Sources of Incongruity as Inspirations for Horror Plots

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

I've written about movie misconceptions, bizarre explosions, Viking inventions and innovations, disciplined photojournalists, horrific acts that are legal in some countries, the first Christmas card, strange phenomena that have stumped experts, famous writers' accounts of public executions, strange and mysterious islands, Halloween pranks gone awry, an innovations coming soon to a mall near you, among many other topics.

My writing has been eclectic, to say the least, although most of my articles have been, like many of my novels and short stories, concerned with the bizarre, the grotesque, and the exceptional. In fact, the site for which I wrote most of my articles specifically requests such fare. To sell, I worked out an approach, listing sources of incongruity from which to draw ideas for such stories.

It's occurred to me that these same sources of incongruity can help writers of horror fiction develop premises for novels and short stories. Here, without further ado, is the list of my sources for incongruity, together with, by way of example, a few of the titles of the articles I derived from them.

Polarity Pendulum: going from one extreme to another: passengers who became pilots midair, lost and found objects, disasters that sparked new safety regulations. 

Prediction Regarding Everyday Life:  futuristic visions of everyday places

Recent Discovery: recently discovered animal species, recently discovered secret caches

Secrets: secret laboratories, secret caches

Incongruous Placement of Objects or Event Location: bodies at the bottoms of wells, objects found in porta potties, underwater rescues, creatures living in people's ears

Ridiculous + Sublime: elaborate gingerbread houses

Great Waste: government boodoggles

Unusal Purpose: objects made from human skulls, dioramas, dollhouses that aren't for play, items made from human corpses

Bizarre Role: bizarre positions in royal courts, stained-glass windows (with various unusual purposes)

Mysterious Phenomena: mystifying mountains, occultists, bizarre skeletons

Sophisticated Early Technology: early special effects, antique prostheses

Precursors: cabinets of curiosity (precursor to museums)

Misrepresentations: deliberate historical errors and misrepresentations, deliberate map errors, accidental map errors

Confusion of Categories: insect imposters

Irony: a hospital stay can make you sicker

Threats to Safety: snake invasions

By categorizing the types of incongruity, a writer can tap a number of sources, ensuring that his or her writing doesn't bog down with only one or two such sources, becoming predictable and less interesting than it could (and should) be. Simply select one of the above categories as your inspiration and develop a story along the lines the selected category suggests.



 

The First Three Closing Paragraphs in “Gideon’s Sword”: A Study in Motivation

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

An earlier series of posts examined Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s use of opening chapters in their latest Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast novel, Fever Dream. In this series, I will take a look at the authors’ use of the first three closing paragraphs in their first Gideon Crew novel, Gideon’s Sword. Since I won’t be providing more than the most cursory and pointed chapter synopses, readers who are interested in how this thriller arrives at these closing paragraphs will have to read the book, which is unlikely to be the best thing that ever happened to them, but will likely be a fairly satisfying experience.

Here’s the closing paragraph of chapter 1:

“Dad!” he screamed into the grass, trying to claw back to his feet as the weight of the world piled up on his shoulders, but he’d seen those feet move, his father was alive, he would wake up and all would be well (7).

At this point in the novel, Gideon is twelve years old; he has just seen his father shot, numerous times--has seen him, in effect, assassinated by soldiers as he sought to surrender, hands up, having released his hostage. His screaming of “Dad” reinforces the father-son relationship that the chapter established earlier, and young Gideon is portrayed almost as though he is an animal: he is belly down, in the “grass,” screaming as he seeks to “claw” his way “back to his feet.” A pitiful figure, the boy is made even more so by his hope (vain hope, readers will surmise) that his father, who has been shot multiple times, will survive. This paragraph brings the chapter’s action to a climax and motivates readers to read on. It also characterizes Gideon, showing his love for his father, his desperation, and his naiveté.

As chapter 1 ends with the dying of Gideon’s father, chapter 2 concludes with the demise of his mother, who has extracted from her son, who is now twenty-two years old, the promise that Gideon will avenge his father’s murder:

Those were her last words, words that would resonate endlessly in his mind. You’ll figure out a way (13).

