Lawrence Block and the "Biter Bit" Plot

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Lawrence Block, who started his career as an author by writing erotic pulp fiction novels under such pen names as Jill Emerson, Paul Kavanagh, Sheldon Lord, Andrew Shaw, Don Holliday, Lesley Evans, Lee Duncan, Anne Campbell Clark, and Ben Christopher, wrote, on average, one of these “sex novels,” as they're known in the trade, per month. He's also written many short stories, typically completing one in a single evening or, sometimes, over a weekend, for which reason he calls one collection of his short stories and “novelettes” One Night Stands and Lost Weekends. The anthology contains 25 “one night stands” and three “lost weekends.” Most of them are thrillers, but the book also includes a science fiction story, “Nor Iron Bars a Cage.”

The majority of the stories in this collection are of the so-called “biter bit” variety, which involve a form of poetic justice in which the tables are turned on the antagonist or, sometimes, since Block's fiction is often populated with anti-heroes, the protagonist. The formula is discernible fairly early on, but the stories remain suspenseful because readers wonder how Lawrence will bring about the ironic reversal which ends a particular tale. To say that he's innovative in effecting his resolutions is an understatement. 

Here are a few examples:

“The Bad Night”: Robbers and would-be killers, Benny and Zeke, are subdued and bound by their intended victim, an aging war veteran named Dan.

“The Badger Game”: Dick Baron, a con man, misreads a lonely woman's invitation to have sex with her as a con game, assuming that her husband will arrive to rob him, but Sally English is sincere; when her husband discovers them together, Baron knocks him unconscious before having sex with Sally. Later, Baron is shocked when her husband, having beaten Sally until she'd told him Baron's name, which the husband then used in a bribe paid to the hotel's desk clerk in exchange for Baron's room number, knocks at the con man's door. Forcing his way into Baron's room at gunpoint, the husband shoots and kills him. 

“Bargain in Blood”: At Rita's insistence, Benny Dix, a callow youth, murders her boyfriend, Moe, to win her heart, only to learn, too late, that Rita is aroused by murder, and she stabs Benny to death with the same knife he'd used to kill Moe.

“Bride of Violence”: After saving his girlfriend Rita from a rapist, Jim rapes her himself, despite his knowledge that she was preserving her virginity for their wedding night.

“The Burning Fury”: A woman promises to make a lumberjack “happy,” but, after they leave the bar in which they meet to go to his place, she discovers, too late, that there's only one way to make him happy: he's a sadist.

“The Dope”: A mentally challenged man is astonished that Charlie remains friends with him, even though Charlie served a one-year sentence for the crimes they committed (robbery and manslaughter), while he himself serves a 10-year sentence.

“A Fire at Night”: An arsonist regrets the death of Joe Darkin, a firefighter who'd risked his life seeking to rescue Mrs. Pelton, an obese woman, from the tenement that the arsonist—and the late firefighter's fellow fireman—set earlier that night.

“Frozen Stiff”: Brad Malden, a terminally ill man, decides to commit suicide by shutting himself inside the freezer at his butcher's shop. When his wife Vicki shows up in the company of another man named Jay, Malden realizes they're having an affair. To deny Vicki the double indemnity his life insurance includes for accidental death, Malden rigs a side of lamb with a meat cleaver so that, when he gives the lamb's carcass a swing, the cleaver cuts his throat, making it look as though he were murdered, confident that Vicki's fingerprints, which are “all over the cold-bin door,” will incriminate her.

“Hate Goes Courting”: John murders his older brother Brad after the latter's endless taunts escalate and Brad rapes John's fiance, Margie.

“I Don't Fool Around”: To avenge the murder of criminal Johnny Blue, a veteran cop shoots and kills the murderer, Frank Calder, making it look as though the shooting had been in self-defense. The cop hopes his junior partner, Fischer, who's bothered by the legally unjustified killing, will ask for a new partner.

“Just Window Shopping”: A woman, catching a voyeur peeping at her, invites him into her house, at gunpoint, to have sex with her. When she won't take no for an answer, he shoots her, killing her with her gun, which she'd set aside as she'd pressed herself upon him. Police try to beat a confession out of him, but he refuses to confess to a rape he did not commit.

“Lie Back and Enjoy It”: After an armed woman is raped by the motorist who'd picked her up hitchhiking, she shoots and kills him with a revolver she carries in her purse, telling him that, until he'd raped her, she'd intended only to steal his car and to leave him stranded with “a little money to get home on.” 

“Look Death in the Eye”: A beautiful woman is picked up in a bar by one of the three men she notices are interested in her. At his apartment, she stabs him to death, cuts out his “bright eyes,” and takes them home to keep in a box with others she's collected in the same way.

“Man with a Passion”: Jacob Falch, a blackmailer, is on vacation after having extorted money from a mayor whose wife Falch photographed in various “compromising positions.” Now, Falch encounters Saralee Marshall, a young woman hoping to escape her small-town life by becoming a model. She agrees to pose nude for him in his motel room, where Falch plies her with liquor and has sex with her, only to discover, later, that her boyfriend, Tom Larson, who was hidden in the closet, has photographed them. Informing Falch that Saralee is only seventeen, Larson tells Falch that paying him to suppress the photographs “is going to cost . . . plenty.”

“Murder Is My Business”: A woman invites a hit man to her apartment after hiring him to kill her husband, and they have sex. Afterward, a man hires the hit man to kill someone at a particular address. Now, the hit man has two people to kill on the same night. He kills both of his clients: the man is the husband who's hired the hit man to kill his wife; the woman is the wife who's hired the hit man to kill her husband.

“Nor Iron Bars a Cage”: Two Althean guards discuss their planet's first prison: a 130-foot-tall tower with a cell at its top and sides that slope in, preventing anyone from escaping by climbing down it. Food is delivered by a pneumatic tube, and the prisoner tosses discarded items from the cell's balcony. The guards leave the key to the prisoner's shackles in his cell and wait until he throws them to the ground. Then, the prisoner flaps his wings and flies away, escaping. 

“One Night of Death”: A condemned man's son ties his ex-girlfriend, Betty, to Dan Bookspan, the son of his father's dishonest business partner, for whose murder his own father is being executed at midnight in San Quentin's gas chamber. Then, the condemned man's son turns on the gas jets in his victims' apartment at the same time that his father is being executed in California. In doing so, he obtains revenge on Dan for his having stolen Betty after his own father had killed the elder Bookspan.

“Package Deal”: John Harper, a local banker, hires Castle, a “professional killer,” to murder four small-time criminals who have taken over the seedy activities of Arlington, Ohio. Castle kills all his targets, and then notifies a man in Chicago, who responds, “We'll be down tomorrow.” The implication is that the Chicago party is a mobster. Either Castle has double-crossed Harper, notifying the Chicago gangster that the local competition has been eliminated and that Arlington is now ripe, as it were, for the picking or he has actually been working for the Chicago mobster, rather than for Harper. In either case, a double cross has occurred, a device that gets considerable play in Lawrence's short stories and novels.

