspect.

Criminal record: An eyewitness is revealed to have a criminal record and is wanted for questioning concerning a criminal investigation.

Back-up: A detective sends for police officers.

Flight: A suspect flees from police.

Accidental death; removal of a threat: Fleeing from police, a suspect falls to his death.

Acceptance of resolution: Police assume that a suspect who fell to his death while fleeing from police is the criminal they sought.

Intention to confess: A suspect goes to the police to confess to having committed a crime.

Fortuitous coincidence: A police inspector receives a telephone call and instructs a detective to assist a woman who has come to the station or precinct to confess to a crime.

Confession with mitigating factor: A woman confesses to having committed a crime but offers a just reason for having done so.

Apparent escape: A detective and a suspect leave a police station together.

Possibility of prosecution: A police officer arrives at the station or precinct with evidence in hand that could incriminate a suspect.

(To see the details of these plot incidents as Hitchcock uses them in Blackmail, read a summary of the movie’s plot.)

 From Cape Fear

Release: A convicted criminal is paroled.

Return: A parolee tracks down the person he blames for his conviction.

Threat: The parolee threatens the family of the person whom he blames for his conviction.

Stalking: The parolee stalks the family of the person whom he blames for his conviction.

Terrorism: The parolee kills the dog that belongs to the family of the person whom he blames for his conviction.

Protection: A man threatened by a parolee hires a private detective.

Crime: A parolee rapes a woman.

Intimidation: A rape victim refuses to testify against the man who raped her.

Intervention: The person whom a parolee blames for his conviction hires three men to beat the parolee to force him to leave town.

Failed intervention: The parolee gets the better of the three men hired to beat him.

Punishment of victim: A parolee’s intended victim is disbarred as a result of having hired three men to beat the parolee so he would leave town.

Refuge: A parolee’s intended victim takes his family to a houseboat to protect them from a vengeful parolee.

Lying in wait; protection: A local lawman and a parolee’s intended victim lie in wait to arrest a parolee who plans to attach the victim’s family.

Attrition: A parolee kills a local lawman lying in wait to arrest him.

Escape: A parolee eludes his intended victim.

Isolation: A parolee isolates the family of his intended victim.

Strategic attack (feint): A parolee attacks the wife of his intended victim.

Rescue: A parolee’s intended victim rescues his wife from the parole.

Attack: A parolee attacks his intended victim’s daughter.

Rescue: An intended victim rescues his daughter from a vengeful parolee.

Struggle: An intended victim fights a vengeful parolee.

Neutralization: An intended victim shoots a vengeful parolee, wounding and disabling him.

Plea: A vengeful parolee asks his intended victim to kill him.

Ironic vengeance (poetic justice): A parolee’s intended victim refrains from killing a vengeful parolee, preferring that he be returned to prison for life instead.

Resolution: A parolee’s intended victim and his family, accompanied by police, return home.

(To see the details of these plot incidents as Thompson uses them in Cape Fear, read a summary of the movie’s plot.)

 Concluding Thoughts

These incidents could be even further generalized to attain true universality. For example, “The parolee kills the dog that belongs to the family of the person whom he blames for his conviction” could be rewritten as “The parolee intimidates the family of the person whom he blames for his conviction” or “The parolee terrorizes the family of the person whom he blames for his conviction.” The degree to which any incident is generalized depends on your own purposes as a writer creating such a list. The list, of course, can be either further generalized or made more specific, as circumstances warrant. For this reason, it may be desirable to keep a “master list” and make a copy of it to generalize more or less, as circumstances warrant.

An extensive list of thriller incidents allows you to pick and choose which incident on the list might best be used for a specific purpose, such as an inciting moment, a turning point, a moment of final suspense, a flashback, a flash-forward, a cliffhanger, exposition, etc. For example, almost any of the incidents on this list could serve the function of the inciting moment, initiating the rest of the story:

Of course, the story will change accordingly, since the incidents of a plot must be connected through an ongoing series of causes and effects. Furthermore, you will develop the incidents in your own way, so they will not be the same, in detail, as those of Hitchcock, Thompson, or any other director or writer. As Heraclitus observed, long ago, it is impossible to step into the same river twice; the water, the silt, the fish, the current, the temperature are all different each time.