Her words, reiterated by the omniscient narrator in italics, become important to the authors’ characterization of Gideon as a young man who can and does perform the impossible, not only in avenging his father’s murder, but also in saving the world--or, at least, the United States. His love for his parents motivates him to plan, to scheme, to strategize, long-term and on the fly, persevering against all odds until he succeeds in attaining his objective. The deaths of his parents, whom he loves, fuels his resourcefulness, his perseverance, and his occasional ruthlessness.

Chapter 3 ends with a single-sentence conclusion:

There was only one way to find out (17).

Gideon has developed a specialized search engine that tracks hits concerning the classified document that his father had written for the government, and, during this chapter, he discovers that a hit has occurred “in a table of contents released to the National Security Archives at George Washington University” concerning his father’s “still-classified” report, “A Critique of the Thresher Discrete Logarithm Encryption Standard EVP-4: A Theoretical Back-Door Cryptanalysis Attack Strategy Using a Group of y-Torsion Points of an Elliptic Curve Characteristic y.” To most readers, myself included, this title is apt to sound impressive, despite its unintelligibility, and this effect, perhaps, is all that Preston and Child intend. For his part, despite his own mathematical aptitude, Gideon is unable to understand all of the document, although he realizes that “this [may] be the memo that General Tucker had supposedly destroyed” and the one that his father had been authored in criticism of the “Thresher” logarithm that got him killed. Given the motivations of his love for his parents and his desire to honor his mother by avenging his father’s murder, readers are likely to be convinced that Gideon will do whatever he needs to do to accomplish his mission now that he has what may be the lead he has long sought. If there is “only one way to find out” whether this is the “brass ring” he’s been seeking, readers will likely believe that Gideon will do it, whatever it is.

Note: To further strengthen Gideon’s motivation to serve his country, even after he has avenged his father’s murder, he is informed that he has but one year left to live, for he is dying of a “vein of Galen aneurismal malformation,” or “an abnormal tangle of arteries and veins in the brain involving the great cerebral vein of Galen,” a “usually congenital and usually asymptomatic” condition which is both inoperable and fatal, usually within a year or two (72-73). Given this veritable death sentence, Gideon is told, he can either “spend your last year amusing yourself, living life to the fullest, cramming it in till the end” or “working for your country” (75). That Gideon chooses the latter alternative ennobles him to readers and reinforces his motivation to do whatever it takes to accomplish his goals and to serve his country.

Stephen King Meets Niccolo Machiavelli “Under the Dome”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Big Jim Rennie, observing his dejected townspeople, comments upon the military’s failed attempt to blast through the dome covering Chester’ Mill, Maine, with a pair of Cruise missiles, his remark sounding like something critics of President Obama might say concerning the real-world commander in chief: “Take a good look, pal--this is what incompetency, false hope, and too much information gets you.”

The federal government has failed to deliver the citizens of the small town from their captivity, just as, in real life, Obama has failed to deliver the citizens of the southern United States from the effects of British Petroleum’s Gulf Oil leak. The crisis in Chester’s Mill is one that Big Jim means to capitalize upon, just as Rahm Emmanuel advised President Obama to take full advantage of every crisis, lest it go to “waste.”

However, there is another lens through which to interpret the political machinations in Stephen King’s latest novel, one provided by non other than the Machiavellian mastermind Niccolo Machiavelli himself, who, in The Discourses (1519), contends that monarchy devolves into tyranny; aristocracy, into oligarchy; and “popular government,” such as democracy, into licentiousness. In fact, these dissolutions occur, again and again, in a “circle,” monarchy-tyranny giving way to aristocracy-oligarchy, aristocracy-oligarchy succumbing to democracy-licentiousness, and so on, continuously, unless and until the three types of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are included in one and the same system, each a check and a balance to the other: Presumably, the American founding fathers had such a strategy in mind when they established the United States federal government, wherein a president fulfills the role of the monarch, the congress is a stand-in for the aristocracy, and the “popular government” is made up of the masses.

