Three Girls Walk into a Forest, and . . . .

Girl Eaten by a Tree by Mark Ryden

What strikes you about this picture? What is the first thing that draws your attention?

The girls? The situation? The setting? The action? The conflict? The girls' motives?

Who are these girls? What are their backgrounds? Why do they share the same facial features? What are they doing? What is the tree doing? What time of day is it? In what forest are they? Where are the girls going? Why are they in the forest? Why did the tree attack one of the girls? Why don't the two girls help the one who has been attacked?

Envision several answers for as many of these questions as you can; write them out, each in a complete sentence.

You can start a story with an answer to any of these questions, but each answer must be interrelated with the one before and after it so that a chain of incidents develops which is based on cause-effect relationships throughout.

Next, as Aristotle suggests in Poetics, arrange the incidents in a pattern organized by the story's beginning, middle, and end. (Edgar Allan Poe gave good advice when he said to know the story's ending before you begin writing.)

Stories are hard to plot because, although they seem simple, they are, in fact, complex: all the parts (answers to the questions of who?, what?, when?, where?, how”, why”, and how many? or how much?, are interrelated. By identifying causes and effects among the incidents, they appear logically connected, unified, and coherent.

Let's try the exercise.

For me, the situation captures my immediate attention. Perhaps the painting's artist, Mark Ryden, anticipated that the situation would be most prominent, as he named the work Girl Eaten by a Tree.

Initially, therefore, maybe I should focus my attention on the situation: a girl being eaten by a tree.

Who is the girl? The sameness of the facial features and the similarities in the dress of the two sisters watching the third girl being eaten by the tree suggests that the two girls are sisters. Although we can't see the third girl's face, her clothing is similar to that of the other two girls, which could suggest that she is their sister; possibly, her appearance is identical to theirs—a triplet. For now, that will be my interpretation: The three girls are triplets.

Notice how, starting with the situation, I veered off to a consideration of the painting's figures, the characters of the story? That's likely to happen, and it's fine: the elements of the story are, after all, interrelated; one question is apt to suggest the answer to another.

But back to the situation: why is the girl being eaten by a tree? Perhaps she insulted the tree, and it is eating her to avenge itself. Maybe she happened to be walking closest to the tree, and the tree snatched her up because it is hungry. It could be that the tree is a sentinel, guarding the forest, and it is eating the girl because the tree perceived her (and possibly her sisters) as being in some way a threat. It's also possible that the two girls who are watching their sister being eaten by a tree are only imagining the situation. Maybe they discussed a scene in a fantasy in which a tree devoured one—or all—of them and the memory of this earlier conversation inspired one of the girls to imagine it happening as the sisters walk through the forest.

For now, I am going to say that the girl in the yellow dress is imagining the situation. Why? We'll come back to this question in a moment, as we envision the girls' background.

Why are they in the forest? They are taking a shortcut. From where to where? From their house to Grandma's house (allusions can exp[and the theme of a story; this one may even have suggested an ending to the story!)

Obviously, it's daytime, but the sky seems overcast; it is gray. Rain seems to be on its way: there's a storm coming, it seems, and it may be an emotional as well as a meteorological storm. (Symbolism is often highly effective in a narrative.)

Apart from the tree's grasping and devouring of the girl in blue, there is no overt action, other than the girl in the yellow dress's touching the shoulder of the girl in the pink dress while holding up her other hand, as if to ward off the tree, and the girl in the pink dress's folding her hands together, as if she is making a silent plea.

Why aren't the other girls helping the victim? Especially if they are sisters—and triplets, at that—one would expect that the other two would be seeking to free their sister from her attacker. Perhaps they are frozen with fear? Their shocked expressions suggest that thy may be. In addition, their hair (not a single one of which is out of place), their pressed dresses, the ribbons restraining their hair, and the attitudes they have adopted suggest that these girls are unaccustomed to the violence they've encountered. Not only are they terrified, but they are also at a loss to know how to react. They are helpless. Al they do, probably instinctively, is to watch, as one wards off the tree and the other pleads silently for deliverance.

And, now, what about the story's ending? The allusion to Little Red Riding Hood (the girls were going to Grandma's house when the tee attacked one of them) suggests that a hero will appear, rescue the girl, and, perhaps, chop down the tree (or, at least, the limbs with which it holds the girl). Obviously, the scene Ryden has depicted is fantastic, so the appearance of a woodsman fits the genre well.

Now, we need only break the story into its three divisions, beginning, middle, and end. (Notice that we have figured out our ending before writing the story.) In doing so, we can insert words that indicate CAUSE and EFFECT.

Beginning

On an overcast morning, BECAUSE they plan to spend the day with their Grandmother, three young girls, triplets, who are dressed in similar dresses, bows, socks, and shoes, travel together through a forest, BECAUSE it is a shortcut, chattering about their plans and about the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

Middle

BECAUSE the tree is hungry, it snatches one of the girls. (The tree has human features—eyes, nose, mouth, and arms—and characteristics—it is hungry, predatory, and conscious.) BECAUSE they are shocked and frightened by the tree's attack, the other girls, feeling helpless, look on in horror, BECAUSE they do not know what to do and are paralyzed with fear.

