The Haunting of a House

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

More a fan of the idea of the haunted house, perhaps, than one who aspires to actually visit such places, even in fiction, I have, nevertheless, visited a few and written several-article series, available right here on Chillers and Thrillers, concerning “How to Haunt a House.”  The haunted houses I’ve visited are a dilapidated and apparently (but not, as it turned out, really) abandoned house in a field of tall grass, the Winchester Mystery House in Los Gatos, California (which was partly the inspiration for the haunted house in Stephen King’s Rose Red televisions series), and the Disneyland Haunted Mansion.

As a fan of the idea of the haunted house, I was particularly interested in reading King’s insights and observations concerning the haunted house stories he’s both written (The Shining and, in a way, ‘Salem’s Lot) and read, two of which, the one in Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House and Anne Rivers Siddons’ The House Next Door, are standouts in the genbre, King argues.  The first, he believes, presents readers “with a history--a sort of supernatural provenance,” and the other “gives” readers “the provenance itself.”

After quoting the opening paragraph of Jackson’s novel, King dissects it to show just “how many things this single paragraph does.”

Jackson’s paragraph reads:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

King’s comments take up a paragraph about as long:

All I really want to do is point out is how many this single paragraph does. It begins by suggesting that Hill House is a living organism; tells us that this live organism does not exist under conditions of absolute reality; that because. . . it does not dream, it is not sane. The paragraph tells us how long its history has been, immediately establishing that historical context that is so important to the haunted-house story, and it concludes by telling us that something walks in the rooms and halls of Hill House. All this in two [sic] sentences (“Horror Fiction,” Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing, 91).

Siddons’ novel, which “could have been subtitled ‘The Making of a Haunted House,’” goes Jackson’s one better, King thinks. No human characters set foot inside Siddons’ haunted house until the novel’s last fifty pages, but its next-door neighbors, Walter and Colquitt Kennedy, are affected by the residence: “We see their lives and their way of thinking change as a result of their proximity to the house,” King observes (92).

At the outset of the novel, the house has yet to be built, but, as soon as the domicile is completed, “Dionysian change,” it is apparent, King says, “is coming to the Apollonian suburb where hitherto there has been a place for everything and everything [has been] in its place” (93). The house is introduced through its impression upon Colquitt:

I drew my breath in at it. It was magnificent. I do not as a rule care for contemporary architecture, [but] . . . this house was different. It commanded you, somehow, yet soothed you. It grew out of the penciled earth like an elemental spirit that had lain, locked and yearning for the light, through endless deeps of time, waiting to be released. . . . I could hardly imagine the hands and machinery that would form it. I thought of something that had started with a seed, put down deep roots, grown in the sun and rains of many years into the upper air. In the sketches, at least, the woods pressed untouched around it like companions. The creek enfolded its mass and seemed to nourish its roots. It looked--inevitable.

The book is divided into three sections, each one telling the story of a different family of the house’s residents, the Harralsons, Buddy and Pie; the Sheehans, Buck and Anita; and the Greenes, Norman and Susan. It would be unfair to share any more of the story’s plot, but it should go without saying, perhaps, that any haunted-house novel that captures the attention and earns the respect of a horror maestro of King’s reputation deserves a read.

What I’m more interested in, at the moment, is the introductions that the writers give their haunted houses. As I argue elsewhere, a grand entrance is important to establish new characters (and protagonists, especially); the same is true for places that, in effect, themselves become like characters--and a specific type of character, at that: the antagonist. Haunted houses are typically evil places, and, as such, they will pit themselves against those who are foolish enough to take up residence beneath their roofs and within their walls. King does a fine job of dissecting Jackson’s opening paragraph, but he doesn’t have much to say about the haunted house in Siddons’ novel. In its own way, the introduction of “the house next door” is  effective in seizing the reader’s attention as it also simultaneously spotlights the new house on the block.

The house, Colquitt implies, is breathtaking, not so much for its architectural style, but for its effect upon the viewer; the house makes Colquitt feel a certain way: “commanded,” yet also “soothed,” as if the house exercises, by its mere presence, a hypnotic or spellbinding effect upon anyone who would look upon it. It is “like an elemental spirit,” but, at the same time, it is also like a plant that, seeded by “hands and machinery”--that is by human design and technology, rather than by nature--establishes “deep roots” and seems one with the “woods” that surround it, even as it is “nourished” by a “creek.” The “elemental spirit” is, perhaps a dryad, and an evil one at that, which takes up residence in the strange vegetative abode. The dryad is the perfect entity to bring to “the Apollonian suburb” as King calls the haunted house’s setting “Dionysian change.”