Applying this formula to the government of Chester’s Mill, Maine, Big Jim Rennie is the tyrant, and Colonel Barbara, Julie Shumway, Brenda Perkins, and their followers represent the aristocracy whom Machiavelli characterizes as “those citizens who, surpassing the others in grandeur of soul, in wealth, and in courage,” are unwilling to “submit to the outrages and excesses” of the tyrant and who gather unto themselves “the masses” to “rid themselves” of the tyrant. However, there is a transitional period between the overthrow of a tyranny and the subsequent government “in strict accordance with the laws. . . established” by the victorious aristocracy. This is the period of time with which Under the Dome is concerned--the transitional period wherein the aristocrats begin to assert themselves against the town’s tyrant. The allegiance of “the masses” is divided between the tyrant and the aristocracy and subject to vacillation.

Such is the case in Chester’s Mill. Some retain loyalty to Big Jim Rennie, the tyrant; others have formed an allegiance with Colonel Dale Barbara, Julie Shumway, and Brenda Perkins. For example, when Big Jim orders Barbie to discontinue the video feed from the expected point of the missiles’ impact to television screens upon which the masses crowding the interior of Dippy’s nightclub hope to see for themselves the effect of the federal government’s attempt to demolish the dome and rescue them, Barbie puts the issue to the people: “The video deal out here on Little Bitch Road is entirely my responsibility,” he tells the crowd, “and as you may have gathered, there has been a difference of opinion between myself and Selectman Rennie about whether or not to continue the feed.” The crowd is not pleased to hear that the official wants the feed discontinued: “This time the ripple was louder and not happy,” and Will Freeman, “owner and operator of the local Toyota dealership (and no friend of James Rennie) spoke directly to the TV. ‘Leave it alone, Jimmy, or there’s gonna be a new Selectman in The Mill by the end of the week’” (338).

The people are behind Barbie at the moment, but Big Jim is counting upon them returning to his fold if the missiles fail to demolish the dome, and, when the missiles do fail to liberate the townspeople, it seems that the wily old politician is correct (as is Barbie, for that matter), for “those who had watched the Air Force’s failed attempt to punch through the Dome left Dipper’s pretty much as Barbie had imagined: slowly, with their heads down, not talking much. . . some crying.” Moreover, their rebelliousness seems to have evaporated: “Three town police cars were parked across the road from Dipper’s, and half a dozen cops stood leaning against them, ready for trouble. But there was no trouble” (351). Disappointed at the federal government’s failure to rescue them from the crisis, the townspeople are dejected, demoralized, and despondent, rather than rebellious, disobedient, and defiant. One suspects they will be more amenable to whatever Big Jim suggests in the immediate future. Score: Tyranny, 1; Aristocracy, 0.

When Barbie earlier suggests that Julia run against Big Jim when they “call for elections,” it is clear that she doesn’t underestimate the power that the tyrannical selectman exercises over the town and its residents. She regards Barbie “pityingly,” as she asks him, “Do you think Jim Rennie is going to allow elections as long as the Dome is in place? What world are you living in, my friend?’” Barbie responds with the courage and resolve of the aristocrat who’s had enough and means to marshal “the masses” against the tyrant: “Don’t underestimate the will of the town, Julia.”

The battle lines are clearly drawn, with the tyrant Big Jim Rennie and his cronies on one side; the aristocracy, comprised of Colonel Dale Barbara, newspaper owner and editor Julia Shumway, Third Selectman Andrea Grinnell, and the police chief’s widow Brenda Perkins, on the other; and the townspeople in the middle. Machiavelli wrote the ending of the story in 1519. According to him, tyranny will be overthrown by the aristocracy, which, in due time, will itself devolve into an oligarchy, the circle circling onward forevermore unless and until the checks and balances of a three-branched system of monarchy-aristocracy-and-popular government is established.

It will be interesting to see whether Machiavelli’s analysis is borne out by the denouement of Under the Dome.