“Professional Killer”: Professional killer Harry Varden receives a telephone call from a woman who, without knowing his name, hires him to kill her husband, saying he's boring and she's met another, more exciting man. By killing her husband, she will receive his life insurance and be able to marry her lover. When Harry collects the slip of paper from his post office box, along with his client's payment in full, in cash, he is angry as he learns the name of his target. He calls Pete, another hit man, hiring him to kill his own client, his wife, who has unknowingly hired Harry, her own husband, to kill himself.

“Pseudo Identity”: After renting an apartment in which to spend the nights he works late as a copywriter, bored and boring Howard Jordan gradually assumes an alter ego, that of Roy Baker, a hip, fun-loving guy who is popular with the in-crowd. When he sees his wife, Carolyn, with another man, he poses as her boyfriend, and sets her up, telling her to come to his apartment, where, dressed as Ray Baker, he kills her. In doing so, he realizes, he has also destroyed the life of his alter ego, as he can never again be Ray Baker without risking arrest and trial for Carolyn's murder. His is stuck with Jordan's lackluster, responsible identity and life.

“Ride a White Horse”: Andy Hart's daily routine is disrupted when his favorite bar is forced to close for two weeks for having sold alcohol to a minor. After he eats at the diner he typically frequents, he tries another bar in the neighborhood, the White Horse, where a 24-year-old blonde invites him home with her, and they become a couple, living together as if they were married, buts she doesn't talk about her past, and Andy isn't sure how she can pay her bills without working. The woman, Sara Malone, asks him to pick up a package for her at the local library. He does so, picking up additional packages at the library and elsewhere. He unwraps one and discovers it contains a white powder, which Sara identifies as heroin. Andy quits his job and works full-time for Sara, a pusher, and becomes addicted to heroin, losing interest in Sara. He wants to expand their operation, and, when Sara is hesitant, he stabs her to death.

“A Shroud for the Damned”: An aged mother knits shrouds. When her son becomes a thief to feed them and begins to associate with criminals, she stabs him to death after he dons the shroud. She is confident that the shroud won't only keep him warm on cold nights, but that it will also “keep the evil spirits from him.”

“Sweet Little Racket”: After losing his business, a liquor store, to a chain of stores, an unemployed entrepreneur decides to demand protection money from wealthy businessmen, threatening to kill their children if they don't pay him $50 per week. When he attempts to extort a fifth victim, Alfred Sanders, Sanders tape-records him threatening to harm his son, Jerry. When Jerry is killed by someone who drives a car similar to that of the extortionist, the criminal realizes that Sanders's tape recording will send him to prison.

“The Way to Power”: A corrupt police chief takes one of his cop's advice when the cop, Joe, suggests they frame Lucci, a freelancing bookie, for the murder of a tramp. Joe volunteers to kill the tramp. Instead, he has Lucci come to the chief's house, shoots the chief, then shoots Lucci, and tells the investigating officer Lucci shot the chief for “cracking down on him” and Joe killed Lucci. Joe wonders whether the chief's widow is still awake, commenting to the reader, “I felt powerful as hell.”

Shared or Recurring Element	Stories Featuring Shared or Recurring Element
Robbers	“The Bad Night,” “The Dope”
Con men, blackmailers, and extortionists	“The Badger Game,” “Man with a Passion,” “Sweet Little Racket”
Rapists	“Bride of Violence,” “Hate Goes Courting,” “Lie Back and Enjoy It”
Hit men and other killers	“The Dope,” “A Fire at Night,” “Hate Goes Courting,” “I Don't Fool Around,” “Just Window Shopping,” “”Lie Back and Enjoy It,” “Look Death in the Eye,” “Murder Is My Business,” “One Night of Death,” “Package Deal,”Professional Killer,” “Pseudo Identity” “Ride a White Horse.” “A Shroud for the Damned,” “Sweet Little Racket,” “The Way to Power”
Sadists	“The Blinding Fury,” “Bargain in Blood,” “Look Death in the Eye”
Sex perverts	“Bargain in Blood,” “The Burning Fury,” “Just Window Shopping”
Female character named Rita	“Bargain in Blood,” “Bride of Violence”
Double crosses	“Package Deal,” “Sweet Little Racket,” “The Way to Power”
Fornication, lust, paraphernalia, rape, or seduction	“The Badger Game” (adultery), “Bargain in Blood” (sexual sadism), “Bride of Violence” (rape), “Frozen Stiff” (adultery), “Hate Goes Courting” (sex), “Just Window Shopping” (voyeurism), “Lie Back and Enjoy It” (rape), “Man with a Passion” (statutory rape), “Murder Is My Business” (adultery), “Ride a White Horse” (fornication)

As the table above indicates, in addition to the common “biter bit” plots, these stories share certain types of characters (robbers, con men, rapists, hit men and other killers, sadists, sexual perverts, and lonely men and women); in one case, two stories both feature a woman named Rita. Although some characters are naive, most are wise to the ways of the world, sometimes behaving in a cynical, even cruel, fashion. For example, sex is easily available and, generally, tawdry. The protagonist of “Murder Is My Business” callously murders the same woman with whom, earlier, he'd had sex, and the main character in “Bride of Violence” rapes his own fiancee after having saved her from another rapist.

In having written several, sometimes many, short stories which contain the same elements, Block developed themes and characters that he would later use in series of novels. His hit men become the precursors of his series about “professional killer” Keller, the anti-hero-protagonist of Hit Man, Hit List, Hit Parade, Hit and Run, Hit Me, and Keller's Fedora. Block's style captures the gritty underworld of the big cities in which his stories often take place, and his plots exhibit his familiarity with the vices and crimes committed by those who live in such cities. However, his tales are not limited to big cities; the action in “Lie Back and Enjoy It” seems to take place in the middle of nowhere, while the action in “Man with a Passion,” like that of “A Bad Night,” occurs in or outside small towns.


Structurally, many of Block's stories tend to follow Aristotle's narrative divisions of plot into three parts: beginning, middle, and end:

“Lie Back and Enjoy It”

Beginning: A driver picks up a young woman who's hitchhiking.

Middle: The driver rapes the hitchhiker.

End: The hitchhiker steals the driver's car and kills him.

“Look Death in the Eye”

Beginning: A beautiful woman in a bar waits for one of three admirers to make a pass at her.

Middle: One (“Mr. Bright Eyes”) picks her up.

End: In his apartment, the woman kills him, cuts out his eyes, and leaves with them, adding them to her collection at home.

“Just Window Shopping”

Beginning: A voyeur watches a woman in a shower.

Middle: The woman confronts the voyeur with a gun, inviting him into her home.



End: When the woman, demanding sex, refuses to take no for an answer, the voyeur kills her.

