How To Create Monstrous Monsters

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

How to create monstrous monsters is a question that pretty much all horror writers will face, usually sooner than later. It’s one of the many challenges that sets us apart from writers of say, romance fiction (unless the leading man is really, really undesirable).

So how do we create monstrous monsters?

One effective way is to follow the lead of our ancient predecessors, the makers of myth who lived, as Edgar Allan Poe might say, “many and many a year ago,” although not necessarily “in a kingdom by the sea.”

In an early attempt to demythologize mythical beasts, the basilisk was once thought to have resulted from a misshapen egg laid by a cock--that’s right, the rooster, not the hen (the beast was also known as a cockatrice). Mistaking the odd egg for one of its own, a maternal cobra hatched it, it was said. Even at the time, however, a detractor found this explanation more incredible than the mythical beast itself.

Since then, explanations have become more believable.

Scientists think that some mythical creatures (many of which are monsters) are based upon real-life counterparts.

Some, they say, are based on misinterpretations of fossilized dinosaur bones.

According to their view, the ancients, believing the skeletons were the remains of animals that had died later rather than sooner (and having no idea that the earth was millions of years old), mistook these giant skeletons for creatures who’d gasped their last gasp relatively recently. If there was one such creature, the early mythmakers believed, there were likely to have been--and might still be--others lurking nearby.

As the American Museum of Natural History’s “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids” points out, the notion of the one-eyed Cyclops could have derived from the discovery of a wooly mammoth’s skull, its more-or-less centralized nasal cavity mistaken for the socket of the creature’s single eye.

Likewise, the museum’s article observes, the griffin might have been based upon the skeletal remains of a Protoceratops, and the roc might have been inspired by the discovery of the fossilized bones of the gigantic, prehistoric Aepyornis, native to Madagascar, which attained a height of 10 feet and tipped the scales at about half a ton--and from the Mongol emperor Kubla Khan’s mistaking a palm frond for a feather of the fabled bird.

Other mythological monsters are thought to have derived from similar real-life lineages. Centaurs are believed to have been fanciful descriptions of nomad horsemen, the likes of whom ancient Greeks had never seen before. The many-headed hydra that Hercules, with a little--all right, a lot--of help from his nephew Iolaus, killed could have been a personification of an unruly river delta that the Greeks were able, finally, to bring under their control. The Gorgons, Ms. Medusa included, are thought to be based upon images of a snake-headed woman’s stone face. A likeness of this mask was carved into warriors’ shields.

Live Science’s “The Surprising Realities of Mythical Beasts” offers similar origins for several of the monsters of myth. Mermaids may have been born of sailors’ loneliness and longing for the womenfolk they’d left at home and a little wishful thinking that allowed them to mistake sea creatures for facsimiles of their lady loves. No less an adventurer than Christopher Columbus mistook a trio of scantily clad manatees for mermaids, albeit a rather unattractive and manly sort of maids. From a distance, they might have looked inviting enough--to a sailor far from shore--but, closer, they were “not as pretty,” the mariner complained, and “somehow in the face," the bewhiskered sea beasts resembled men.

In a related article, “Top 10 Beasts and Dragons: How Reality Made Myth,” the same website explains the origin of the dragon. This mythical monster is based upon actual reptiles such as alligators, lizards (frilled dragons, bearded dragons, flying dragons, Komodo dragons, megalania prisca, pterosaurs, seahorse-like sea dragons), and a snake (the python). Additionally, comets, with their long tails, flashing across the nighttime skies, may have been interpreted as dragons in flight.

So, how does one create monstrous monsters? The same way the ancients did. Look at something that seems as if it could be frightening if it were to be misunderstood as being something else, far more threatening. See it anew. Misinterpret it, and, in the process, envision it as wild, antisocial, powerful, threatening, and, most likely, as having bad breath. Ask yourself, for example, what kind of monster California freeways might make or imagine a not-so-innocent dust mite a thousand times its normally microscopic size. Viola! You’ve created a monster!

Sources Cited:

“Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids.” American Museum of Natural History.
“The Surprising Realities of Mythical Beasts.” Live Science.

Bond, James Bond: A Lesson Concerning the "Inversions and Variations" of a Plot Formula

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

James Bond, as Ian Fleming envisioned him.

Note: In this and a the two previous posts, I summarize and comment upon essays concerning horror fiction that appear in Gender, Language, and Myth, edited by Glenwood Irons (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). Although some of the claims in these essays seem far-fetched (to me, at least), others appear to have some validity and even some practical application. In any case, readers of Chillers and Thrillers are likely to find that these synopses offer unusual takes on the theory and practice of writing horror fiction.

According to Umberto Eco, Ian Fleming used nine plot elements to structure every one of his James Bond novels. The only real difference between any two of the books was the order in which their author presented these elements: “The scheme is invariable in the sense that all the elements are always present in every novel. . . . That the moves always be in the same sequence is not imperative” (161).

Eco’s analysis posits three recurring characters: Bond himself, the villain whom Bond defeats, and the woman whom Bond seduces. Some of the elements of Fleming’s plots themselves contain alternative possibilities of development, so that the nine can be presented with some variety that is additional to that which is supplied by Fleming’s changing the order of their presentation from one novel to the next.