Styling the Thriller

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

In his “Introduction” to the 2006 Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night, James Patterson, playing the role of editor, reminds readers that the varieties of thrillers is deep and wide, including “the legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, and military thriller, but they have “common ground” in “the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness.” In short, a thriller must thrill (iii).

James Patterson

Thrillers are also fast-paced, Patterson says, and their protagonists achieve “an objective . . . at some heroic cost. The main character's “goal can be personal (trying to save a spouse or a long-lost relative) or global (trying to avert a world war) but often it's both.” There may be a ticking clock (iii). A thriller, he maintains, may “build rhythmically to rousing climaxes that peak with a cathartic, explosive ending,” or a thriller may “start at top speed and never let off” (iii). Thrillers tend to be well-researched and to use “accurate details.” At the end, readers “should feel emotionally satisfied and better informed” (iii).

The collection includes thirty short stories by thirty-three well-known writers, among them Lee Child, James Rollins, David Morrell, John Lescroart, Eric Van Lustbader, F. Paul Wilson, Brad Thor, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. In many of the tales, well-known protagonists make another appearance: Jack Reacher (“James Penney's New Identity”), Joe Kowalski (“Kowalski's in Love”), Repairman Jack (“Interlude at Duane's”), Nick Neumann (“Assassins”), NYPD's Detective Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta (“The Fisherman”).

Often, the situations on which a thriller is built is as at least as interesting as the story's protagonist and villain, and those in Thriller are, generally, intriguing, even if they are familiar, in large part because of the way their authors handle them. The stories are based on such situations as “an explosion at the U. S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay” (34), street gangs (53), an unexpected storm (68), an empath (89), the setting of a trap for a dangerous former FBI profiler (178), prison life (259), Balkans intrigue (292), a road trip (342), and the theft of an Inca sacrificial knife (542). Most are close to twenty pages in length.

“James Penney's New Identity”

In Lee Child's story, “James Penney's New Identity,” the divorced protagonist is fired from the factory job at which he's worked for seventeen years, because of downsizing. Unable to pay for his new Firebird, Penney burns down his house. The fire also destroys the homes of two of his neighbors. With six weeks' pay in his pocket, from his last check, Penney leaves town. After spending the night in a cheap hotel, he wakes to find that his Firebird has been stolen. He goes to the local police station to report the theft, but sees a wanted poster with his photograph on it; he's wanted for arson and criminal damage. He flees, and, wen a driver offers him a ride, he accepts.

The driver, Jack Reacher, is a military police officer who has false identification documents, which he seized from Edward Hendricks, an Army liaison officer he'd arrested. He lets Penney have a set of the documents, handcuffs him, and, Penney posing as his prisoner, are passed through a police roadblock after the authorities check their identification and record their names.

The men separate, and Reacher disposes of the corpse in the trunk of his car. Lee leaves it to his readers to make the connections between the story's rather over-the-top set of coincidences and figure out their collective significance.

“Gone Fishing”

We don't learn the first names of the on-the-lam duo of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's “Gone Fishing.” They've stolen an Inca sacrificial knife from New York City's Natural History Museum. They'd made a deal to sell the stolen artifact to Lipski, a psychopathic criminal fence, who'd planned, in return, to sell it to a wealthy collector. After stealing the knife, though, Woffler and Perotta decide to cut out Lipski, the “middleman,” and fence the item themselves; failing to find a buyer, they'll melt the knife down for its rubies and gold.