Quick Tip: Redirect the Reader

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

I learned this trick from my sister, although, I suppose, other mothers and grandmothers may also know and use it. Certainly, mystery writers employ it. Authors of horror fiction may find the method useful, too. I call it redirection. Elsewhere, I’ve written about both misdirection (the use of red herrings and irony, dramatic, situational, or verbal, to frustrate readers’ expectations and keep them guessing) and indirection (the use of nonverbal, often figurative, means of communication to establish mood and intensify suspense).

  

Redirection is different. Here’s how a mother or a grandmother might use redirection. Little Johnny or Susie is angry or sad. To refocus his or her attention off of him- or herself or his or her predicament, mom or grandma refocuses the child’s attention, redirecting him or her to something else. “Why don’t we bake some cookies?” she might ask or suggest, “Let’s see what SpongeBob is up to!”

 

In mysteries, writers, especially when they are dropping clues or red herrings, often redirect their readers’ attention by focusing it upon a glamorous female character, having another character engage the protagonist in an offbeat or otherwise interesting conversation, creating a disturbance, or otherwise engaging the readers’ attention.

 

Horror story writers can benefit from employing redirection, too. For example, suppose one is offering a scientific explanation for a monster whose very nature or existence is of a paranormal or a supernatural character. Obviously, as such, its nature is beyond scientific explanation. The writer is caught between the rock of plausibility and unbelievably, so, soon after the scientific explanation begins (or ends), the writer could redirect the readers’ attention, perhaps by the arrival of the monster itself, a hysterical character who rushes in to announce that the monster has attacked and killed again, or an emergency communiqué from a government official.

 

Redirection works for mom. It works for grandma. It works for mystery writers. It will also work for authors of horror stories, including you.

Quality Television--It’s Back!

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Occasionally, television transcends itself and offers a series that is worth watching, even in the conglomerate science fiction-fantasy-horror genre: Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville. Lately, the Syfy Channel has done it again, with not one, but two, series: Eureka and Warehouse 13.


Created by Andrew Cosby and Jamie Pagli, Eureka premiered on July 18, 2006, and focuses upon its setting, the small town of Eureka, Oregon. The town (like Mercury, Nevada) is owned and operated by the U. S. Government, as a combination home, laboratory, and think tank for its residents, most of whom are geniuses and scientists who work for Global Dynamics, a research facility that has invented, discovered, or engineered most of the cutting-edge technological marvels released and distributed to the public over the past half century.

The plotlines for the episodes are much the same: use or abuse of experimental research causes a catastrophe that is remedied by the town’s scientists and its sheriff, Jack Carter. The lawman stumbled upon Eureka as he was transporting his runaway daughter Zoe back home to her mother’s residence in Los Angeles and, when one of the town’s many mysterious accidents injured the sheriff, Carter was chosen as his replacement. The show is filmed mostly in Canada’s British Columbia, although its city hall is Ashland, Oregon’s, city hall and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the source of Global Dynamic’s exterior shots.


Warehouse 13 was created by Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran and executive Battlestar Galactica co-producer Jane Espenson and D. Brent Mote. Two U. S. Secret Service agents, Myka Bering and Peter Lattimer, chase down supernatural artifacts, collect them, and deposit them in a secret government warehouse (the Warehouse 13 of the series’ title) for safekeeping. The agents are supervised by Arthur Nielsen, whose nemesis is James McPherson, a former Warehouse 13 agent who now seems to be freelancing. Twelve similar warehouses preceded Warehouse 13, each of which was located, in its day, in the world’s most powerful nation. Designed by Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and M. C. Escher, Warehouse 13 is located in South Dakota.

Among the artifacts that Bering and Lattimer have recovered are a stone that controls those whose blood touches it (“Aztec Bloodstone”), an electronic stun gun (“Tesla Gun”), a boomerang football (“Rugby Football”), a mask that allows its user to breathe underwater (“Underwater Breathing Mask”), a self-propelled vehicle (“Bio-Energy Vehicle”), an aircraft lost in the Bermuda Triangle (“Training Flight 22”), a billfold that can transport dead souls (“Harry Houdini’s Wallet”), a kettle that can grant some wishes but not others (“Wishing Kettle”), a clock-stopping calendar (“Mayan Calendar”), a song that creates a sense of euphoria (“Euphoria Record”), an Alice in Wonderland-style looking-glass (“Lewis Carroll's Mirror”), a camera that transforms its subject into a still, two-dimensional, black-and-white photograph (“Still Camera”), and a host of other objects. Although the artifacts are not all as imaginative or ingenious as one might wish, enough of them remain at large, one may presume, to fuel many future installments of the inventive series.