Although Block himself has admitted he's not at his best in creating titles for his stories, those in One Night Stands and Lost Weekends are effective. They're not only eye-catching, but they also tend, in many cases, to hint at, or even to summarize, their stories' plots, especially once it's recognized that he often employs the “biter bit” formula:

“The Burning Fury” suggests the lumberjack's motive for savagely beating a woman he's never met before.

“The Dope” suggests why the mentally challenged robber and killer is easily controlled by his partner in crime and why he continues to regard his “buddy” as a friend, despite the other man's harsh treatment and manipulation of him.

“Frozen Stiff” alludes to a dead body (a “stiff”) and the manner of death (“frozen”), suggesting that the "stiff" froze to death.

“Just Window Shopping” suggests that the voyeur is not interested in “buying” (i. e., in having sex); he's just looking, or “window shopping,” a critical insight into why he refuses the woman's demand for sex and why, despite being beaten by the police, he refuses to confess to rape, a crime he did not (and, indeed, might not have been able to) commit, for it appears that he is probably psychologically impotent.

The idiom used as the title of “Lie Back and Enjoy It” supposedly originates with the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who allegedly said, “If rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.” Certainly a callous and sexist bit of advice, to say the least, the expression introduces the crux of Block's story, which concerns a hitchhiking woman who is raped by a supposedly good Samaritan, the motorist who stops to give her a ride. The phrase also indicates the rapist's indifference to his victim's well-being; when she uses the same idiom, as she is about to shoot and kill the man who has raped her, the irony of her words underscores the poetic (street) justice she's about to deliver. This narrative's title shows how much information and meaning can be implied by the well-chosen name of a story.

By studying these stories, anyone who aspires to writing thrillers, especially of the noir type, can learn the craft.

Ironic Settings

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In my series concerning “How To Haunt a House” and my critical review of the movie The Descent, “A Descent into the Horrors of Extreme Feminism,”  I discuss the symbolic significance of setting as a means of conveying themes. A house can represent its resident’s soul or personality, with various rooms corresponding to aspects of the person: the attic, his or her mind; the kitchen, his or her instincts and appetites; the living room, his or her persona; the basement, his or her unconscious; and so forth. In the movie The Descent, the underground cavern in which the female spelunkers are attacked by subterranean monsters, the cave, I argue, represents the womb, and the monsters represent the fetuses that liberated women have aborted in favor of childless independence from their traditional and, indeed, biological, roles as mothers and wives.

As Nicholas Ruddick points out in Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction, a symbol can involve a long history of philosophical development. The idea of the island as a symbol of insular individual identity followed, he says, the loss first of the geocentric worldview and then of anthropomorphic notions which left each man and woman an isolated subjectivity, or island, as it were, cut off from the mainland, which is representative of the rest of humanity:

The idea of an individual island has become associated with that of the individual psyche, though the metaphor of the insular Self. The decline first of geocentrism and then [of] anthropomorphism as a result of scientific discovery has led to the rise of individualism, the philosophical privileging of existence over essence. . . and [the idea of] a universe in which the human domain seems an insignificant speck--at best an island--in the oceanic immensity of the spatiotemporal macrocosm (56-57).

Symbolism can be far richer than one imagines!

According to the teleological argument, which is also known as the argument from design, the existence of the universe, as a created artifact, implies the existence of a Creator. Natural theology suggests that we can learn of the nature of God, the Creator, from His creation, nature. This theology, unlike that which is based upon divine revelation that includes the doctrine of humanity’s (and the cosmos’) fall from grace, doesn’t explain (or, some might argue, explain away) the existence of evil, but accepts it as part and parcel of God’s creation and as, therefore, in some way, indicative of God’s own nature as well. As Herman Melville’s Queequeg declares, in Moby Dick, “de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.”

Whether one accepts the portrait (or, possibly, the caricature) of God that natural theology paints, one may apply its insight to the artifacts of human technology: whether microscopes or atomic bombs, the things that we create suggest something about us, their creators. Writers, especially of horror, do well to remember this lesson--and to apply it in their work by consciously and deliberately suggesting the symbolic nature of their central properties, or props, and settings by using them as thematic motifs.

As usual, contemporary writers can take a lesson in doing so from Edgar Allan Poe. The house of Usher (in “The Fall of the House of Usher”) is identifiable with its resident, protagonist Roderick Usher; the fall of the former is also the fall of the latter. Indeed, even physically, the house resembles its resident. According to Walter Evans, the windows of the house are Usher’s eyes, the sedges his mustache, and the white tree trunks his teeth (“‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and Poe’s Theory of the Tale” in Studies in Short Fiction, 14.2).

Poe also uses the wine cellar in “The Cask of Amontillado” to great symbolic effect. Wine is the drink of camaraderie and friendship; indeed, in Christianity, wine is an element of communion, representing the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ. In Poe’s story, the significance of wine, as represented by the titular cask of Amontillado, is subverted through irony. The libation of friendship becomes the means by which a mad and vengeful Montresor lures his victim Fortunato to his doom.

Appealing to Fortunate’s friendship as much as to his expertise in wine, Montresor succeeds in getting him to follow him through catacombs, where, after expressing concern for Fortunato’s health while plying him with wine (the catacombs are damp, Montresor says, and Fortunato is coughing), the villain walls up his victim alive, leaving him to die. Half a century later, Montresor, in recounting his tale, brags that he has never been caught.

Wine, which normally cements relationships, here helps to destroy a man who was once at least ostensibly a friend. In the story, the Amontillado, it may be argued, thus represents friendship itself, albeit, in this story, friendship more feigned, on the part of the protagonist, anyway, than real.

Poe’s masterful use of irony to undercut symbolic images and motifs enriches his narratives and, indeed, adds a subtle subtext to the story's overt horror. In learning from the masters, contemporary writers of horror can accomplish similar wonders in their own works of fiction.

Thesis and Demonstration: Philosophical Horror Fiction

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Many of H. P. Lovecraft’s short stories, like those of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, begin with a thesis-like assertion, the truth of which is then demonstrated, as it were, by the narrative that this philosophical premise introduces:

Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal (“The Tomb”).

I have frequently wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong (“Beyond the Wall of Sleep”).

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the craven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around monoliths on uninhabited islands [but]. . . the true epicure of the terrible to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and ignorance combine to form the perfection
of the hideous (“The Picture in the House”)

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent (“The Shunned House”).

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far ("The Call of
Cthulhu").

I have dealt with this topic already, at some length, in a rather different (and some might say odd) manner in “Alien Androids: Another Plot-generating Method,” but I wanted, here, to provide a few examples of a celebrated writer of horror’s use of this technique.

Quick Tip: Irony and Its Uses in Horror Fiction

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Since O. Henry (and before), writers have surprised readers by ending stories with surprises, or twists. Twisting one’s tale often results from the use of irony--dramatic, verbal, or situational. However, irony can also be used to create humor, to sensationalize moments or incidents, and to generate and heighten suspense.

