Showing posts with label prologue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prologue. Show all posts

Saturday, February 23, 2019

From Poster to Prologue to Sale?

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

I'm browsing horror movie posters again. This time, I'm checking out erotic horror movie posters. There are strong parallels between erotica and horror, after all, so movie posters that advertise a cross between the two are apt to be doubly erotic or horrific or both. That, at least, is my hypothesis.

But I'm also looking for originality, so if there are more than a couple erotic movie posters concerning the same theme—vampires, werewolves, or witches, say—I eliminate those based on this theme. Thus, the poster for Vampire Lesbos, which features a beautiful, topless brunette vampire drinking what appears to be a wineglass of blood, as her largely unseen lover embraces her from behind, ends up, as it were, on the cutting-room floor; so does An Erotic Werewolf in London, whose fanged female rips away her own blouse as she begins to undergo her transformation from woman into wolf.

One of the posters that remain is that for the movie Cadaver. The poster shows a nude female body being sliced, or mutilated, by a scalpel in the gloved hand of someone (presumably, a medical examiner). The surgical knife, instead of making the “Y” incision characteristic of autopsies, cuts through the front of the woman's right breast and down the same side of her abdomen.


Blood, rising from the wound, suggests she isn't dead, after all, because, of course, cadavers don't bleed. She's a victim, it seems, rather than a dead body.


Her ordeal begs the question, Why is she being treated in this manner? Is she being tortured? Did the medical examiner (if he is a medical examiner) mistake a condition or conditions which may mimic death—catatonia, perhaps, coupled with paralysis—for her apparent absence of life? The text, which frequently unlocks the implications of the images on movie posters is, this time, of no help: “The anatomy of evil, the pathology of curse.” The film itself provides an explanation for the bleeding body that potential moviegoers aren't apt to guess.


The movie poster for Hostel: Part II (2007) seems to have been inspired by Washington Irving's short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Instead of a headless horseman, though, the poster features the body of an apparently decapitated nude woman, shown from neck to knees, holding what seems to be her own head, the eyes of which are turned up, showing white, and the tongue of which lolls between its parted lips.


Hostel: Part II is nothing like the legend of the headless horseman, in either its American version (Irving's version) or any of its medieval variants. However, the apparent allusion to Irving's story (or, perhaps, more generally, to the legend of the headless horseman per se) may yet be intentional, a red herring, as it were, to imply a reference that doesn't exist and a context irrelevant to the movie's actual storyline. By suggesting parallels where there are none, the advertisers of the film may have intentionally misled potential viewers, the better to intrigue them while, at the same time, preventing them from guessing the movie's plot.


The Maniac (1980) movie poster shows what, at first glance, seems to be a naked young woman wearing a veil. She is beautiful of face and attractive in “all the right places,” as the euphemistic phrase states.


However, as one begins to look closer, it's clear that what seem to be the straps of a transparent bra and the lines of sheer panties are actually seams, and the blue-eyed blonde's staring, vacant gaze suggests there's nothing human behind her stare. She is, in fact, a mannequin—a mannequin that bleeds, for blood appears at her hairline and streams down her brow and the side of her face. (I must admit, I saw these details only after taking in other of the mannequin's features.) The smooth contours of her body, like her erect posture and her empty, glazed look make it clear she's a mannequin, which makes her bleeding all the eerier.

The movie's plot clears up the mystery of the bleeding mannequin, and the explanation actually makes sense, in its own twisted way: the “maniac” implied by the movie's title is a particular type of madman, a man with a fetish for agalmatophilia, like Pygmalion.

By searching for erotic movie posters that don't depend on cliched themes, such as Vampirism, lycanthropy, and witchcraft, one is apt to find more unusual and creative possibilities for accounting for a story's erotic character or, at the very least, as in Cadaver, an innovative use of a rite theme.

But there's another use to which such approaches can be put in a horror novel (or film). A prologue or the opening scene of the story proper, can describe such a situation as a movie poster such as the one's we've considered, without presenting the explanation for its bizarre nature (or with an implied explanation which turns out, for a believable reason, to be false), thereby, like a movie poster or a movie trailer, hooking readers with the mystery of the horror and making them want to read on, even if it makes them buy the book. By the same token, such an approach might hook an editor, making him or her decide to commit to the purchase of the author's rights to his or her story.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Saturday’s Child: A Prequel to Mystic Mansion


Synopsis

Edgar Allan Poe High School, Home of the Ravens, was a normal academic institution, populated by normal teenagers--or was it? Once the new principal took over, things quickly went from normal to bizarre, and Crystal Fall’s and her friends’ lives were in danger. But the teens had a secret ally: God was on their side! For readers who've graduated from R. L. Stine but aren't quite ready for Stephen King, this novel and its sequel, Mystic Mansion, are perfect reads!

For more, visit Saturday's Child

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

Sample
Prologue

Amy Black nodded. Her head dropped, and she woke with a start. Mr. O’Brien was droning on, something about a bare body or a bear named Bodkin or some other such Shakespearean nonsense. Why couldn’t Shakespeare have written his plays in English? she thought drowsily.