More information about both shows is available at Syfy’s official website.

Horror Subsets

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In Terror Television: American Series, 1970-1999's "Commentary" on The X-Files, John Kenneth Muir offers a helpful classification of the show’s “subsections of horror,” breaking the types of antagonists that the FBI’s Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully face each week into ten groups:

1. “Trust No One,” which involves “secret experiments” that “the U. S. government. . . is conducting on its own people”
2. “Freaks of Nature,” which presents “mutants and monsters,” some of which are “just beasts,” others of which are “evolutionary nightmares,” and still others of which are “genetic mutants”
3. “Foreign Fears,” comprised of “ancient ethnic legends” which happen “to have a basis in fact”
4. “From the Dawn of Time,” featuring prehistoric “creatures” which “reassert themselves in present time”
5. “Aliens!,” or “extraterrestrial creatures”
6. “God’s Masterplan,” which is replete with “elements of Christian religion/mythology” which are “explored as ‘real’ concepts”
7. “The Serial Killer”
8. “Psychic Phenomena,” such as “astral projection. . . clairvoyance. . . soul transmission,
   and. . . the effect of heavenly bodies on human bodies”
9. “The Mytharc”/”Conspiracy,” comprised of “the history of the government’s association with aliens”
10. Tried-and-trued “Standards” of the horror genre, which is populated by “the vampire. . . the werewolf. . . ghosts. . . crazy computers. . . matters of time. . . succubi. . . cannibalism. . . tattoos. . . Evil dolls. . . and the like” (353).

“In addition to these ten plots,” Muir observes, “The X-Files has also showed a commendable dedication to asking the great questions of our time, and telling stories about the most puzzling mysteries humankind has yet faced,” so that an eleventh “subsection of horror” discernable in the series is the episodes that center upon “The Mysteries” (354).

Muir’s categorization of the types of threats that the series’ protagonists face is interesting in itself, but it is also interesting because it represents an approach that writers of horror may adopt for themselves in the writing and development of their own oeuvres. A writer who writes a series, whether of television episodes, novels, or even short stories that are unified by a theme, as those, for example of Ray Bradbury and H. P. Lovecraft sometimes are, can take a leaf from Muir’s classification of the “subsections” common to The X-Files’ exploration of the horror genre.

Just as a literary genre tends to develop stock characters and characteristic settings, it also tends to evolve typical themes and situations. These situations, in fact, can, and should, support the themes, as those of The X-Files do. For example, Muir assigns the following X-Files episodes to the “Trust No One” category: “Eve,” “Ghost in the Machine,” “Blood,” “Sleepless,” “Red Museum,” “F. Emasculata,” “Soft Light,” “Wetwired,” “Zero Sum,” “The Pine Bluff Variant,” “Drive,” and “Dreamland (I & II)” (353). Taken together, he says, these episodes express “paranoia” which results from the government’s violations of “its sacred trust to represent the people,” as its agents seem “capable of any atrocity, including murder and cover-ups” (353). Eugenics experiments, bioengineered disease, experiments with dark matter, mind control, bee-delivered plague, and the like are enough to make paranoia a rational, rather than an irrational, response to the an unscrupulous government that is clearly out of control.

Muir points out eleven sources for horror; others might be space, crackpot theories or visions, the biochemical foundations of animal and human existence, arcane and mystical traditions and lore, religious cults, alternate histories and universes, conspiracies and cover-ups, dangerous self-fulfilling prophecies, solipsism, actual unsolved mysteries of crime or history (what really became of the Lost Colony of Roanoke?) and, always, of course, the seven deadly sins.