First, however, they plan to lie low and have rented a mountain cabin surrounded by woods near Passumkeag Lake, New Hampshire. On their way to their destination, Perotta annoys Woffler by needlessly drawing attention to them by speeding, sending his hamburger back twice at a restaurant, staring at a tough ex-con in the restaurant and spewing rocks and dust over him as he peels out of the parking lot, and honking at a psychedelic VW bus bearing “Honk if You Support Pro-Choice” bumper stickers.

Soon after their arrival at the cabin, they hear a knock at their front door, but no one is there. They imagine they've heard the sound—then, there's a second knock. Investigating, Woffler sees footprints at the edge of the woods, leading into the forest. At Perotta's insistence, Woffler follows the footprints into the woods. Both men wonder whether his partner plans to double-cross him and abscond with the stolen relic. Perotta also wonders whether their mysterious stalker is the ex-con. Although Perotta also suspects Lipski, he thinks the fence an unlikely suspect. He also dismisses Lipski's potential buyer, who wouldn't know of the theft yet.

Thirty minutes pass. Woffler has not returned to the cabin. Perotta hears what might have been a scream and, arming himself with a flashlight, sets out on his partner's trail. Along the way, he sees what he thinks is a mushroom, then a shell; the object, he realizes to his horror, is, in fact, a severed human ear.

Fleeing, he becomes lost. He suspects the stalker is Lipski, after all; suspicious of Woffler and Perotta, Lipski has followed them. A bloody hand seizes Perotta, but he shakes it off and hastens from the area, still lost. His flashlight illuminates a severed foot, then a decapitated head. A voice threatens to do to Perotta hat was done to other victims.

Natural History Museum, New York City

The story skips forward. Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, NYPD, is on the scene as local investigators bag the body parts. Police have determined that the victims are Woffler and Perotta, employees of New York's natural History Museum. Local police have found the men's wallets and Ids and the stolen knife and called the NYPD, having heard of the heist. D'Agosta warns a local police officer that there will be more victims and that the murders of Woffler and Perotta ave nothing to do with the sacrificial knife they stole, but the officer does not believe D'Agosta.

The story skips ahead again, as the serial killer, The Fisherman, sits inside his psychedelic VW bus, parked by the side of the road leading out of town. A passing car, noting the bumper stickers on his bus, honks. Thankful to God that He has given him another opportunity to “serve” Him by killing and dismembering “another killer of the unborn,” the murderer drives onto the road and follows the carload of his next victims.

Techniques

Child and the writing team of Douglas and Preston use their own techniques to craft their stories, techniques that help them to build their thrillers.

Detective Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragmet

Child uses a straightforward approach, in which he straightforwardly moves from one incident to the next, using a journalistic style in which, despite his stories' intense emotions, seems to present “just the facts,” as Dragnet's Sergeant Friday was fond of saying to witnesses recounting their stories. This happened, and then this, followed by this next thing. His technique lulls the reader into accepting the events, even when they would become hard to believe otherwise. Just what are the chances that a wanted arsonist would encounter a murderer disguised as a police officer—and a military police officer, at that? Whatever they are, the odds become even less likely when the killer just happens to have a few sets of fake Ids in the trunk of his car, the one inside which he's hauling his victim's dead body. However, thanks to Child's disarmingly straightforward, matter-of-fact style, readers are likely to pass over so,me of these “details” or at least pretend to turn a blind eye to them. Child's style, in short, helps readers to maintain a Coleridge an “willing suspension of disbelief.”

Preston and Child pile up details—a lot of them—while tossing half a dozen suspects at readers. The story's incidents snowball, but, at the same time, have a relationship with the other incidents of the story, incidents bound to other incidents and to characters, and characters tied to other characters and to incidents. What is a simple story, when everything is unraveled at the end, seems complex and mysterious in the telling. Who's out there, in the woods (and the swamp), stalking the pair of robbers? The ex-con? Lipski, the fence? Lipski's prospective customer? One or the other of the two robbers himself, intending to double cross his partner in crime? The vengeful spirit associated with the stolen Inca knife of sacrifice? These suspects are linked through the crime Woffler and Perotta have committed; through their road trip; through Perotta's making “scenes” along the way, by speeding, harassing a waitress, eyeballing and dissing an ex-con, and honking at a VW bus parked alongside the highway, during the robbers' drive from New York to New Hampshire; and by the remote cabin they rent in the deep woods. Everything is related, but only one set of relationships, in the end, counts. Preston and Child keep their readers guessing by a style that draws relationships everywhere, at all times.