Narrative suspense results from dramatic irony. In dramatic irony, the reader knows more than one or more of the characters involved in a scene. For example, the monster might wait in ambush, at the intersection of tunnels just ahead; the reader knows this, but the character or characters traveling through the tunnel do not.

Verbal irony is often used in humor. The narrator or a character in the story says the opposite of what he or she means. Example: Seeing a dark sky, feeling a heaviness in the air, and seeing and feeling the effects of rising winds, a character might say, “What mild weather we’re having today!” In horror fiction, verbal irony can sensationalize; for example, a character might say, “Vampires aren’t nearly as scary as I thought they’d be--they’re way more terrifying!” Verbal irony, as it is used, for example, in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, can also foreshadow future incidents or situations.

Suspense often relies upon situational irony, which occurs when one situation causes readers to expect a particular outcome, but a later situation either resolves the earlier one in an unexpected way or takes the plot in a new, unanticipated direction. Example: A scientist may be confident that he has the technological means by which to neutralize or destroy a monster, but, when he tries to do so, the technology either has no effect or an unintended effect that actually makes matters worse.

Which type of irony is used in each of these scenes?

1. Montressor wishes Fortunato a long life as Montressor leads Fortunato to his death, and, when Fortunato assures Montressor, “I will not die of a cough,” Montressor [who kills his victim by sealing Fortunato inside a wall] agrees, replying, “True--true.”)

Answer: Verbal (It happens in in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.”)

2. Revenants suspected of being zombies turn out to be lobotomized.

Answer: Situational (It happens in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Cemetery Dance.)

3. Kendra thinks Buffy Summers is a vampire because Kendra sees Buffy kissing a vampire (Angel); Kendra doesn’t know that Buffy is a fellow vampire slayer who has fallen in love with Angel, whose soul was restored to him in a Gypsy curse.

Answer: Dramatic (It happens in an episode of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

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.

Quick Tip: Writing the Short-Short Story

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

A short-short story is a narrative that is under 1,000 words in length, It is often made up of only a single scene, wherein a conflict, usually between two characters, is posed and resolved. There is frequently a twist, or surprise, ending to the story, which is generally effected through dramatic irony, situational irony, verbal irony, or a combination thereof. However, these are not hard-and-fast rules, but sweeping statements. Many times, short short stories derive from situations. In any case, they must be tightly written. Every word counts, adding to the narrative’s development and effect.

My own short-short story, “Finis” illustrates the form. After writing it in full, I changed the second paragraph to provide a stronger motivation for the protagonist’s extreme action. Before this revision, the paragraph supplied enough information to suggest why the actress might do as she does, but not sufficient motivation for her to do what she does; the revision makes her actions more believable.

Finis

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

The director asked, “Ready, Amanda?”

The actress thought of her husband and three-year-old daughter trapped inside their SUV, burned alive before they could be rescued; of the doctor’s pained expression when he’d detected something suspicious in her left breast and had, sober-faced, his voice flat, an attempt at a smile faltering at the corners of his lips, telling her that, “just to be on the safe side,” he wanted to order a biopsy; and of the five million dollars she’d been paid for this role and of how the money would finance her institutionalized daughter’s needs, and she nodded. “Ready.”

“I’d like to get it right the first time,” he said, and she nodded.

The production assistant held the clapboard between her and the camera: Snuff, Scene 1, Take 1. He snapped the top lever, the clapstick, down, upon the board, clack!

“Action!” the director called.

The camera dollied in, close.

Blood spurted from Amanda’s left forearm, bright and explosive.

She grimaced, drawing the straight-razor down the vein in her other forearm.

Blood was everywhere. Amanda felt faint. She listed to her left, her head spinning. Dizzy, she capsized, landing in the pool of her own splattering blood. The vital fluid was warm and thick. She moaned.

“Cut!” the director cried. “Perfect. Print it.”

For Amanda, everything went dark, and silence claimed her.

Quick Tip: Narrative Reversals

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Most readers and writers know about plot twists, which usually result from situational irony--setting up an expectation that is later resolved in a manner different from that which one is led to believe is likely. However, writers can, and sometimes do, also upset expectations regarding other elements of fiction, such as character, conflict, setting, and theme. A character who is established as self-centered and self-serving can turn out to be capable of being altruistic and humane, as Han Solo, of Star Wars, turns out to be. A conflict that seems likely to end in only one way can end in an unexpected manner, as the conflict between Gone With the Wind's Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler does; all the way to the end of the novel, Rhett is interested in winning the heartless Scarlett’s heart, and, when he finally seems to get his own heart’s desire, well, “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” he tells her. A setting that appears to be dangerous can turn out to be a refuge, as Spike’s crypt is for Dawn when she is being hunted by the goddess Glory (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The opposite can be true, too: a character who seeks sanctuary in a church can find that the holy place is a place of danger, as Nightcrawler does in the X2: X-Men United movie, only to be tracked down and captured by Jean Grey and Storm. A theme can also be inverted through irony. The apparent theme of a story can be provided, perhaps through the dialogue or the habitual behavior of a character, only to be reversed at the end of the narrative or drama. At the outset of Gran Torino, Walt Kowalski, a racist war hero, avoids young people, members of ethnic and racial groups, religious people, and anyone else who does not measure up to his narrow standards of propriety until he rescues a young Hmong woman from black gang members who seem intent upon raping her. The movie’s theme, which seems to be that it is best to mind one’s own business, adopting an everyone-for-himself philosophy, turns out to be one that affirms the importance of brotherly love and self-sacrifice.

Cemetery Dance, The First 10 Chapters and the Epilogue: A Study of Technique

By Gary L. Pullman

The use of situational irony; the introduction of new or recurring characters; the planting of clues; the descriptions of violent encounters which could be injurious or fatal to sympathetic characters; the teasing of readers by the raising of questions, large or small (especially those which concern motive or cause), which are then answered incorrectly or partially, either immediately or in the future; the creation of ambiguous situations which themselves give rise to questions in readers’ minds which are also then answered incorrectly or partially, either immediately or in the future; the inclusion of unusual or bizarre incidents, characters, settings, or objects; the piecemeal revelation of character; and the allusion to bizarre beliefs and rituals, especially with the suggestion that they may be true and real, are all ways by which to generate the suspense by which readers’ interest in a story is created or maintained.

These elements are often about significant incidents, but even small matters can, and do, sustain suspense (at least for a short time) and, therefore, readers’ interest in the story. Those which are more significant than others might be mentioned more than once, often in dialogue between different characters.

Short, tightly written chapters, comprised of only one or two scenes, in which composed, if not serene, action alternates with fast-paced, sometimes violent, action (and usually a change of setting and characters), also keeps readers reading. Most of the chapters of Cemetery Dance are five or six pages long, but there are 85 chapters and an epilogue, or 435 pages, total.