End

BECAUSE a woodsman, happening to be in the area, chances upon the scene, he cuts off the limbs (arms) of the tree, freeing the girl, who has not come to harm. The girls are unable to thank him BECAUSE he is gone before they can do so. The girl in yellow finds that she holds the woodsman's ax BECAUSE, as she realizes, it was she who vanquished the tree. She took strength from imagining herself to be a woodsman BECAUSE doing so made her feel strong and gave her courage. She thought of herself as a woodsman, she thinks, BECAUSE her talk with her sisters made her think of him when her sister was endangered. In fact, their talk and the creepy forest CAUSED her to imagine the whole incident—her sister was never attacked, except in her own mind. But, now, BECAUSE she has learned of her own strength and courage, the girl needs no surrogate hero: she herself is strong, courageous, and heroic.

Although this seems a simple story, whether it is or is not depends on how the story is written. Possibly, a writer could make profound statements about such matters as gender roles, sisterhood, fantasy as a means of personal empowerment, self-discovery, and self-realization. Before writing such a story, an author might do well to read Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment.

Although Bettelheim's scholarship has been tarnished by allegations of his misrepresentation of his credentials, by plagiarism, by abusive behavior toward his students, and other issues, his study of the therapeutic potential of fantastic literature is stimulating, indeed, and may suggest psychological and social directions for a narrative about a girl in a forest who imagines an assault upon her sister, especially when her sister, a triplet, is identical in appearance to herself.

Learning from the Masters: Lawrence Block's Use of Metaphor as a Narrative Device

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

According to his website, Lawrence Block started his writing career writing “midcentury erotica,” but is better known for his Matthew Scudder novel series and short stories. A Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and a former president of MWA, he has written other series of novels, some under various pen names, several non-fiction books; has contributed to several screenplays; has seen a number of his novels adapted to film; and maintains an occasional blog.

In his short story “Catch and Release” (Stories: All New Tales, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio), Block's metaphor, comparing fishing to killing, unifies the story's action, allowing the author, at the same time, to characterize his nameless first-person protagonist as a philosophical, if psychotic, serial killer.

The narrative's opening paragraph lays out the protagonist's modus operandi. A fisherman, he subscribes to the practice identified by the catchphrase “catch and release”:

When you spent enough time fishing, you got so you knew the waters. You had certain spots that had worked for you over the years, and you went to them at certain times of the day in certain seasons of the year. You chose the tackle appropriate to the circumstances, picked the right bait or lure, and tried your luck.

If they weren't biting, you moved on. Picked another spot (168).

Throughout the rest of the story, the fisherman employs this strategy. In terms of Block's metaphor, the fisherman (protagonist) is the serial killer; the “sport” of fishing is the killing; and the fish are the vulnerable young women for whom he fishes. The metaphor is extended by the narrator's exposition and dialogue and by Block's descriptions.

 

For example, the protagonist entertains violent fantasies after he catches (gives a ride) to a female hitchhiker whom he releases (lets her depart from his vehicle alive and well):

. . . he gave himself over to the fantasy she inspired. A lonely road. A piece of tape across her mouth. A struggle ending with her arms broken.

 

Stripping her. Piercing each of her openings in turn. Giving her physical pain to keep her terror company.

And finishing her with a knife. No, with his hands, strangling her. No, better yet, with his forearm across her throat, and his weight pushing down, throttling her (172).

Like the fisherman in the story's opening paragraph, the narrator also moves from location to location, visiting “certain spots that worked . . . over the years.” he cruises the interstate, selecting his prey as he seeks to catch “a girl all by herself” (178). Like “the true fisherman,” he is content to “fish all night and catch nothing” while he reminisces about previous fish he's landed (179).

His identification with the ideal fisherman extends to his description of a woman he sees in a roadhouse, as he describes “her full-lipped mouth” and explains how he “closed the distance between them,” as if he were reeling in a fish (173).

Alternating between talk of fishing and his stalking of young women keeps the story's metaphor alive. For example, in recalling a previous murder victim, he compares her murder to the gaffing, or impaling or clubbing, of a fish:

. . . He'd pulled up behind her just as she was about to put her groceries into the trunk of her car, and hopped out and offered his help. She smiled, and was about to thank him, but she never had the chance. He had a flashlight in one hand . . . and he took her by the shoulder ans swung hr around and hit her hard on the back of the head. He caught her as she fell, eased her down gently (178).

Concerning the gaffing of a fish, the narrator explains,

. . . Most people, they think of fishing and they somehow manage not to think about killing. They seem to think the fish comes out of the water, gulps for air a couple of times, and then obligingly gives up the ghost. Maybe he flops around a little at first, but that's all there is to it. But, see, it;s not like that. A fish can live longer out of water than you'd think. What you have to do, you gaff it. Hit it in the head with a club. It's quick and easy, but you can't get around the fact that you're killing it (179).

Although the woman he clubs in the head with his flashlight does not die from the blow (she's rendered unconscious, instead), he later kills her, after terrorizing and raping her. In fact, his telling her about the gaffing of the fish is part of the way he terrorizes her, before he mentions “the other unpleasant chores” that result from the killing of a fish, “the gutting, the scaling, the disposal of offal” (179). He stops talking only so that she can reflect upon the terrible things he's told her, “letting her figure out what to make of it” (179).