Another example, justly famous, of a writer’s introduction of his story’s haunted house to his readers is the opening chapter of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble ; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

So many critics have dissected and analyzed this paragraph that it need not be done again. Suffice it to say that Poe’s description of the place embodies it, for Poe, in writing of the dwelling’s “vacant eye-like windows,” and, indeed, what Walter Evans sees as the “‘bleak’ cheeks, huge eyes. . . ‘rank’ and slightly bushy mustache, and perhaps even ‘white trunks of decayed’ teeth” of the story’s protagonist, Roderick Usher himself (“‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and Poe’s Theory of the Tale,” reprinted in Short Story Criticism). The house not only looks like its owner, who will fall mentally, into madness, as the house has already begin to fall into physical ruin, but, like Siddons’ haunted house, it has an almost palpable effect upon those who encounter it: “with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit,” the narrator admits, adding, “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?”

Like Jackson and Siddons, in introducing his haunted house, Poe both hooks his readers while, at the same time, making his haunted house forever--well, haunting!

Dust Jacket Plotting

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

If you’re like most people, you find plotting a novel difficult, even with such helps as those I have identified and explained in many previous posts. There can never be enough tips or techniques, it seems, when it comes to making (or trying to make) plotting E-Z. So, here’s another tip: write your synopsis as if it’s the blurb inside the dust jacket of the finished book. Doing so is apt to help you to envision your novel as a finished product. It may also help you to emphasize the promotional aspects of your story, those features which are likely to sell your story to the reader (and, indeed, an editor). In preparation for doing so, you might read a couple of existing blurbs. These will get you into the spirit of things and indicate how to ignite your prospective readers’ interest in your story. Here are a couple, to get you started, followed by one concerning one of my own novels. The first sample is from the book jacket of Stephen King’s Needful Things (1991); the second is from the just jacket of Dean Koontz’s Breathless (2009). Each is superbly written.

Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story

With a demonic blend of malice and affection, Stephen King says goodbye to the town he put on the map--Castle Rock, Maine. . . where Polly Chalmers runs You Sew and Sew and Sheriff Alan Pangborn is in charge of keeping the peace. It’s a small town, and Stephen King fans might think they know its secrets pretty well: they’ve been here before. Leland Grant is a stranger--and he calls his shop Needful Things. Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk is his first customer, and Brian finds just what he wants most in all the world: a ‘56 Sandy Koufax baseball card. By the end of the week, Mr. Gaunt’s business is fairly booming, and why not? At Needful Things, there’s something for everyone. And, of course, there is always a price. For Leland Gaunt, the pleasure of doing business lies chiefly in seeing how much people will pay for their most secret dreams and desires. And as Leland Gaunt always points out, at Needful Things, the prices are high in deed. Does that stop people from buying? Has it ever?

For Allan and Polly, this one week in autumn will be an awful test--a test of will, desire, and pain. Above all, it will be a test of their ability to grasp the true nature of their enemy. They may have a chance. . . But maybe not, because, as Mr. Gaunt knows, almost everything is for sale: love, hope, even the human soul. With the potent storytelling authority that millions of readers have come to prize, Stephen King delivers an Our Town with a vengeance, an inimitable farewell to a place his fiction has often and long called home.

This blurb consists of 285 words. Notice that each of its first four paragraphs are of approximately the same length: 63 words, 58 words, 57 words, and 64 words, respectively. At 36 words, the concluding paragraph is a bit shorter. In this short space, the blurb’s author has accomplished a good deal, suggesting the tone (a mixture of “malice and affection”); introducing several characters, including protagonist Sheriff Pangborn and antagonist Leland Gaunt; identifying the setting as Castle Rock, Maine; and establishing the basic conflict, which examines, as its theme, the price that people are willing to pay for the things they want most in all the world. The blurb’s writer has, in the allusion to a famous play, also suggested a comparison between King’s novel and Thornton Wilder’s dark drama of small-town horror. Not bad for 285 words! The blurb suggests the elements that appeal most to prospective readers: intriguing characters involved in an intriguing situation in a familiar location that involves an important theme and is told with flair. Adjectives further indicate what readers will encounter in the novel’s pages: “malice,” “affection,” humor (Chalmer’s shop is named “You Sew and Sew”), the “secrets” of a small town, a mysterious “stranger,” the question of “how much people will pay for their most secret dreams and desires,” and a severe testing of characters.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz delivers a thrilling novel of suspense and adventure, as the lives of strangers converge around a mystery unfolding high in the Colorado mountains--and the balance of the world begins to tilt. . . .