Writers and readers alike complain about the difficulty of bringing a narrative to an appropriate and satisfying end--one which doesn’t make readers feel as though the writer has cheated them with a convenient, tacked-on, but emotionally unsatisfying and philosophically unrealistic, conclusion. Cemetery Dance’s epilogue shows an effective way of concluding a story of combined genres, which might be called the horror-mystery-thriller.

Note: Bold black font indicates incidents which create or maintain suspense; bold red font explains how these incidents accomplish this purpose.

Chapter 1 (pages 1-7)

Who: Bill Smithback, his wife Nora Kelly, and Colin Fearing
What: Fearing kills Smithback after Nora leaves on an errand; Fearing also attempts to attack Nora
When: Smithback’s and Nora’s first anniversary
Where: Smithback’s and Nora’s apartment in New York City
How: Knife
Why: Unknown at this time
Twist: None

Contrast is used to effect situational irony [readers’ expectations are overturned] as New York Times reporter Bill Smithback, a character who has appeared in several previous novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, anticipates, on his first anniversary, an intimate evening with his wife, Nora an archaeologist with New York City Museum of Natural History who has just received the news that her expedition to the “Southwest” to analyze “the spread of the Kachina Cult” has been approved [is this cult somehow important to the story, and, if so, how and why?]; instead of the intimacy that Smithback anticipates, he is brutally killed by a knife-wielding assassin identified by eyewitnesses and surveillance video as his neighbor, “out-of-work British actor” Colin Fearing. In addition, Smithback’s fight for his life [will he survive?] helps to maintain readers’ interest, as does Fearing’s attempted attack upon Nora [will she be injured or killed?] as she returns home from having run an errand. The motive for the murder, which is not known [what is the motive?] at this time, also maintains readers’ interest in the story, as does Smithback’s reminder to Nora to be careful as she embarks upon her errand, especially since they have been receiving “weird little packages” [what is in the packages, who has been sending them, and why?].

Chapter 2 (pages 8-13)

Who: Detective Vincent D’Agosta and Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast
What: D’Agosta and Pendergast investigate the crime scene
When: Morning of Smithback’s murder
Where: Smithback’s and Nora’s apartment in New York City
How: Knife used in murder; crime-scene analysis performed; Pendergast performs own tests
Why: Murder is thought to have followed an attempted rape gone wrong
Twist: Pendergast eliminates suspect

The introduction of two other recurring characters, Detective Vincent D’Agosta and Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast [for new readers, who are they; for regular readers, what are they up to this time around?], maintains readers’ interest in the story, as does the discovery of clues at the crime scene [which, if any, are important to the case, and why?], the identification of the suspected motive for the crime [is this the true motive?], hints that the murder is not “open and shut,” [why not?], as D’Agosta believes it to be, the disclosure that “a star witness” awaits interrogation [what will the interview disclose about the case?], and the situational irony that results from the twist ending to the chapter, wherein Pendergast informs D’Agosta that the suspect is dead [readers’ expectations are overturned].

Chapter 3 (pages 14-18)

Who: Detective D’Agosta, Special Agent Pendergast, “star witness” Enrico Mosquea (doorman), and Pendergast’s driver, Proctor
What: With D’Agosta present, Pendergast interviews Mosquea
When: The morning following Smithback’s murder
Where: The lobby of Smithback’s and Nora’s apartment building; the interior of Pendergast’s 1959 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith
How: Interview; surveillance tape
Why: Pendergast questions a witness and views a surveillance tape for clues
Twist: Pendergast observes that it is curious that Fearing, just after he has committed a murder, would look into a camera he knows to be present

With D’Agosta present, Pendergast interviews Mosquea [what will the interview disclose about the case?], who swears, most adamantly, that the killer is Fearing, maintaining his belief even after Pendergast tells the doorman that Fearing has been dead for 10 days; in Pendergast’s car, D’Agosta and Pendergast review the surveillance tape [what will the tape disclose about the case?], showing Fearing entering and exiting Smithback’s apartment building, bloody upon egress, and Pendergast thinks it curious that Fearing, just after he has committed a murder, would look into a camera that he knows to be in the lobby [why does Fearing do so?]. The authors provide three possible explanations for the killer’s resemblance to the dead actor [which, if any, is correct?]: Fearing has a twin, there are two men named Colin Fearing in New York City, or the medical examiner’s office has “made a terrible mistake” in misidentifying Fearing as the dead man.

Chapter 4 (pages 19-23)

Who: Caitlyn Kidd, obituary writer Larry Bassington, “a bald, heavyset man” and Heidi, the latter two of whom were Smithback’s neighbors
What: Caitlyn responds to a police scanner’s report concerning Smithback’s murder
When: Morning following Smithback’s murder
Where: Interior of Caitlyn’s car, as she eats breakfast and monitors her police scanner; exterior of Smithback’s apartment building
How: Monitoring of police scanner; driving of personal automobile
Why: Caitlyn seeks her next news scoop
Twist: None

The introduction of another recurring character, West Sider reporter Caitlyn Kidd [for new readers, who are they; for regular readers, what are they up to this time around?], maintains readers’ interest in the story, as does Caitlyn’s scanning of the police monitor in her car [will she hear an important lead?], and her interviewing of witnesses outside Smithback’s apartment building [will she learn anything significant about the murder?]. A minor incident--the possibility of her getting a ticket for illegal parking (next to a fire extinguisher) also maintains readers’ interest (she does get a ticket).

Chapter 5 (pages 24-27)

Who: Nora, a bloody man, three nurses
What: Nora dreams that a bloody man is attacking her
When: The night after Smithback’s murder
Where: Nora’s hospital room
How: Dream
Why: Dream, perhaps resulting from trauma
Twist: None

Nora awakens from a drug-induced sleep, alone in her hospital room, the privacy curtain drawn around her bed, but, when she hears moans from the bed beside her own and sees a “silhouette” through the curtain, she assumes another patient has been admitted who needs help [is this person another patient; Smithback, who has somehow survived; the killer, come to murder her; or someone else who is sinister?]; then, the other person seems bent upon attacking her [is she actually being attacked or does she only believe she is being attacked and, if she is being attached, why?], and she jabs the call button. A trio of nurses arrive, one giving her an injection, another righting the intravenous stand Nora has knocked over, and all of them helping her back into bed, assuring her that she has had a nightmare [are they telling her the truth, are they mistaken, or are they part of a conspiracy?], which is not uncommon “after a concussion” and showing her that the other bed in the room is not only empty but well made [was the while thing a dream or was it real, and if it truly happened, why is the adjacent bed still made?].