As the protagonist points out, for him, “fishing is not just a metaphor” (174). he is a fisherman; fishing is part of his life and the means of his livelihood (he sells fishing lures through a mail-order service) ((171-172).

Fishing is also something akin to a religion for him, a source of moral precepts and guidance for living. Instead of the Bible, he reads (and rereads) Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler and is familiar with Stephen Leacock's comment that “angling was the name given to fishing by people who couldn't fish” (177). Again and again, he repeats, “I am a fisherman.”

The act of fishing (capturing and killing young women) defines him: he is one who captures and kills, a serial killer. Even after he decides to “catch and release” women, he continues, occasionally, to kill his captives rather than releasing them. He remains, at the end of the story, what he was at the beginning of the tale: a fisherman, which is to say, a serial killer.

In the murder of a woman he encounters at a supermarket, the narrator describes himself as he appears to see himself (although his description, the reader sees, is not entirely accurate): he tells her that he is a “catch-and-release fisherman,” who enjoys fishing: “It does something for me that nothing else has ever done. Call it a sport or a pastime, as you prefer, but it's what I do and what I've always done” (178).

A narcissist who believes that women are no better than fish and can be used to satisfy his need to dominate, control, and decide their fate, as if killing is as much a “sport”—and as much a justified, morally correct “pastime”—as fishing, he captures and kills them with as much abandon as “most people” who “think of fishing” without associating it with “killing.”

In fact, the narrator derives his moral principles from the sport, an action that in itself suggests his madness:

. . . He had hooked and landed three trout. Each had put up a good fight, and as he released them he might have observed that they'd earned their freedom, that each deserved another chance at life.

But what did that mean, really? Could a fish be said to earn or deserve anything? Could anyone? And did a desperate effort to remain alive somehow entitle one to live?

Consider the humble flounder. He was a saltwater fish, a bottom fish, and when you hooked him he rarely did much more than flop around a little while you reeled him in. Dis this make him the trout's moral inferior? Did he have less right to live because of his genetically prescribed behavior? (175)

In his reflections, the protagonist moves from a fish to “anyone,” including, it seems, human beings or, more specifically, the young women for whom he routinely fishes. In conversing with the first young woman, the hitchhiker, whom the reader observes him to hook, or pick up, he tells her, “When [he releases them, and] they swim away . . . I get the sense that they're glad to be alive. But I may just be trying to put myself in their position. I can't really know what it's like for them” (170). He also wonders whether “they learn anything from the experience” of having been caught and struggles to free themselves and save their lives: “Are they warier the next time around?” When she replies, “I guess they're just fish,” he agrees: “I guess they are” (170).

These two passages, juxtaposed to one another, show that the narrator believes that the same moral principles, if any, that apply to fish also apply to his human victims. When it comes to morality, one precept fits all, regardless of species. If fish are undeserving of mercy, if they are undeserving of life, despite their valor, so, also, are young women. At least, that is true as far as anyone can know, because, to assume otherwise, requires a projection of one's own subjectivity upon creatures of the natural world. Whether fish or woman, the narrator says “I can't really know what it's like for them.” His inability to empathize aids his dehumanization of women.

Although the narrator may be right in asserting that we must presume that each of us must assume that others, like ourselves, are self-conscious entities capable of thought and emotion and belief and other subjective powers and processes and that we can, therefore, to some extent, at least “know what it's like for them,” he commits the fallacy of moral equivalency when he equates the value of a fish with that of a woman. A fish and a human being are not essentially the same, and there is no reason to value them equally. The comparison of them as equals is false and shows that the protagonist's thinking is deranged.

What type of “fish” captures the protagonist's attention, readers wonder (because the protagonist himself suggests this very question. While shopping at a grocery store, “he hadn't been looking for her,” or anyone else, but “then he looked up and there she was” (177). Although she is beautiful, he admits, “it wasn't her beauty he found himself responding to” (177). What was it, then, the reader wonders, that caught his eye?

Like the other young women whom he does not “catch and release,” she is killed by him. Perhaps, then, by recalling the other women he has killed already, we can glean the source of his attraction to this woman. One woman he recalls killing had passed out from drinking too many gandy dancers. Unable to terrorize her by suggesting his intentions to her before committing the outrages against her, “he let himself imagine that she was dead, and took her that way,” before breaking her neck (174). What seems to have excited him was her helplessness.

However, in considering the “many” women he's killed, the narrator states that “little of what he did ran to pattern” (175). In fact, he admits, “if anything, he'd deliberately sought variety, not for precautionary reasons but because it was indeed the spice of life—or death, if you prefer” (175-176).

Unlike many other serial killers, he does not take “trophies” and does not keep “souvenirs.” Moreover, he confuses memories of real victims with memories of imaginary victims about whom he has fantasized (176).

The woman he encounters in the grocery store is “beautiful, not young-pretty like the hitchhiker” he catches and releases, “or slutty-available like Marni the barfly,” whom he also catches and releases, “but genuinely beautiful,” so beautiful that 'she could have been an actress or a model” (177). However, he says, it is not to her beauty that he responded, and “it scarcely mattered what she wore” (177). After he hits her in the back of the head, knocking her unconscious, the woman is as helpless as the woman who'd drunk too many gandy dancers.