The juxtaposition of a museum in a world-class city with the barbarism of The Fisherman is also a technique that increases the emotional thrill of the horror in the woods.

James Patterson: A Master of Pacing

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In Murder Beyond the Grave, the world's #1 bestselling author, James Patterson, tells (or retells) two of the true-crime stories that originally aired on Investigation Discovery's Murder Is Forever: the book's title story and Murder in Paradise.

On the inside of the front of the flyleaf, the publisher summarizes each; since this post is concerned only with Murder Beyond the Grave, we'll limit ourselves to quoting its synopsis:

MURDER BEYOND THE GRAVE.

Stephen Small has it all—a Ferrari, fancy house, loving wife, and three sons. But the only thing he needs right now is enough air to breathe. Kidnapped, buried in a box, and held for ransom, Stephen has forty-eight hours of oxygen. The clock is ticking . . .

So how does Patterson keep the pace of his story moving? Here are several of his techniques:

Short chapters. Typically, a Patterson chapter is no more than 3.5 pages long, or about 320 words. The first page starts a bit past the halfway mark and contains 18 lines; each line contains approximately 11 words: 189 words (we'll round to 200). The second page is a full-length page, numbering 29 lines, or about 320 words: 29 x 11 = 319 words. The last page, a half page, numbers about 10 lines, or 110 words (11 x 10 = 110), for a rand total of 630 words: 320 + 200 + 110 = 630.

Short paragraphs. Most of Patterson's paragraphs are short, longer ones usually lasting no more than four or five sentences. The effect of short paragraphs, like that of short chapters, is to suggest that the reader is reading more quickly than he or she is likely to be reading, which could imply that the pace itself is quicker than usual.

Large font. Patterson's novels typically employ a larger-than-typical font size, which creates the illusion that one is reading faster than usual, which may, in turn, create the impression that the story's pace is unusually quick.

Present tense. Patterson writes in the present tense, which may create a heightened sense of immediacy, suggesting that the action is occurring before one's own eyes. What we see often seems to occur very quickly, almost instantly, whereas what we hear (and past tense implies we are hearing about, rather than witnessing, events) appears to present itself more slowly.

Brief descriptions. Only a sentence or two is used, enough to set the scene: “Flakes of snow drift in the air. Danny's breath comes out in bursts of visible vapor. Cars drive by, slicing through gray slush” (23 words). (As short as these sentences are, they could be even shorter: “Flakes of snow drift through the air. Danny exhales bursts of vapor. Passing cars slice gray slush” [17 words].) Brief descriptions do not drag the story; thus, the narrative appears to move more quickly.

“Head-hopping” economizes characterization, allowing the omniscient narrator to describe all characters' inner states.This technique helps move the story along, keeping it from bogging down, and, therefore, speeds the narrative's pacing:

When the man opens his arms to give Danny a hug, Danny awkwardly thrusts a hand out for a shake instead.

“How have you been?” Danny says, feigning a smile.

“Oh, you know,” says his longtime associate, who, unfazed by the rebuffed embrace, claps Danny on the shoulder. “Same o', same ol!'. . . .”

Maintenance of forward momentum: The story drives relentlessly forward: “Danny opens his mouth for more small talk, but the host cuts him off with a nod toward the kitchen. 'He's waiting for you in the back. Told me to send you in straightaway.'” (Italics added.)

Use of scenes: The action is staged in scenes, as if the reader were watching a film. Transitional phrases or sentences link the scenes: “Outside in a nondescript panel van, two police officers listen with headphones.” It's as if Patterson writes a screenplay first, which he then transforms into a novel or a novella.