Breathless

In the stillness of a golden September afternoon, deep in the wilderness of the Rockies, a solitary craftsman, Grady Adams, and his magnificent Irish wolfhound, Merlin, step from shadow into light. . . and into an encounter with enchantment. That night, through the trees, under the moon, a pair of singular animals will watch Grady’s isolated home, waiting to make their approach. A few miles away, Camilla Rivers, a local veterinarian, begins to unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring to her door all the forces of a government in peril. At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come together to begin a descent into darkness. . . . In Las Vegas, a specialist in chaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable. . .. On a Seattle golf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements for murder. . . . Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the past begins a trek toward his destiny. In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless, fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the moment between one turn of the world and the next, across the border between knowing and mystery. It is a journey that will leave all who take it Breathless.

At a total of 254 words, the blurb for Koontz’s novel is 31 words shorter than the one for King’s, but Breathless, at 337 pages, is quite a bit shorter than the 690-page Needful Things. In fact, King’s novel is a little more than twice the length of Koontz’s book. The paragraphs of the blurb for Koontz’s novel number 42 words, 62 words, 31 words, 67 words, and 51 words each, respectively. They are not nearly as symmetrical as the paragraphs in the blurb for King’s novel, nor is the information that they impart as specific or clear.

What does the Koontz book blurb accomplish? It identifies the setting, introduces the protagonist and other major characters, suggests a situation of national importance that involves “the forces of a government in peril,” mentions a conspiracy to commit murder, alludes to a movement of mysterious forces, and indicates the narrative’s tone (“fearless and funny”). A bit vague about the details of the novel’s plot, the blurb’s elusiveness underscores the mystery of the forces at work, suggesting that fate may be operating behind the scenes, as it were. As with the King book blurb, the Koontz book blurb also uses adjectives to pinpoint the elements to which readers are known to respond: “mysterious,” “singular,” “isolated,” “unknowable,” “scarred,” “timeless,” “fearless,” and “funny.”

These blurbs are not the full-fledged synopses that editors will want to see when they are deciding whether to green light publication, of course. Their objective isn’t to summarize the entire plot of the novels they represent, but to pitch the basic storylines to prospective readers who are willing to read two or three hundred words to get an idea of what the book they hold in their hands may offer. A full-fledged synopsis will run 15 pages or more. Nevertheless, these blurbs are good starting places for writers faced with the task of plotting the basic idea for their latest (or, for that matter, first) novel. They supply such prerequisites of plotting as protagonist, antagonist, setting, conflict, tone, and theme. They seek an appealing means of orienting the writer’s storyline to readers’ interests.

Here is a blurb for my own first novel Saturday's Child:

Although Crystal Fall, her not-so-secret admirer David Lewis, and their friends Fran Newell and Dee Dee Dawkins crack jokes and behave in the silly manner characteristic of teens across America, what’s happening at their alma mater, Edgar Allan Poe High School, in southern California is no laughing matter. Their new principal, Dr. Snyder, has introduced changes, both to the school’s curriculum and to the way things are done at Poe, none of them good. For example, he not only lengthens the school days to twelve hours, but he also institutes Saturday school. Once open, the campus is now closed. In fact, it has become more like a prison than a school, with the patrol officers, or “trolls,” as the students call them, guarding the campus and surveillance cameras everywhere--even in the locker rooms and restrooms. An odd dress code is imposed, governing even students’ choice of underwear. Strange, whispered messages are repeated all day in the music piped through the school’s public address system. Students are compelled to eat in the school cafeteria, and a secret ingredient has been added to their food. A student health clinic is planned, wherein hypnotized students will receive mental health evaluations--and brain implants. If the new administration wins, personal freedom will be lost forever, and Crystal and her friends will become the first of an army of brain-dead public servants in a new world order. And the odds seem stacked against the teens, for Principal Snyder is backed by top government officials with unlimited resources, including an endless supply of funds and military forces. But the teens are willing, even at the cost of great personal sacrifice, or even death, to take back their school, and Crystal and her friends have a secret ally: God is on their side!

My blurb numbers 295 words: 48 (paragraph one), 87 (paragraph two), 64 (paragraph three), and 96 (paragraph 4), so the lengths are a bit uneven. Perhaps the text can be shortened a bit without losing the hoped-for appeal of the blurb to prospective readers. The relative lengths, in words, indicate where chopping may best take place: the second and last paragraphs are rather longwinded in comparison to the other two. As a rough draft, though, my novel’s blurb accomplishes the same sorts of things as those for King’s and Koontz’s books. Like their books’ blurbs, mine sets the tone; introduces the major players, including both the protagonist and the antagonist; identifies the basic conflict, implying that it is significant; establishes the setting; and suggests the story’s theme. As a means of getting the novel’s basic outline down on paper in a compelling fashion, it’s a pretty good way to kick-start one’s imagination and get the creative juices flowing. Such a synopsis, although far from the level of detail that a publisher would require, also allows one to expand upon the basic storyline, adding details to fill out the plot, develop the characters, describe the setting, maintain the tone, expand the conflict, and convey the theme. Not bad for fewer than 300 words.