Chapter 6 (pages 28-32)

Who: Detective D’Agosta, Nora Kelly
What: D’Agosta interviews Nora about Fearing’s murder of Smithback
When: The morning after Smithback’s murder
Where: Nora’s hospital room
How: Interview
Why: To elicit information that can help to find and convict Fearing
Twist: None

During D’Agosta’s interview, Nora supplies a list of suspects [will one or more of them turn out to have been Smithback’s killer?] in her husband’s death by telling the detective of several enemies who may have wanted to kill Smithback, including Lucas Kline, who “runs a software development company” and was exposed by her husband as someone who sexually harasses his female employees; Kline (and others) sent Smithback “threatening letters”; she also tells D’Agosta about the “strange packages” she and Smithback received, filled with dolls, animal bones, moss, and sequins” [who sent the packages, why, and why do they contain such bizarre objects?]. She asks why Fearing would have armed himself with only a knife, rather than with a gun [D‘Agosta admits that this is a “good question,” as readers are likewise apt to do], asks why Fearing neither disguised himself nor avoided witnesses and the lobby’s surveillance camera [this echoes Pendergast’s comment about Fearing’s looking into the camera, again implying that the killer’s doing so was intentional and making readers wonder what the killer’s motive for doing so might be], and asks whether she can return to her apartment after her release later in the afternoon (she can).

Chapter 7 (pages 33-35)

Who: Special Agent Pendergast, Miss Kyoko Ishimura (Pendergast’s deaf mute housekeeper)
What: A tea party inside Pendergast’s apartment teahouse
When: Unidentified, except as after Smithback’s death
Where: Pendergast’s apartment
How: N/A
Why: Pendergast bids farewell to Smithback
Twist: None

Pendergast enters the furthest extension of his Dakota’s apartment on West 72nd and Central Part West Streets, where he has a teahouse beyond a garden; therein, he drinks tea, remembering the times he’s had with Smithback and the deeds they’ve accomplished together, bidding farewell to the murdered reporter, using a foreign tongue (waga tomo yusurakani) to do so. [This chapter’s interest for readers is in the curious nature of Pendergast’s abode and his unusual behavior in drinking tea in memory of his deceased friend. It is also a lull, as it were, before the dramatic storm to come. This chapter also suggests that Smithback really is dead; Pendergast is too good a detective to be fooled into supposing Smithback dead when he is not.]

Chapter 8 (pages 36-42)

Who: Detective D’Agosta, Special Agent Pendergast, security guard, secretary, Dr. Wayne Heffler (assistant medical examiner)
What: D’Agosta and Pendergast interview the assistant medical examiner, who autopsied Fearing
When: Noon (of the day following Smithback’s death?)
Where: New York City’s medical examiner’s office
How: Interview
Why: To request that an autopsy on Smithback’s body and DNA tests be expedited
Twist: None

With Pendergast in tow, D’Agosta interviews Dr. Heffler, the assistant medical examiner who autopsied Fearing; they learn that Fearing’s sister, Carmela Fearing, identified the body, Fearing having committed suicide (his body was discovered in the Harlem River). They learn that Fearing’s identity was also collaborated by his birth mark, which was described on his birth certificate, and the tattoo parlor that had tattooed Fearing lately, but Pendergast’s questions disclose the facts that there is no record of Carmela’s proof of her identity, that no one witnessed Fearing’s suicide, and that no “forensic examination” of the suicide note was performed “to ascertain” that the note “was indeed in Colin Fearing’s handwriting.” When Heffler denies D’Agosta’s requests to expedite the autopsy on Smithback’s body and tests on the DNA in the blood obtained from the crime scene and Smithback’s hair samples and on the blood of Fearing’s mother “for comparison,” Pendergast threatens the assistant medical examiner by threatening to expose the legal, but disturbing, practice of his office’s selling of organs harvested from the city’s indigent dead to support its work. There remains only one matter to which to attend: collecting the DNA of Fearing’s mother, which could take months to do using lawful procedures. To this end, Pendergast informs D’Agosta, they will “be paying a visit to one Gladys Fearing,” who, although she is institutionalized as mentally incompetent, Pendergast believes will “prove surprisingly eloquent.” [This chapter’s interest to readers lies in its setting up the possibility that Fearing is not dead, after all, and in the revelation that Pendergast is both innovative and unwilling to be bound by petty bureaucratic procedures or by petty bureaucrats. Pendergast’s reference to a future visit with Fearing’s mother also foreshadows this event, thereby creating suspense as to the visit’s nature and outcome.]

Chapter 9 (pages 43-46)

Who: Nora Kelly, anthropology curator Primus Hornsby
What: Hornsby, implying that Smithback may have been killed by a zombie, explains how Nora should bury her husband’s body, lest Smithback now be one of the living dead himself
When: 2:00 PM, two days after Smithback’s murder
Where: Nora’s office in the New York City Museum of Natural History
How: Dialogue concerning special chemicals and rituals by which to bury the dead
Why: To prevent the return of the dead as a zombie
Twist: None

Having gone straight from the hospital to work, instead of home, Nora takes refuge in her laboratory from her well-meaning colleagues. She logs onto her computer and catalogues specimens of potsherds, trying to forget her memory of the stark nightmare she’d had of the attacker in her hospital room. Primus Hornsby, the anthropology curator, visits her, showing her the latest West Sider headline: “TIMES REPORTER KILLED BY ZOMBIE?” Hornsby, implying that Smithback may have been killed by a zombie, explains how she should bury him, in case Smithback, too, is now one of the living dead: embalmed with Formalazen, mixed with rat poison, instead of formaldehyde, with his mouth sewn shut, and facedown, with a “long knife in one hand,” as they do in Dessalines, Haiti, where Hornsby did his fieldwork. [This chapter’s reference to bizarre beliefs and rituals and its implication that Smithback may be a zombie who was himself killed by another zombie intrigues readers.]

Chapter 10 (pages 47-52)

Who: Detective D’Agosta and Special Agent Pendergast, Mrs. Gladys Fearing, Jo-Ann (desk clerk at Willoughby Manor Extended Care Facility)
What: The detective and the FBI agent obtain a DNA sample from Fearing’s mentally incompetent mother
When: Shortly (perhaps two days) after Smithback’s murder
Where: Willoughby Manor Extended Care Facility, Kerhonkson, New York
How: Pendergast’s automobile; interview
Why: To obtain a DNA sample
Twist: None

After interviewing the desk clerk, Jo-Ann, about how often Gladys Fearing’s son (Colin) and daughter (Carmela) visit their mentally incompetent mother at Kerhonkson, New York’s Willoughby Manor Extended Care Facility (Colin seldom, and most recently eight months ago; Carmela, never) and extracting from Jo-Ann a promise to notify him if anyone visits the patient, Pendergast, asking Gladys about her first teddy bear, gets her to cry and to blow her nose into a tissue that he offers her, thereby obtaining her DNA (in the mucus). [This chapter shows, once again, how unconventional and resourceful Pendergast is and how adept he is at manipulating others, and advances the plot by overcoming an obstacle that would set the narrative back by weeks or months. Readers enjoy seeing character traits revealed and may wonder whether Pendergast’s encouragement of Jo-Ann to stay in touch with him may result in future revelations which are helpful to the case and, if so, what and why.]