Expository dialogue. Dialogue keeps the story moving by explaining what happened or is happening. In other words, dialogue acts as exposition: “Damn it,” says the first officer. “He's been made!”

Suspenseful dialogue. Dialogue also maintains suspense, which compels readers to continue to read and facilitates the sense that the pace is brisk: “Wait,” says the other. “This guy Danny is a slick operator. Let's see what he does.”

Brief back story. Patterson's characters tend to have brief back stories. Usually, the back story is presented as a flashback that is inspired by or otherwise associated with imagery or scenery related to the character's past. One's childhood neighborhood can evoke memories. As much as possible, such memories are presented in active voice, and only during the flashback is past tense used.

Interconnected action: All of the story's bits and pieces of action are interconnected:

Danny Edwards is summoned by Mitch, a mobster. Though a microphone Danny wears, police listen in on his conversation with Mitch. The police raid Mitch's office, arresting Mitch and Danny. Danny remembers his childhood. Danny works as a laborer in the construction business. Short on money, Danny asks his father for a loan. While visiting his father's home, Danny sees a wealthy neighbor, Stanley Small, of whom Danny is envious. After encountering Stephen at a marina, Danny learns that Stephen is worth $65 million. Danny decides to kidnap Stephen and bury him alive so Danny can demand a ransom from Stephen's family. Danny buys supplies at a lumberyard and builds a contraption (a coffin equipped with PVC tubing) that mystifies his girlfriend, Nancy Rish. Danny reconnoiters Stephen's house. Danny fills a milk jug with water and leaves Nancy in the middle of the night, without explanation. Danny deposits his coffin and supplies at a remote site. Danny takes Nancy for a ride, making her promise to return to the remote area at 3:00 AM to pick him up, but does not tell her what he is up to. Danny pretends to be a police officer, luring Stephen out of his house early in the morning. Danny kidnaps Stephen, forcing his victim to drive to the site where Danny has hidden the coffin and supplies. Danny records Stephen's plea to his wife to pay the ransom Danny demands for Stephen's release. Danny buries Stephen alive with only forty-eight hours' worth of air. Such interconnected action unifies the story, giving coherence to the incidents of plot, and allows a shorter plot, creating the sense of a faster pace.

Clock: The time for which Stephen's supply of oxygen will last (forty-eight hours) provides suspense, which encourages readers to continue to read, or even to skip passages, thereby seeming to speed the pace of the story.

Factual tone: Most sentences are written as if they merely report objective facts: “Danny climbs out of the cab . . . . Danny reaches for the shovel . . . . Danny stabs the blade of the shovel into the loose soil.” This factual tone not only lends verisimilitude to the action, but it also economizes wording, making the pace seem faster.

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need to Dominate

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

All of us feel the need to dominate others, Jib Fowles notes. Advertisements, he says, appeal to this universal “basic need.” The desire for “clout,” this need is characterized by “the craving to be powerful—perhaps omnipotent”—and it may take the form of a desire to “dominate and control one's environment.”

Although Fowles doesn't mention these other forms specifically, it seems that the “basic need” to dominate would also occur in such endeavors as those involving social, personal, economic, governmental, and technological ends, to name but a few.

Horror fiction, like other genres of literature, often appeals to the need to dominate.

In one of Stephen King's novels, Gerald's Game (1992), men sexually dominate a woman; in another, Misery (1987), a woman physically dominates a man.

