Showing posts with label mages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mages. Show all posts

Saturday, March 21, 2020

The Thrill of It All, Part 3

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman



Writers are often encouraged to “show” rather than to “tell,” as if their novels and short stories are motion pictures.


It can't be done, of course, any more than Las Vegas, Nevada (famous for its miniaturized reproductions of such world-famous landmarks as the Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty), can reproduce an actual beach (although Mandalay Bay certainly makes an attempt to do so.)

The closest a novelist or a short story writer can come to “showing” action is to describe it in active voice (of course), using action verbs and lots of figures of speech. (Three masters of descriptive writing who come readily to mind, by the way, are the late Ray Bradbury, the late H. G. Wells, and the very-much-alive Frank Peretti. The late William Peter Blatty isn't bad, either, although his descriptions tend to be a bit on the weighty, even rather tangible, side.)


In addition, writers can be, and often are, inspired by movies, just as screenwriters often adapt novelists' books to the big screen or allude to them, more or less directly, in their films. Quentin Tarantino pretty well summed up the state of affairs when he said, “I steal from every movie ever made.” (He meant, of course, that he is inspired by the work of other moviemakers.)

Writers are a bit handicapped, dealing in words, rather than moving images. Nevertheless, a few techniques can help a writer translate other people's ideas, words, and images into the writer's own ideas, words, and images.

Some horror movie posters use red letters to attract viewers' attention. This device works best, perhaps, when the red letters are integral to the movie's plot. Think of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel the Scarlet Letter, Stephen Crane's novel the Red Badge of Courage, or Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Masque of the Red Death”: posters for any movie version of these literary classics would almost certainly feature red letters in the posters' titles or captions.

One way that writers can accomplish a similar feat is to describe bloody graffiti. Here's an example:

Except for the peeling paint, the long, high wall of the building forming the left side of the narrow alley was featureless and nondescript—well, except for the peeling paint and the ominous word, spelled out in foot-tall, dripping, crimson letters: MURDER.


(Yes, a novel can include red letters, in all caps, bolded and italicized.)

 Some horror movies' titles include effective plays on words. A couple, Shutter and Shutter Island, use a homonym for “shudder,” a word that alludes to a reaction to fear: when one is sufficiently frightened, he or she is apt to tremble, or shudder. Although “shutter” means something quite different than “shudder,” the words sound enough alike that the connotative associations of “shudder” are transmitted to “shutter.”

Obviously, writers can use homonyms and other plays on words in their writing, but they shouldn't overdo it; the “punch” of a play on words comes from its unexpectedness coupled with its curious appropriateness. By overusing wordplay, writers defeat their own purpose.

Here's an example:

The reporter's use of “cereal” instead of “serial,” whether a puerile attempt at wit or an honest mistake that somehow escaped the proofreader's review of the article, was both shocking and ghastly: the report was about a killer who preyed upon children, after all.


The poster promoting Intruder prominently displays severed human body parts. One way that a writer can do the same thing, while avoiding plagiarism, is to describe the parts as realistic-looking props in a novelty shop's display window:

Scattered among the playthings spilled from the children's toy box in the novelty shop's display window were a man's “bloody” severed head and a dismembered forearm bearing a tattoo of a woman's name surrounded by a bloody pink Valentine heart.


Several horror movie posters depict skulls. In a few such posters, the skulls are composed of a variety of smaller images that, together, make up the image of the skull. It would be difficult for a writer to describe such a composite image (and it might take several pages). Instead, the shape, as a whole, could be described, supported by descriptions of only a few of the smaller pictures that make up a couple of the parts of the skull. Perhaps the skull could be a mosaic or a collage:

For the final exam, Jason's art teacher, Ms. Fenway, had assigned her students to create a collage, which had given him the perfect excuse to buy a dozen magazines devoted to horror. Unfortunately, now he had to cut them to pieces, excising pictures that, together, he could assemble so they'd form a giant skull. He'd already glued down the coronal suture, using the stitches from the back of one of Frankenstein's monster's hands. How, he cut out a decapitated head, a loop of intestines, a nest of vipers, and a seductive incubus, dark images all, to form the left ocular orbit; its twin would be made up of a single picture: a jack-o-lantern bearing part of Michael Meyers's face. When the collage was complete, Ms. Fenway would (a) have a heart attack, (b) give him an “A,” (c) suggest his parent hire a psychiatrist, or (d) all of the above.


Pictures similar to those which appear on posters for Halloween, Black Christmas, or other holiday-themed horror movie posters could be described as posters in pop-up stores devoted to particular holiday sales:

Santa looked especially old as he faced off against the demonic snowman. The human head on the Christmas tree was a novel, if rather grotesque, ornament. The blood leading up to the chimney on the snow-covered rooftop suggested that Santa had come to a bad end. The snow globe didn't replicate a blizzard, but a deluge of blood. Thaddeus Gorman smiled, as he set the hammer aside. The posters he'd hung by the chimney with care created a festive, if eerie, air to his pop-up Christmas shop. He was ready, now, for business!

Possibilities are virtually endless, but two things are required:
  1. Avoid plagiarism. A horror movie poster can inspire, but it shouldn't be copied, even in words. Instead, let the design, the use of color, the images, the text, and the other elements of the poster suggest similar (or even opposite) ideas. It's the ideas you want. Ideas cannot be copyrighted; specific creations based on ideas can, and usually are, copyrighted.
  2. To describe the pictures you have in mind, don't use the same devices as the posters use. Change the ways you use and “display” word pictures. Instead of a poster's use of red letters in a string of text, describe only a single word, written as graffiti on a wall; in place of a poster's display of body parts next to a cash register, describe them as items among a child's toys; rather than employing a poster's exhibition of a skull made up of images (possibly of characters and settings and actions in the movie the poster promotes), show them as pictures cut out of a magazine as material for a collage: pictures similar to those on horror movie posters can be altered and appear as posters in a pop-up Halloween or Christmas shop. Use your own ideas (not the movie posters' or mine, as described here). How? Use your imagination.
There's more to learn from analyzing thriller (and horror) movie posters. We'll do just that in a future Chillers and Thrillers post.
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Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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