Epilogue (pages 433-435)

Who: Nora Kelly
What: Nora disposes of her cremated husband’s ashes
When: a “day in early April”
Where: Lake Powell, Arizona
How: Powerboat
Why: Nora bids adieu to her late husband
Twist: None

To explore the offer of becoming the curator of the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute in New Mexico, Nora stays with her brother Skip, revisiting places she’d been with Smithback during their first encounter with one another, including a channel of water near a waterfall beyond Lake Powell, Arizona’s Serpentine Canyon, where she’d begun to fall in love with Smithback. Here, she shakes the ashes of her cremated husband into the water, wishing him “good-bye.” [The epilogue brings an appropriate closure both to the story and to Nora’s grief, bringing about a sense of completion to the narrative. For readers, it is also a way to allow them to bid farewell to a friend, as it were, whom they have either gotten to know for the first time in reading this novel or have known and liked for many years as returning readers of the Pendergast series.]

If, in reading how Preston and Child advance the plot of Cemetery Dance and create and maintain their readers’ interest in continuing to read their novel, you would like to know the outcome of the action, these writers have done a good job in generating and continuing your suspense.

Building Horror and Suspense Tobe Hooper’s Way, Part 2

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

In Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper, John Kenneth Muir explains some of the narrative and symbolic devices that Hooper uses in his film, Invaders From Mars (1986) to build horror and suspense.

According to Muir, Hooper is “quite expert at using the background and foregrounds of shots to convey important, frightening information” (109). In support of his contention, Muir offers a couple of especially instructive examples, worth quoting in their entirety:

Tobe Hooper’s use of film language in Invaders From Mars is the most impressive it’s been since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. His always-on-the-prowl camera not only records David’s nightmare of alien invasion, [but] it [also] successfully expresses his situation, his mood, and his feelings of isolation. The opening shot of the movie, that of David and his Dad [sic] lying flat on their backs in the grass, stargazing, should be a peaceful, idyllic one. Instead, forecasting the horror to come, the high[-]angle perspective (always the harbinger of doom in the cinematic lexicon) grows increasingly disturbed. As the camera nears its objects, it commences a fast spin, rolling over and over as it nears David and his Dad [sic]. This spin reveals that David Gardner’s world is about to be turned upside down, and that below the surface of perfect suburbia, trouble exists.

Throughout the film, Hooper’s well-placed camera continues to express the plight of the film’s dreaming protagonist. On the school playground, David is farmed inside a metal jungle jim [sic], a surrogate jail cell of sorts, and the message is clear: he’s trapped like a caged animal. Of all the children on the playground, only Davis is “trapped” in this fashion, simultaneously indicating his special status (as the star of his own dream) as well as his knowledge of his isolation. Later, David is literally surrounded by cages, by stuffed, mounted animals in miniature cages in his teacher’s van, and the blocking is very much the same, expressing the identical point: this is a nightmare David cannot escape from. Instead of relying on art design, [William Cameron] Menzies [the director of the original film of which Hooper’s version is a remake] staged many shots, nay entire sequences, in minimalist oversized sets to achieve similar results: feelings of entrapment and isolation. Instead of relying on art design, Hooper falls back on his thorough understanding of film grammar, mise en scene and cutting (108-109).

Writers of short stories and novels, it may be argued, do not have the resources at hand that filmmakers do, and, even if they had, their medium is pen, ink, and paper (or, more likely, a computerized word processor and printer). What good, therefore, does it do the short story writer or the novelist to examine the narrative techniques of movie directors and cameramen? The short answer is that it’s not only possible, but desirable, to learn artistic techniques from as many artists as possible, without undue concern as to their form or genre, always with an eye as to how to adapt their methods to one’s own work. After all, filmmakers have certainly helped themselves generously to quite a few literary techniques as well as to the methods of other artists, visual, plastic, musical, and otherwise.

Instead of a camera, the writer has description. Description, it may be truly be said, is the writer’s camera. Using its powers, he or she can create symbolic images, just as Hooper does, with his spinning camera and high-angle camera perspective, and images of the Jungle Jim and the caged animals. (A literary master of such technique is Stephen Crane; consider his use of symbolic imagery in The Red Badge of Courage, for example, in which he describes the clearing in a forest near a battlefield in terms of a cathedral.) What a writer can learn, more specifically than merely the use of symbolic imagery, created through description, to express theme, convey a character’s emotion, suggest the narrative‘s tone, or to effect foreshadowing, perhaps, is what Muir points out concerning Hooper’s employment of mise en scene’s blocking out of the critical elements of a scene so as to exploit the background and the foreground of each separate shot. Before writing a scene, an author should write out, in a few sentences, as specifically as possible, the answers to such questions as:

1. What is the purpose of this scene?
2. Can a special perspective (camera angle, as it were) be used to heighten the reader’s interest and to emphasize key information (or maybe to shift the reader’s focus away from a bit of information--a clue, for example, in a murder mystery) in the scene?
3. What should the scene’s lighting be? Should it be direct, indirect, partial, full, from above, below, from one side or the other, from behind? (Anyone who has ever held a flashlight below his or her chin in an otherwise dark room knows what valuable tricks light can play in creating horror, fear, or suspense.)
4. What properties (“props”) should the scene include, and why? To what use should they be put?
5. What link is there between this scene and its predecessor, and what link is there between it and the next scene?
6. What colors will be used to describe the characters’ hair, eyes, clothes, the “props,” and other items contained in the scene?

In other words, start to think off scenes not as so many words on a page, sandwiched between other segments of words on other pages, but as an image (or a series of connected images) within the continuous flow of many other, related images which, together, tell a unified, coherent, and meaningful story. At the same time, though, consider how the scene can best perform its function, or purpose, within the whole of which it is a part, using symbolism, irony, composition, and other elements, both narrative and visual.

The result will be a more artistically told story, and a story that is apt to be taken more seriously. At times, it is enough, perhaps, to tell a story, but it is always better to tell a story well.