His victims' helplessness seems to be one of the elements that he finds attractive in his victims, which may be the reason he selected the drunken woman, but the grocery shopper was not helpless before he'd struck her. Like the gandy dancers victim, the protagonist snaps the grocery shopper's neck, after arranging “her on the ground on her back” and smashing “both her kneecaps,” but laving “tape on her wrists and across her mouth” (179). In other words, he renders her even more helpless, denying her the ability to run or scream or fight. Helplessness certainly seems one of the elements that the protagonist finds attractive, whether it is present when he kidnaps a victim or whether he himself causes her helplessness after the fact.

Toward the end of the story, the narrator recalls “the first time he'd departed from the catch-and-release pattern,” which was “less impulsive” and more planned. She was “the right girl,” and, like the other victims, had “turned up.” Thus, she was a target of convenience, as were most of his other victims. She was also physically attractive, “young, blond, a cheerleader type, with a turned-up nose and a beauty mark on one cheek” (180). 
The narrator does not tell what he did to this girl; he mentions only that “he'd thought long and hard about it.” However, his recollections of other victims' fates suggests that he also rendered her unconscious and, therefore, helpless, and dispatched her after terrorizing and raping her. Despite his claims to the contrary, there does seem to be a method to his madness, after all.

The protagonist finds justification for his killings in viewing himself as a fisherman and the women he kills as being prey who are of no more value than fish. However, he also cites the Bible or alludes to it on several occasions, leaving readers to wonder what might Block's purpose be in having his protagonist make such references.

The first reference to the Bible is actually a quotation of Luke 5:5: We fished all night and caught nothing. The Gospel verse is quoted out of context. The fisherman Simon (later, the apostle Peter), a fisherman, is suggesting to Jesus that it is pointless to continue to fish, as Jesus has instructed Simon and the rest of the ship's crew. However, when Simon obeys the command, Jesus performs a miracle, and the net is so full of fish that it breaks. When, with the assistance of the crew of a second ship, the fish are loaded aboard both ships, they are so heavy that they sink. Despite Simon's petition to Jesus to leave him, because Simon is a “sinful man,” Jesus tells the fisherman to follow him and that Jesus will make Simon “a fisher of men.”

Jesus calls his disciple to a very different sort of fishing expedition than that to which the protagonist of Block's story devotes himself. Instead of saving the souls of the unworthy, Block's narrator seeks to destroy the bodies and minds of his captives and to take their lives. The narrator of “Catch and Release,” as readers will learn, is too narcissistic, too sadistic, and too psychotic to understand the significance of the Bible verse he quotes or, perhaps, knowing the meaning of the scripture, perverts it by citing it in reference to his own monstrous deeds.

The protagonist seems to see himself and his victim, the grocery shopper he has bound and maimed, n the roles of Adam and Eve, describing them as “Adam and Eve in the garden . . . . Naked and unashamed” (180). Of course, Adam and Eve were only “naked and unashamed” before they disobeyed God, whereupon their innocence vanished, and, “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen 3:7). They then “sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons,” aware and, it seems, repentant of their sin.

Once again, the narrator's reference to scripture is either intentionally ironic and blasphemous or misapplied. It seems, given his character, as it is revealed throughout the story, that the protagonist intends to mock Christian morality, which, after all, does not only conflict with his own, but censors it. In Christianity, the creature is not the equal of the Creator any more than the beast is the equal of the human. Women are not fish, and the fisherman is not a god.

Block leaves the reality of the protagonist's monstrosity before the reader; at the end of the story, the narrator continues to believe that he is doing nothing wrong, even when he kills, rather than releases, his victims. It is his position of moral equivalency that allows him to indulge his delusion that women, like fish, are expendable commodities in the satisfaction of his sadistic “sport” or (the metaphor changes) his appetite for flesh:

He was still a catch-and-release fisherman. He probably always would be. But, for God's sake, that didn't make him a vegetarian, did it?

Hell, no. A man still had to have a square meal now and then (180).

"The Cone": Style, Sentence by Sentence

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

As I mentioned in “H. G. Wells: The Art of 'The Cone,'” Wells is a master of style. He makes every word count toward the creation of the final effect he designs his stories to create. Style, as Jonathan Swift defines it, is “proper words in their proper places.” Mark Twain, like other writers, agrees that “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” AlfredHitchcock says something similar concerning images, the lexicon of film. It is not any single image that matters, he says, but the way in which they are assembled to evoke thought and feeling. On the importance of style, a science fiction writer, a satirist, a humorist, and a master of suspense agree, as does any serious writer or producer. Style is not a small thing; it is everything, for it shapes and invigorates everything: character, including dialogue, action, plot, setting, theme.

With a single phrase or sentence, Wells often accomplishes several narrative or rhetorical purposes at once in his exemplary short story, “The Cone,” as he does in his other tales. The story is a true tour de force, the literary equivalent of expressionistic and surreal paintings, but, as I discuss this aspect of the story in “H. G. Wells: The Art of 'The Cone,'” there's no need to repeat it here. Instead, I will concentrate on the effects, literary and rhetorical, he achieves by several phrases and sentences in “The Cone.”