Gerald's Game: After Jessie tells her dominant husband, lawyer Gerald Burlingame, she does not want to engage in another session of bondage and discipline with him, he persists, climbing atop her after handcuffing her to the bed, despite her protests. She kicks him, he falls onto the floor, has a heart attack, and dies. Alone in the remote cabin to which they have repaired, and shackled to the bed, Jessie begins to hallucinate, seeing a figure she calls “Space Cowboy” and hearing voices, each a different aspect of herself that she's repressed. The voices help her to better understand her past as a victim of paternal sexual abuse and her present as a wife who is more valued as a trophy than as a human being who's an equal partner in marriage. She has settled for Gerald, despite his emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of her, because he is financially secure. After several attempts at escape, she finally frees herself of the handcuffs by cutting away enough of the skin on one wrist to lubricate her skin with her blood. She pushes the bed to the bureau, retrieving a key with which to unlock the cuffs and free her other hand. However, the blood loss she has suffered causes her to lose consciousness, and, upon awakening, she imagines she is being pursued by the Space Cowboy and wrecks her car. Later, as Jessie is recovering, a nurse tells her that the Space Cowboy is actually a necrophiliac killer, Raymond Andrew Joubert, who was passing through Maine when he came upon her cabin.

A victim of her father, her husband, and a serial killer and necrophile, all of whom abused and dominated her for their own sexual and sadistic purposes, Jessie is a survivor because she is willing to do whatever it takes—repress horrific memories of her past to the extent that she becomes three personalities, rather than one; kill her husband; and evade a killer who had apparently left her to die in the cabin so he could return to have sex with her corpse.

Misery: Romance novelist Paul Sheldon wrecks his car during a blizzard and is rescued by his “number one fan,” Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who lives in a remote house in the mountains. Angry that Sheldon has killed his heroine, Misery Chastain, in the last book of the series, Annie keeps him prisoner, demanding he resurrect Misery in a sequel, Misery's Return. He discovers she's a serial killer but isn't aware that she plans to kill them both after reading Misery's Return. After Sheldon finishes his manuscript, he sets it ablaze. (In fact, however, the manuscript is merely a counterfeit of the actual document.) He and Annie struggle until Annie collapses after falling and striking her head on the mantelpiece in his bedroom. The next day, he gets the attention of state police who are seeking her in connection with a trooper she'd killed earlier. At first, they cannot find her body, but it is later discovered in the barn. She'd made her way there to get a chainsaw with which to kill Paul, but died from the injuries she'd sustained in their fight. Paul publishes Misery's Return, before working on a literary novel, planning to launch a new career as a serious author.

The ordeal through which Sheldon goes, suffering emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his psychotic “biggest fan,” is not only a testament to his courage, perseverance, and will to survive, but they are also the reasons that he is able to endure the torment to which he is subjected, escapes, and emerges alive, more or less in one piece. His tenacity also allows him to overcome the alcoholism that plagues him and the writer's block he suffers as a result of his ordeal. By showing the traits of character and will that Sheldon requires to come back from the brutal abuse of a dominant personality, King suggests the way forward for actual individuals who have experienced similar barbarity.

As Fowles observes, dominance doesn't have to be sexual or depend on relationships between men and women. In William Golding's The Lord of the Flies (1954), a novel King says he wishes he'd written, the need to dominate is expressed socially.

Economic dominance occurs in Bentley Little's The Store (1998). A national chain of big-box department stores has virtually taken over the brick-and-mortar retail world. The Store is everywhere. Its ever-expanding growth wipes out mom-and-pop stores, most franchises, and any vendors and suppliers who don't want to meet its terms. Stocking anything anyone could ever want to buy, and selling merchandise at discount prices, The Store is quickly becoming the only place to shop. Its benefits—a huge inventory, low prices, thousands of locations, employment for an army of workers, and taxes to local, state, and federal governments, are as numerous as its operations are vast. However, there's a downside to The Store—and, like its benefits, its negative effects are tremendous.

The Store: Juniper, Arizona, wants The Store, so officials offer tax breaks and other incentives to entice its executives to build one in its community. From the beginning, there are indications that The Store may not be the blessing local politicians believe it will be: dead animals—and a human corpse—at the construction site, black vehicles delivering mysterious merchandise in the middle of the night, and The Store's taking over of the town. Bill Davis senses trouble, and he's uneasy when his daughters become employees of The Store. Night Managers terrorize the staff. Employees disappear. Bizarre merchandise, including a line of dildos and other sex toys, show up on the shelves. Through its economic power, The Store runs roughshod over the lives of employees, customers, townspeople, politicians, vendors, suppliers, and other businesses. Just who is The Store's CEO, Newman, and what does he want to accomplish through his domination of the town—and of the nation?