Building Horror and Suspense Tobe Hooper’s Way

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

In Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper, John Kenneth Muir explains some of the narrative and symbolic devices that Hooper uses in his film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), to build horror and suspense. First, Muir says, Hooper sets the tone of the film by using symbolic images that suggest that the world exists within an indifferent, or even hostile, universe in which human life is not only meaningless but also endangered. A corpse is shown, posed as if it were a work of art (55). Then, Hooper shows “close-ups of violent eruptions on the surface of our sun,” the red shade of which “belies a kind of anger,” the whole image implying, again, that “the universe is disordered, anarchic, even cruel.” Indeed, the sun and the moon may represent the eyes of the “cosmos,” suggesting that the cosmos is “watching from a distance” (56). One might even wonder if the heavenly orbs might suggest that God is observing the bizarre and hideous actions that transpire in the film. If so, the God who watches such horrors is obviously not a loving God, but a voyeur who is something along the lines of a sadist. A third image is that of armadillo road kill. It is important to observe that the armadillo “is overturned, upside down,” because such a position, Muir points out, “is a long-time signifier of death in the language of the cinema” (56). This image accomplishes a double task, Muir says. First, it reinforces the idea that “the ordered universe has become topsy-turvy” because although “the highway is a symbol of man’s intelligence and his need to connect one place to another,” the presence of the dead armadillo suggests that “above and beyond man’s sense of self-imposed order (the road), is the overriding chaos of the universe” (56). Second, the image of the dead armadillo heralds a similar image of a homeless man, “signifying. . . the death and horror to come”:

Not long after the shot of the armadillo, a drink is seen in the cemetery to be lying in the same position as the road kill. . . . In fact, this is the film’s second “armadillo” shot: the drunk’s face is upside down in the frame too, out of order, signifying again the death and horror to come (56).

So far, three images have conspired, so to speak, to indicate that the world exists within an indifferent, or even hostile, universe in which human life is not only meaningless but also endangered. Next, sound--or, more specifically--music is used to further underscore the universe’s cosmic indifference to humanity:

The music in the film. . . is distinctly unpleasant, all cymbal crashes and echoes; highly discordant and jarring. There is no lyrical theme running through the music, no recognizable leitmotif, only a jumble of ugly, seemingly random sounds strung together. Like the eruptions on the surface of the sun, the music reflects the absence of equilibrium, sanity, reason, and order in the universe” (56).

This sense of an unintelligible, meaningless, and possibly hostile universe comes across even more clearly when there is, as it were, a “theme” or “leitmotif” to man-made sounds, such as, for example, the news report to which one of the film’s characters is listening at the moment that he is struck and killed by a passing truck while he is busy reliving himself into a cup while standing at the edge of the road. The report is full of seemingly random events of a “discomforting” character, which, taken together, indicate “a disordered, uncaring universe” (57). Having used both images and sound to symbolize such cosmic indifference to humanity, Hooper now turns his film’s attention to its characters, eliminating, from the very outset, first the group of victims’ “alpha male,” followed, in short order, by the elimination of the second male, which leads the female character on her own, with “no ‘male’ figure to cling to at all” (57-58). Hooper ratchets up the film’s horror and suspense by refusing to grant the character’s experiences any meaning; what happens to them--and, vicariously, to the audience, has no cognitive or epistemological significance; they learn nothing from it. Therefore, their experience is without value:

He denies his viewers the critical act of learning. . . . an audience usually learns important facts from the story’s structure or through the expositional dialogue of the main characters. . . . Knowledge does not pass from one protagonist to the next and no acts are explained or even rationalized. . . . They are killed without learning anything. . . and so the audience doesn’t learn anything either (58).

The failure to explain the bizarre, violent incidents lends the film verisimilitude, Muir suggests, because, in moviegoers’ own lives, similar events transpire, without readymade answers (58). By setting up a series of expectations on the parts of both his characters and the audience and then frustrating or “overturning” them, Hooper maintains the horror, the randomness, and the suspense of his movie’s action, Muir adds: “They go to the gas station expecting gas, but it’s out of gas. They go to the swimming hole expecting water, but it’s dry. They go to the friendly looking farmhouse down the lane expecting help but find only insanity and death” (58). Likewise, the characters are dwarfed by their surroundings, which suggests that they are of comparatively little significance whose lives are often on the verge of extinction, whether they are aware of their danger or not:

Hooper takes special pains to accentuate the vastness of the universe around his young characters. . . . Hooper sees [them] much as those very characters view the spiders in the web or the cows locked away in the slaughterhouses. They’re little, meaningless creatures, running around in their lives with a sort of tunnel vision, unable to see that they inhabit a much larger and terribly frightening domain. As human beings, we. . . do a hundred “normal” and “routine” things . . . while unaware that a tornado could be approaching, or that a serial killer could be roaming the very neighborhood where we live. But we impose a false sense of order (and hence security) in our everyday existence and Tobe Hooper’s modus operandi is to strip all that away. . . . We‘re victims of a universe that unfolds randomly (59-60).

According to Muir, Hooper is not necessarily an atheist. It could be that “the universe has a plan”; it’s just that “humans don’t know what it is, or even if they’re important to it” (60), a point that Hooper underscores through imagery, camera angles, and his characters’ dialogue:

Under the uncaring eye of the distant sun, Jerry’s van picks up the Hitchhiker. . . . Under a giant blue sky, the Hitchhiker [one of the film’s antagonists] and the van itself might as well be ants on a hill or cows in the slaughterhouse. . . . Hooper and cinematographer [Daniel] Pearl make inventive use of the low angle perspective. . . . [to reveal] the inherent hierarchy (or disorder) of the universe. High above his oblivious characters stand outer space, suns, and galaxies. And those cosmic entities could not care less that five teens are about to meet their makers in a backwater corner of some place called Texas.

The film’s dialogue reinforces many of these themes (60).

The film’s central antagonist, the cannibalistic, transvestite, serial killer name Leatherface, is himself an embodiment of Hooper’s view of the universe as an uncaring, hostile place: “Ultimately, the very nature of Leatherface’s villainy is a prominent part of Hooper’s thesis about the universe, too.” For example, “he doesn’t want to have sex with the lovely Sally.” Instead, as if she were nothing more than a cow in a slaughterhouse, “where her grandfather once worked,” Leatherface would rather slaughter and eat Sally and wear her face as a mask (60).

The sole survivor, Sally survives merely by chance: she “happens to get a break, to escape the crazies and make it to the road beyond the farmhouse but none of that is part of a design or intentional strategy on her part. It’s just the law of averages” (66); the universe remains impartial in its indifference to all humanity. Moreover, as Muir points out, Sally’s escape may not have left her unscathed emotionally: “her sanity is in serious question at the end of Chain Saw” (66). Finally, Hooper uses even seemingly random business and road signs to reinforce his movie’s horror and suspense:

Also interesting is Hooper’s appropriate use of signage at just the right times to provide the audience with subconscious clues about the horror to come. At the gas station, there is a sign reading “Gulf,” quite an appropriate brand for a half-way place between two regions, in this case the normal and the insane. Shortly thereafter, another sign reads “STOP” as the protagonists near the old Franklin place, a visual warning that is ultimately ignored (67).

It should be obvious that Hooper is a consummate director of horror films, adept in the use of symbolic imagery, instrumental music, the denial of thematic meaning to his characters’ experiences, frustrated expectations, irony, size discrepancies between characters and their vast surroundings, dialogue, business and road signs, and other forms of non-verbal communication to suggest both horror and suspense. Any storyteller, whether of film or literary fiction, interested in the horror genre would do well to study the techniques of such a master. Fortunately, Muir’s study of precisely this topic, in Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre, helps one to do just this.