At the outset of the story, his omniscient narrator comments, “They [Mrs Horrocks and the artist Raut] sat at the open window, trying to fancy the air was fresher there.” This sentence accomplishes three things:

1. It suggests that the air is not “fresher” near the open window, because it is not “fresh” anywhere.
2. The fact that they are “trying to fancy” fresh air near the window means that they are not succeeding. The open window admits no fresh air; like their attempt to imagine fresher air, the open window is a mere prop and, therefore, a failure.
3. The illicit couple's attempt to “fancy the air was fresher” characterizes them. In the face of a reality they find unpleasant, they imagine their circumstances are different. They seek to impose their own preferences upon the world, adjusting what is to what is suitable to them. In this, the sentence's use of “attempt” suggests, they also fail.

Wells gets much out of other phrases, too. In the story's fifth paragraph, his narrator describes an approaching train: “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs—eight trucks—passed” not only shows the passing of the cars, but also makes readers count them as they go past: “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs—eight trucks.” The counting helps to make the paragraph active, but it also reinforces the number of cars in the train. The ironworks, we think, is a busy, productive place. In the same sentence, the narrator adds that the cars “were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of the tunnel,” causing readers to imagine each car being “extinguished” as it enters the tunnel's “throat.” This description includes one of the many personifications Wells uses to bring his ironworks to life as an active, vengeful, and menacing entity.

For Raut, the ironworks represents “Gehenna,” meaning “a place of burning, torment, or misery,” or, “(in Judaism and the New Testament, Hell).” The ironworks is impertinent, daring to belch “fire and dust into the face of heaven.” Raut's words suggest that the ironworks is an affront to God Himself, an impious, wicked hell the very existence of which is an insult to heaven. “Fire and dust,” the insults, as it were, which the hellish ironworks belch “into the face of heaven,” are later juxtaposed to the Biblical phrase “pillars of cloud” and “pillars of fire” in which God appears to Moses and the Israelites as He guides them across the desert after their escape from pharaoh: “And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.” (Exodus 13:21). The substitution of “fire” for the more eloquent phrase “pillars of fire” and of sullying “dust” for the more elegant expression “a pillar of a cloud” degrades the poetic language of the Bible, substituting crass terminology for its elevated diction. While Raut accuses the ironworks of insulting God, it is he, through his paraphrases of scripture, who actually does so.

In two clever sentences, Wells creates a sort of reverse-personification. His omniscient narrator describes blast furnaces, which stand “heavy and threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron,” as if they are hearts full of passion and rage; Horrocks himself, as their manager, is the mind, or soul, that controls these savage breasts. His “seething” passions and the “incessant turmoil of [the] flames” of his rage are the vengeful hearts that will burn Raut alive. 

 

Throughout descriptions of the ironworks, Wells's omniscent narrator uses phrases suggestive of violence, blood, death, and hell to depict the ironworks, the scene of Raut's eventual demise: “ghostly stunted beehive shapes,” “a ringing concussion and a rhythmic series of impacts,” “fitful flames,” “hammer beat heavily,” “palpating red stuff,” “blood-red reflections,” “succession of ghosts,” “blood-red vapour as red and hot as sun,” “white as death,” “fire writhing in the pit,” “sulphurous vapor,” “boil the blood,” and “hot suffocating flame.”

References to Gehenna, “the pit,” “pillars of cloud by day,” “pillars of fire by night,” “sin,” “sulphorous vapor” and “God” give the story a Biblical, if not an expressly Christian, context, as does Horrocks's horror at what he has done when “his sanity returned to him,” following his apparent crime of passion and he observes the effect of his vengeance, the sobbing, “inhuman, monstrous creature” that had been Raut. However, this context is undercut by Raut's reference to Jove and the omniscient narrator's allusion to “half-naked Titans.” Not only does the adulterous behavior of Raut and Mrs. Horrocks and Horrocks's seeking of vengeance against Raut suggest that religion is, for them, merely conventional, rather than sincere and devout, but Raut's use of the expression “by Jove,” like the omniscient narrator's employment of the phrase “half-naked Titans,” also implies that none of the characters is religious. Whether Horrocks' own plea to God at the end of the story is genuine or merely an expression of his horror at the sight of what he has done is open to question.

Through his conscious and deliberate selections of words and constructions of phrases throughout “The Cone,” Wells creates and maintains a style that is not only appropriate to his tale, but one which complements it at every turn, creating ironic contradictions; movement and pace; a religious context; complex characterization through allusions and personification; a sense of violence, blood, death, and hell; doubt concerning the characters' true devotion to the religious faith that is implied by the story's allusions to religious themes and theological concepts; and, overall, the unity of effect that produces a seemingly inevitable resolution of the story's central conflict. Wells' style delivers a great deal, largely thanks to his deliberate use of language—“proper words in their proper places”—a and to his own inimitable artistic genius.