Sometimes, we forget the true power of money, thinking of power in physical terms, as brute strength, weapons, or military force. However, economics is the basis of every enterprise, especially in capitalistic countries, and its potential for evil, like its potential for good, is tremendous. How is such economic clout to be resisted and overcome? How are individuals, families, communities, and nations to survive against such a powerful economic threat to their autonomy, safety, welfare, and liberty? The need to achieve through economic dominance, Little reminds his readers, is a force to be reckoned with.

Dean Koontz's The Taking(2004) depicts attempt to dominate the environment. 

The Taking: After a torrential downfall of semen-scented rain, a mysterious slime appears overnight, coating buildings, streets, trees, lawns, bushes, and the rest of the landscape. The small town in which Neil and Molly Sloan reside is isolated from the rest of the world as telephone, radio, television, and Internet service fail. The Sloans gather a group of their neighbors. Some among them believe the apocalypse is upon them. The truth is that an advance team of alien scientists have arrived, and they're reverse-terraforming the earth to make it habitable for them in preparation for a massive invasion.

By showing the effects on the environment through the lens of an alien invasion, Koontz provides a fresh look at the effects of pollution and energy waste that societies are inflicting on their own planet, offering an ironic portrayal of some of the effects that continuous neglect and abuse of the planet could have on Earth and its inhabitants, including human beings themselves. It's a harrowing story condemning the dominance of the environment that is underway today, as it has been for generations. 

The story is made all the more unsettling, indeed horrible, because of the actual use of pesticides to control weeds and defoliants to denude vast acreages of plants. 

Developed in the 1970s by Monsanto, Roundup, a “glyphosate-based pesticide,” is today used in more than 160 countries, on a variety of crops, despite controversy concerning whether the product is a carcinogen. 

During the Vietnam War, the United States military used Agent Orange to strip the foliage from “3,100,000 hectares (31,000 km²; 12,000 sq mi)” of forest, in the process exposing millions of Vietnamese people and thousands of U. S. military personnel to the agent, which has been linked to a variety of cancers. The “herbicidal warfare” operations occurred from 1961 to 1971, but their effects continue to cause health problems to the Vietnamese people and to Vietnam veterans. 

Whether the intent has been to protect crops by controlling pests or to defoliate forests during “herbicidal warfare” operations, chemical attempts to dominate the environment have had effects even more chilling than those of which Koontz writes in The Taking, because, unlike his novel's horrors, those that resulted from the use of pesticides and defoliants are real, not imaginary. 

Both King's and Koontz's novels also chronicle the results of attempts by the federal government to dominate society. King's Firestarter (1980) and Koontz's Watchers (1987) depict how ruthless the United States government can be in its quest to use science and technology as instruments of government dominance.

Firestarter: “Charlie” McGee develops telekinesis and the ability to “push,” or make hypnotic suggestions using the power of thought, after her father, Andy, participated as a subject in a clandestine government experiment. Over time, Charlie's powers become enormously powerful. She and Andy are hunted by government agents, including an assassin known as Rainbird, after they escape from the government laboratory, “the Shop.” Eventually, they escape to a cabin in Vermont, but they are subsequently captured and taken to a secret location in northern Virginia. Using their powers, they escape again, destroying the government facility, although Andy is killed. Charlie informs a national publication of her experiences.

Watchers: Travis Cornell, formerly of the Delta Force, stumbles upon a golden retriever and a hulking creature, the outsider, which have escaped from a top-secret government laboratory. The latter is pursuing the former, in an attempt to kill the canine. Because of the retriever's extremely high intelligence, Cornell names the animal “Einstein,” and he and the dog save a woman, Nora Devon, from a sexual predator. They become a trio, pursued by the Outsider, federal agents, and a Russian operative, Vince Nasco, who wants to kill the scientists involved in the experiments that produced Einstein and the Outsider and capture the dog to sell.