Everyday Horrors: Bureaucrats

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Come on, come on, come on, now, touch me, babe.
Can’t you see that I am not afraid?

-- The Doors

Caution: The Yuck Factor of this paragraph is 8.8 on a scale of 10! A couple of years back, upon visiting a restroom at a fast-food restaurant, I witnessed an employee exit a toilet stall. He didn’t so much as pause at the sink on his way out. Sure enough, I saw him behind the counter, in the food preparation area, and I promptly notified his manger, who was chewing him out (but should have fired him on the spot) as I left, making a mental note never to frequent this establishment again.

In public restrooms, we put paper sanitary shields on toilet seats before using the commode (although we’re not sure how effective a barrier to germs a thin layer of paper really is) and most of us use a paper towel as a makeshift glove before turning the door handle to let ourselves out of the facility (although we’re not sure how effective a barrier to germs a thin layer of paper really is).

Caution: The Yuck Factor of this paragraph is 9.8 on a scale of 10! The ladies among Chillers and Thrillers' vast audience of readers and writers may not realize this, as most of them are unlikely to have entered many men’s rooms, especially when men have been present within these rooms, but many men do not wash their hands after urinating! They simply walk past the waiting sinks as if neither these fixtures, hand soap, nor paper towels are there. (Fortunately, with a few exceptions, such as the one mentioned in the first paragraph, men do wash their hands after performing the other restroom task.) What’s frightening about men with poor hygiene habits is that not washing one’s hands after urinating is a known transmission route for hepatitis, a particularly nasty disease. (Mothers, do us all a favor, and teach your boys to wash up after using the toilet or the urinal, please!)

We are all victims of systems beyond our control.

-- The Jefferson Airplane

In more innocent days, we used to believe that the government (a) cared about us, (b) was looking out for our welfare, and (c) is competent. We’ve since learned the truth that the government (a) cares only about our tax dollars, (b) is looking out for its own welfare, and (c) is incompetent. In the old days, the government sometimes subjected its citizens to bizarre medical or scientific studies, as when, during the Tuskegee Experiment, black American males who’d become infected with syphilis went untreated so that doctors could study the progress of disease--up to the point, at least, that it killed the subjects.

Now, as far as anyone knows, the government isn’t seeking our death and destruction by any such active neglect (except by its refusal to protect and defend its own borders, which may be creating a resurgence of diseases that the medical establishment once had on the ropes).

The government's incompetence and indifference to its responsibilities causes many significant and dangerous problems, such as the possible infection of 40,000 patients of a handful of medical clinics in Las Vegas, Reno, and Henderson, Nevada, in which medical personnel reused syringes while administering anesthetics to endoscopic and other patients. It turns out that, in many cases, the Clark County Health Department may have been remiss in inspecting these facilities. A lawsuit is in the works, but cash awards and prison time for the doctors and nurses (if, indeed, any are punished in such a fashion) is little comfort to someone who may have been given hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or HIV along with their joy juice.

Science fiction and horror writers have warned readers of the amoral and immoral conduct of government officials and mad scientists for years, but many have supposed such fictional accounts of human greed, sloth, and the other so-called deadly sins inherent in such behavior to have been purely imaginary. Such indifference, arrogance, and greed might provide fodder for suspenseful fiction, many thought, but the U. S. of A. is not, and never will be, Nazi Germany. Americans, in government offices and in scientific laboratories, have morals. They are principled. They have consciences. Doctors even swear to “do no harm.” The terrors unleashed in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in H. G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods or The Island of Dr. Moreau, in Robin Cook’s Coma, in Stephen King’s Firestarter and The Stand, in Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, in Douglas Preston’s and Lincoln Child’s Mount Dragon, in James Rollins’ Amazonia, and the many other novels devoted to bureaucratic and scientific insanity and malice couldn’t happen here, not in America.
In most cases, of course, this is true, if for no other reason than that these novels, for the most part, depict terrors and horrors that remain beyond the possibility of science and technology.

For the moment, at least.


“Everyday Horrors: Bureaucrats” is part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured on Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.