Quick Tip: 12 Methods of Characterization

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

There are at least a dozen ways by which a writer can characterize his or her characters:

1. Comment directly: “John was as brave as he was reckless.”
2. Describe the character’s appearance: “John was square-faced, with penetrating, but kind eyes, which always seemed secretly amused at a private joke, but his firm jaw and thin lips belied any sense of frivolity.”
3. Use allusion, comparing a character to another familiar literary character, to a celebrity, or even to a famous cartoon or comic strip character: “John’s lantern jaw, narrow eyes, and beaked nose made him a living embodiment of the cartoon detective Dick Tracy.”
4. Show the character performing an action: “John jammed the .38 in the thug’s ribs.”
5. Use dialogue: “‘If you move, you’re dead; it’s as simple as that. I’m taking you back to face a judge and jury, to face justice,’ John said.”
6. Reveal the character’s thoughts: “The American judicial system was far from perfect, John thought, but it was better than those in countries in which a defendant was guilty until proved innocent.”
7. Describe the character’s emotions: “John was satisfied that the killer would be forced to pay for his crime, but he was sorry for the young woman he‘d killed and for the victim‘s family.”
8. Describe the character’s facial expressions and body language: “Arms crossed over his chest, an eyebrow arched, John scowled at the speaker,”
9. Let another character summarize his or her thoughts about the character who is being characterized: “Sue knew that John was a man of determination and courage, a man of honor and true grit.”
10. Let another character summarize his or her feelings about the character who is being characterized: “Sue felt safe when she was with John; she felt something else, too, something that made her blush.”
11. Link the character’s past to his or her present situation or circumstances: “Having served in combat had given John the steel backbone and granite will that would serve him so well in his present one-man vigilante war on crime.”
12. Use “props”: “Regardless of the suit or the occasion, John wore an American flag pin on his lapel.”
    

By the way, Happy New Year!

Quick Tip: Writing Means Reading

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

It seems self-evident that writers must be (not should be, but must, be) readers. Every writer worth his or her salt will tell anyone who wants to write (or, more likely, thinks he or she wants to write), that, to be successful as a writer, he or she must also read.

Stephen King, for example, reads a couple of hundred books or more every year. In fact, his reading has caused him to discover, among others, Bentley Little, a horror writer of no small talent himself. As the many blurbs he has written to help sell other writers’ works indicate, King is as much a fan of other writer’s work as readers are of his oeuvre. His love of reading is shared by his wife and fellow writer Tabitha and their children, one of whom, Joe Hill, has followed in his father’s footsteps, writing horror novels himself.

Writers should read every novel or short story (or see every movie) at least twice (although several times more is actually recommended), the first time for pleasure and to get a sense of the story’s structure, of how it is put together, and of how it attains unity. The second time, readers who would also be writers should read for technique.

How does the writer describe persons, places, and things? How does he or she create and maintain suspense? How are transitions used to tie action and scenes together? Are flashbacks used? If so, why, and, again, how are transitions used to tie past and present together? What figures of speech (metaphors, allusions, irony, symbols, and so forth), either explicit or implicit, are used in the story, and how and why are they used? Why is the action narrated in this, rather than some other, sequence? What can be gleaned from the writer’s choices of words and images? How does he or she fully involve readers in the action of the story? Why is the setting important, if not essential, to the characters, plot, conflict, setting, and theme? What is spicy or memorable about the dialogue? If the novel is a murder mystery or a detective story, what clues does the writer drop, when, where, how, and why? Which are red herrings? If the novel is a horror story, what mythos, legend, historical fact, or scientific discovery or theory grounds the paranormal or supernatural incidents or characters in the everyday world of commonsense realism, and how does the protagonist learn the truth of the monster’s origin or nature so that he or she can banish or destroy it?

Almost every writer has weaknesses as well as strengths, and both aspiring and established writers can learn from both. One of King’s weaknesses is his inclusion of extraneous scenes and exposition in his overly long plots; one of his strengths is his characterization, especially of the young. One of Little’s weaknesses is his novels’ unsatisfying, tacked-on or inconclusive endings; one of his strengths is his ability to create, maintain, and heighten suspense, often through the powers of his descriptions of menacing places. As a reader, learn to avoid the mistakes of writers and to adopt their strengths.

Then, read the novel or the short story or watch the movie again to discover all the wonderful tricks of the trade that you missed the first couple of times you read or watched the story unfold.

Writing an Effective Title

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Ideally, like a movie tagline, an effective title should snare its reader’s attention, suggest the novel’s or film’s genre, indicate the type of monster or other threat, promise enjoyment, and have aesthetic appeal. Although it is difficult for single-word titles to accomplish such a three-fold task, it is possible. Pyscho is an attention-grabber, suggesting that the movie that bears this title is apt to be a horror film, indicates that the threat is that which to be posed by a madman, and promises a display of madness and mayhem. The Exorcist gets prospective audiences’ attention, suggests horror as its film’s genre, and promises an appearance not only of an exorcist but of a demon to exorcise and of a victim from whom to cast out the devil.

In addition to accomplishing the tasks of snaring the reader’s attention, suggesting the story’s genre, and promising enjoyment, a good title should be pleasing to the ear. Some examples of titles that accomplish this goal are Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (use of alliteration), The Bride of Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (use of allusion), and Stephen King’s The Storm of the Century and Wes Cravens’ The Hills Have Eyes (use of common phrases).