What makes these novels truly terrifying is that they address issues that have actually occurred in similar government experiments in which the human rights of test subjects were wantonly violated with impunity. In 1953, during MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency administered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to Frank Olson, an army biologist, without his knowledge or consent. As a result, he leaped to his death.

For forty years, from 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. Six-hundred-and-twenty-two poor black men, supposedly receiving free medical care, were monitored without being treated for the disease, despite the proof that penicillin could cure them. None of the participants in the study were notified that treatment was being withheld, and none of them consented to the withholding of treatment. Forty of their wives contracted the disease, and nineteen children were born with congenital syphilis.

During Operation Top Hat (1953), the United States Army Chemical Corps deliberately “exposed personnel” to biological and chemical warfare agents, including phosgene, a suffocant; blister agents; and nerve agents, so decontamination methods could be tested.

James Patterson's novel Humans, Bow Down (2017), written with Emily Raymond, focuses upon technological dominance, as do the films the Terminator (1984-present) franchise, Demon Seed (1973), and many others.

Humans,Bow Down: In a war between humans and smart robots, which occurred some time ago, robots were the victors. Now, as the title of the novel suggests, humans have been subjugated to their conquerors. Whenever a robot leader appears, humans are ordered to “bow down,” showing their submission to their dominant masters. When a small band of humans dares to defy their mechanical overlords, there is hope that humans may regain their freedom, but liberty will not come cheaply, if at all.

Terminator: In the future, smart robots rule the Earth, and humans live minimal lives in filth, discomfort, and poverty, until John, the son of Sarah Connor, leads his fellow humans in a war against their brutal conquerors. To prevent this event from happening, the robots send one of their own, The Terminator, into the past to kill Sarah before she can conceive him. However, Sarah is not alone: her son also sends a soldier of the resistance back through time to protect her.

Demon Seed: Dean Koontz's 1973 novel, which was adapted to the big screen under the same title (1977), features Proteus, an artificially intelligent, state-of-the-art computer that plans to impregnate Susan, a wealthy divorcee whose home is controlled by a computer system. After commandeering Susan's home computer system, Proteus imprisons her in her home, in effect putting her under house arrest, and uses hypnosis and subliminal perception on her, interacting physically with her by using “pseudopod” tentacles that Proteus designs and constructs in the nearby university that houses “him.” From their union, a monstrous human-hybrid creature results, their “child,” with which Susan must do battle. 

Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been used to dominate workers and consumers, the economies of both domestic and foreign markets, military forces, politicians, and, indeed, entire political systems. It is only now becoming possible, some believe, for technology to dominate individuals in personal ways, such as by enslaving them or transforming their sex lives through the use of “sexbots” (robots designed as surrogate sex partners). If this proves to be the case, such visions as those presented in Humans,Bow Down, Terminator, and Demon Seed may be closer to realization than many might imagine. 

Although horror and science fiction are both forms of fantasy, writers of each genre have made some fairly horrific speculations about the abuses that stem from the need to dominate others and the environment.

In the past, it seems, more authors were likely to be optimistic about the future effects of present-day personal, social, economic, governmental, and technological efforts to dominate the world. After experiencing such horrors as two world wars, the medical experiments of Josef Mengele, the gassing of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis, the effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and such covert operations by American organizations against their own citizens, as carried out during the Vietnam War, the MKUltra project, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, and Operation Top Hat (to mention only a few), contemporary authors do not seem to share such an optimistic view of the need to dominate, as Gerald's Game, Misery, The Store, The Taking, Firestarter, Watchers, Humans, Bow Down, Terminator, and Demon Seed unanimously suggest.

The need to dominate may be universal among all individuals, but that doesn't mean its practice will necessarily produce beneficial outcomes.