Using letters of the alphabet, Eco lists “the invariable scheme” as consisting of:

A M. . . gives a task to Bond.
B Villain. . . appears to Bond (perhaps in vicarious forms).
C Bond. . . gives a first check to Villain or Villain gives first check to Bond.
D Woman . . . shows herself to Bond.
E Bond takes Woman (possesses her or begins her seduction).
F Villain captures Bond (with or without Woman, or at different moments).
G Villain tortures Bon (with or without Woman).
H Bond beats Villain (kills him, or kills his representative or helps at their killing).
I Bond, convalescing, enjoys Woman, whom he then loses (“Narrative Structures in Fleming,” 161).

“The invariable scheme” that Eco detects in Fleming’s fiction represents a formula.

Eco’s analysis of Fleming’s plot structure allows him to summarize the plots of various novels simply by referring to the elements by the letters with which he designates them, in the order in which these elements appear in any of the novelist’s works. For example, Eco says,

A minute detailing of the ten novels under consideration might yield several examples of a set scheme we might call ABCDEFGHI (for example, Dr. No), but often there are inversions and variations . . . For example, Goldfinger presents a different scheme, BCDAECDFGHEHI, where it is possible to notice repeated moves: two encounters and three games played with the Villain, two seductions and three encounters with women, a first flight of the Villain after his defeat and his ensuing death, and so on (161).

Likewise, the length at which Fleming treats any of the elements of his plot are apt to differ from one novel to the next. In From Russia with Love, for example, Eco discerns both “a long prologue in Russia. . . [and] a long interlude in which Kerim and Krilenku appear and the latter is defeated” (161-162) among shorter treatments of other elements.

Additionally, to further vary the typical elements, Fleming sometimes includes several “side issues” in his books, Eco observes. In Diamonds Are Forever, Fleming includes such “side issues” as a “long, curious prologue that introduces one to diamond-smuggling in South Africa”; a “detailed journey by air” during which, “in the background two vicarious Villains” appear and there is an “imperceptible duel between hunters and prey”; a “meeting with Felix Leiter, who brings Bond up to date about the Spangs”; a “long interval at Saratoga at the races,” where. “to help Leiter, Bond, in fact, ‘damages’ the Spangs”; “appearances of vicarious Villains in the mud bath and punishment of the treacherous jockey, anticipating symbolically the torturing of Bond; the whole Saratoga episode” and Bond’s decision “to go to Las Vegas” followed by a “detailed description of the district”; and numerous other such incidents, all while the standard elements are in play (162-165).

Despite such “inversions and variations” and such “side issues,” however, “the true and original story remains immutable,” Eco argues, “and suspense is stabilized curiously on the basis of a sequence of events that are entirely predetermined” (165). Each plot, in essence, Eco contends, “may be summarized as follows”:

Bond is sent to a given place to avert a ‘science-fiction’ plan by a monstrous individual of uncertain origin and definitely not English who, making use of his organizational or productive activity, not only earns money but [also] helps the cause of the enemies of the West. In facing this monstrous being, Bond meets a woman who is dominated by him and frees her from her past, establishing with her an erotic relationship interrupted by capture by the Villain and by torture. But Bond defeats the Villain, who dies horribly, and rests from his great efforts in the arms of the woman, though he is destined to lose her (165).

Fleming’s technique works, despite its limitations and predictability, Eco suggests, for the same reason that a game or an athletic competition works” “The reader finds himself immersed in a game of which he knows the pieces [Bond, the Villain, and the Woman] and the rules [the nine plot elements]--and perhaps the outcome--and draws pleasure simply from following the minimal variations by which the victor realizes his objective” (166).

Eco’s analysis of Fleming’s plot structure has application for horror writers who employ the plot elements that, in a previous post, I identify as typical for one standard horror storyline, in which--
In previous posts, including “The Calm Before the Storm,” I advance the claim that the general formula for the horror story consists of these phases:

1. There is a period of normality, or everydayness.
2. A bizarre incident occurs.
3. The initial bizarre incidents gives rise to a series of additional bizarre incidents.
4. The protagonist learns the cause of these incidents.
5. The protagonist uses his or her newfound knowledge to end the incidents.

Eco’s analysis of Fleming’s structure and the “inversions and variations” that James Bond’s creator interjects into his own nine-element scheme suggests ways by which horror writers can expand, rearrange, lengthen, and strengthen their own basic formula. For example, rather than the traditional 12345 organization, the horror story formula’s plot elements might be arranged as 1234512345. Although an arrangement of 451231345 is somewhat unusual, it is not impossible. Stephen King’s novel It has, in fact, a similar structure. After battling a protean monster as children, the protagonists (except one, who commits suicide) return to the hometown of their childhood, as adults, to take on the entity again, hoping, this time, to destroy it forever. The complete story is thus made up of these two smaller stories. Beowulf consists of three stories: the hero’s slaying of Grendel, his slaying of Grendel’s mother, and his slaying of the dragon that also slays him and thus takes the form of 1234512512345.