A good story title may accomplish other ends as well. Although titles may not, in so many words, express what is at stake in the battle between good and evil that occurs in most horror novels and movies, it may do so. For example, The Exorcist suggests that an individual’s soul is at stake. H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds suggests that the fate of the Earth itself is at issue. The movie Independence Day implies that liberty--a value sacrosanct--to the American public which would make up a huge segment of the film’s presumed audience--is in peril.

Other titles suggest both the nature of the beast and its habitat: It! The Terror from Beyond Space, Alien, The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Most titles ignore the question of “Why?” (saving the answers, if any, to this bigger concern for the novel or movie itself) and concentrate on more immediate questions such as those which involve the agent (“Who?” or “What”?), the setting (“When?” and “Where”), and the method, process, or technique (“How?”). By reserving the answer to “Why?” for the story itself to resolve, writers maintain the suspense that, hopefully, their titles have created.

For motives related to the foreign release of films and for other reasons, the same horror movie may be released under two or more titles, offering one the opportunity to compare and contrast the titles with an eye (and mind) toward determining which seems more effective and why. Such an exercise can make one more cognizant both of more effective and less effective techniques for creating titles and may disclose the subtle differences in how various audiences perceive stories and storytelling and clues as to what may offend one audience but not another. For example, Planet of the Vampires was also released under the alternate titles of Demon Planet, Planet of Blood, Space Mutants, Terror in Space, The Haunted Planet, The Haunted World, The Outlawed Planet, The Planet of Terror, and The Planet of the Damned.

If a writer wants to pack even more into his or her title, he or she can add a subtitle.

A good way, of course, to learn what makes good titles is to study those of well-established writers and directors such as, in the field of horror, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, Bentley Little, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, James Rollins, H. G. Wells, Frank Peretti, Ray Bradbury, Alfred Hitchcock, Wes Craven, Brian De Palma, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, George Romero, and Tobe Hooper.

A lot goes into a carefully written title because a lot is expected from it.

Anaphoric Allusions

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Kenneth Burke

No matter how we parse it, evil comes from but two sources (internal or external) and consists of only two types (natural or supernatural). (It may be suggested that there is a third type of evil, namely, paranormal, but a little reflection makes it clear that, by definition, paranormal phenomena are also natural, rather than supernatural, incidents; when their effect is injurious or damaging, they are, from a human perspective, also evil.) Misery, it would seem, is not nearly as “manifold,” as Edgar Allan Poe’s “Berenice” would have us to believe.

In Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of Delight and Terror, Dennis R. Perry reminds his readers that Kenneth Burke

. . . listed several sources of the sublime, including power (fear of a superior force), difficulty (extremely complex predicament), obscurity (darkness, fogginess, confusion producing a sense of isolation and helplessness), and privation (isolation, silence, solitude, darkness) (12).

(In reference to horror fiction, “sublime” may be defined as “awe-inspiring,” “astonishing,” or as producing a sense of the uncanny, which includes experiencing a sense of terror; think Rudolph Otto.)

Certainly, Burke’s analysis is insightful and useful to writers of horror fiction, and it seems to expand (although it does not, really) the categories of evil phenomena we listed earlier. Perhaps what Burke’s explanation accomplishes, more than anything, is to characterize the elements of the sublime, or, as we call them here, the types of evil phenomena.

Having suggested the sources, the types, and the character of evil phenomena, we now turn our attention to the ways by which writers of this genre of fiction can, through the use of a limited number of synonyms, reinforce and perhaps even heighten the horrific character of a monster. (There are many other, more sophisticated and subtle ways to accomplish this same objective, of course, such as the use of literary allusions, metaphors, similes, images, irony, and so forth, but, in this post, we concentrate on one of the simplest means of reinforcing and highlighting the character of the monster.)

There may be a few others, but, listed alphabetically, these are the synonyms that come most readily to the mind, perhaps, as means by which to refer to an antecedent term that represents a monster of some kind:

animal, beast, being, demon, entity, fiend, grotesque, imp, it, monster, predator, thing

To this list of basic synonyms may be added one or two more unusual, hyphenated compound adjectives: “hell-beast” and “hell-spawn.” Stephen King (and no doubt others) has created an interesting spin-off, as it were, on the use of such compounds, the first part of which is comprised of the character’s name and the second part of which is made up of the noun “thing,” introducing the compound itself with the definite article “the.” Having forgotten King’s character, “Gary” is hereby substituted, by way of illustrating King’s technique: “the Gary-thing.”

Alfred Hitchcock

Although short, our list gives us simple, but effective, ways to smuggle in associations between our monster, whatever it is, and the fierce or bestial attributes of various other entities, thereby extending, in shorthand fashion, the ongoing sense of the monster’s monstrosity. Of course, some synonyms will be more appropriate to the type of monster stalking our story’s protagonist (and, vicariously, our reader as well) than others would be, and the author should give due consideration to the suitability and aptness of potential synonyms.

For example, if the monster is a natural force, “it” would be fitting, whereas “being” or “entity” would not be suitable, as a synonym. However, if the force were also sentient or intelligent, perhaps “being” or “entity” could be appropriate as a synonym for the monster. Paradoxically, “it” or “thing” might be appropriate even for a human being, suggesting that the person has devolved or otherwise been dehumanized and is more a monster, now, than the man or woman that he or she once was.

Edgar Allan Poe

It helps, too, to have described the monster in terms of the characteristics of the creature to which it will later be related before using a synonym to refer back to the monster thus described. For example, if, later in a sentence, paragraph, chapter, or book, an author uses the word “animal” or “beast” to refer to a monster that he or she has previously described, the effectiveness of the use of such a synonym is heightened if, when the monster was first described, it was characterized as having “sharp teeth,” “fangs,” “claws,” “talons,” “scales,” “wings,” and so forth, for the subsequent allusion to it as an “animal” or a “beast” will then be sufficient to recall to the reader these characteristics of the monster.

The use of nouns and adjectives to refer back to a monster that has been previously introduced and described may seem a slight matter, but, in the final analysis, a writer’s style, which consists, in large part, of his or her deliberate choice of this word or phrase over that, is what separates an author like Edgar Allan Poe from a lesser writer--or, as Mark Twain put it, lightning from the lightning bug, and horror, like all other genres of fiction, is built of words and the choices authors make in using them.

Source

Perry, Dennis. Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of Delight and Terror. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2003. Print.

The Rhetoric of Emotion

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In one of his novels, Mark Twain, at the outset, swears off the use of weather to indicate or symbolize his characters’ emotional states, referring those who feel a need for such effects to the appendix of weather conditions descriptions he’s added for this purpose. As always, Twain wrote this notice with tongue firmly planted in cheek. However, his irony does call attention to screenplays’ dependency upon this cliché to accomplish the same effects as the writers in (and well before) Twain’s time--namely, to represent characters’ feelings. Seldom seen is the horror film that doesn’t feature, along with its creature, at least one terrific thunderstorm to make viewers tremble, and lightning remains the primary means, perhaps, by which revelation is indicated.

 

However, there are other, more subtle, ways by which to indicate terror and its fellow feelings. One is to use an emotive character. He (or, more often, she) will be not only sensitive and reactive but also very emotional. She will scream at the sight of a shadow, weep at the death of a fly, shriek at a drop of anything that even resembles blood, and gasp at the sudden appearance of anything from a moth or a bat to a ghost or a vampire. By keeping the reader apprised of this character’s emotional responses, the writer suggests that the reader should feel the same way about whatever has seized her attention at any given moment as she is said to feel.

There is no music in books. The best they can do is mention that there is music playing and maybe list the lyrics to a song, real or imagined (make the song fictitious to avoid copyright infringements!). Therefore, the use of melodies to suggest sorrow, joy, and all the sentiments and passions between these two extremes is impossible for the writer of fiction that depends upon the page rather than the screen for its display. The writer of fiction that appears upon the printed page must adopt subtler and more difficult tactics.

 

Symbolism is used. Metaphor is employed, and simile. Allusion is used. Description is employed. Juxtaposition is used. Contrast is employed, and comparison. Parallelism is trotted out. Ambiguity is unleashed. Readers are shown, rather than told, although, at times, they are told as well. Repetition is employed. Irony is made to strut the page. It is rhetoric to the rescue in service of the portrayal of perception, interpretation, and emotion. Anyone who wants to depict emotion in fiction, whether on the screen or on the page (but especially on the page) must master these rhetoric techniques. To start, one is well advised to know the meanings of these terms, which is the purpose of this post:

• Symbol = “any object, typically material, which is meant to represent another.”
• Metaphor = “The use of a word or phrase to refer to something that it isn’t, implying a similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described, and without the words ‘like’ or ‘as.’”
• Simile = “a figure of speech in which one thing is compared to another, generally using like or as.” Allusion = “Indirect reference; a hint; a reference to something supposed to be known, but not explicitly mentioned; a covert indication.”
• Description = Concrete illustration of a person, place, or thing by an appeal to one or more of the five physical senses.
• Juxtaposition = “A placing or being placed in nearness or contiguity, or side by side, often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences.”
• Contrast = difference.
• Comparison = similarity
• Parallelism = “agreement or similarity; resemblance; correspondence; analogy; likeness.”
• Ambiguity = “something liable to more than one interpretation, explanation or meaning, if that meaning etc cannot be determined from its context.”
• Repetition = “the act or an instance of repeating or being repeated.”
• Irony = “a statement that, when taken in context, may actually mean the opposite of what is written literally; the use of words expressing something other than their literal intention.”

Note: Except for the definitions of “contrast,” “similarity,” and “description,” these definitions are taken from Allwords.com, an “English Dictionary - With Multi-Lingual Search”

Of course, it is one thing to know the meanings of words; it is another thing entirely to learn to master the concepts to which they point. A dictionary cannot teach us to do that. To learn the techniques, we must apprentice ourselves to the masters and learn from observing them at work. For example, to learn to use symbolism effectively, we might study the works of Stephen Crane, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain. Ambiguity might be best learned from the example of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Proverbs can teach more than morality; Proverbs can also teach us how to employ parallelism, both complementary and antithetical. Poe is a master of symbolism, too, but he is also gifted in the art of juxtaposition and repetition. There are many masters from which to learn. We have already learned a preliminary lesson, however: a knowledge of the meaning of words is merely a beginning. To become adepts, we must become students of the adept.