She closed her eyes.

Her head fell forward again, and she saw the gun--

It was there, in her locker, under her gym bag.

She reached in, took the cold hard steel in her hand.

Him! That jerk!

She watched him enter the boys’ rest room. Her legs carried her down the hallway, and she pushed the door open.

He was at one of the sinks, washing his hands. He turned, saw her, his mouth and eyes wide with surprise.

“What are you doing in here?” he demanded.

He was always demanding something.

“Can’t you let me have even a moment’s privacy? Do you have to--”

There was a sound of thunder, a flash of lightning, and the gun kicked hard in her hand.

Somewhere, someone was screaming.

She sat bolt upright in her chair, barely able to distinguish her dream from the commotion around her and the ringing bell.

The other kids were gathering their books. They left their seats and hastened toward the door, toward a few minutes of freedom, toward a five-minute rendezvous with their friends. Mr. O’Brien called after them, reminding them of their homework. Amy grabbed her book, too, stuffed it into her book bag, and strode from the classroom, the deafening sound of the gunshot still in her ears.

In the hallway, outside Mr. O’Brien’s English Lit class, Amy paused to lean against the wall. She was breathing fast. She was shaking, and she felt faint. The dream, the vision, the hallucination, whatever it was--it had been so vivid, so real! And this was the third time in two weeks that she had had the nightmarish vision.

Why did she keep seeing herself shooting Ed Warner?

She may not love him, exactly, not anymore. But she still had some feelings for him. Certainly, she didn’t hate him. And, most definitely, she did not want to hurt him, least of all to see him dead. After all, he was her boyfriend, for the time being, anyway.

Sure, sometimes Ed could be a little too pushy--all right, a lot too pushy, demanding even, but, hey, that wasn’t any reason to have such violent fantasies.

Maybe I need help, Amy thought. Maybe I’m going crazy.

The thought frightened her. What would Ms. Martin, the counselor, do if Amy dared to confide in her about her “dreams”? Call the cops? Have her arrested? Or put her into a mental institution? Amy shuddered, feeling even weaker. She couldn’t bear being torn from her home, from school, from her parents and friends, and she didn’t think that the understanding Ms. Martin would, in fact, be all that understanding. Maybe no one would, not doctors or her mom and dad or even her friends. She didn’t understand it herself. How could anyone else?

No, Amy decided, she couldn’t risk telling anybody about these strange hallucinations. She would just endure them and maybe, eventually, they would no longer plague her.

She bent over the water fountain and drank deeply of the ice-cold water. Her head hurt. There was a dull ache behind her eyes that threatened to explode at any moment.

“Hi, Amy!”

She straightened, forcing a tight smile.

Her friend, Dee Dee Dawkins, looked at her, an expression of concern on her face. “Are you all right?” Dee Dee inquired.

“Not bad for a Monday,” Amy lied. “Just a little headache.”

“Yeah,” Dee Dee replied, with a giggle. “A headache by the name of Ed Warner.”

Amy gasped.

Dee Dee’s eyebrows lifted. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Sure,” Amy said.

She didn’t sound too convincing, Dee Dee thought. Then Dee Dee said, “Duh!” and smacked herself on the forehead with the heel of her hand. “It’s because you’re breaking up with him today, right?”

Amy smiled. This time, the smile looked more genuine. “Well, maybe not today, not with this headache,” she said, “but soon.”

“I’m glad,” Dee Dee said.

Amy arched an eyebrow, looking pointedly at her friend.

“Well, I am,” Dee Dee insisted. “He’s become such a jerk!”

The girls came to a junction in the hallway. “See you at lunch,” Dee Dee said.

“See you at lunch,” Amy repeated mechanically, her thoughts elsewhere.

Dee Dee, looking at her friend as Amy walked slowly down the other hall, shook her head. “Boys!” she said, exasperated.

Amy thought about lunch, about Dee Dee, about the test coming up in Biology, about what a mess her room was and how she’d promised her mom she’d clean it up after school, about the new teen club that she and her friends were considering visiting tonight--about anything and everything she could think about to keep her mind off Ed Warner and the awful visions she had had of the smoking gun in her hand and his lifeless body on the bloody rest room floor.

For more, visit Saturday's Child

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Anthology Ideas

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

There are probably as many ways to come up with an anthology idea as there are editors who come up with anthology ideas. In the brief head notes to his stories in his own anthology of twice-told tales, The Collection, Bentley Little mentions a few of them. For any who imagined that the innards of the publishing industry are as confused and messy as those of a dissected high school biology class frog, his comments on the matter suggest that such cynics are pretty much right on the money.

The ecology movement gave rise to the notion for one anthology: The Earth Strikes Back was to be a collection of tales concerning “the negative effects of pollution, overpopulation, and deforestation” upon the planet, or so Little supposed, at least, “judging by the title of the book.”

Another anthology, Cold Blood, was also to be centered on a “theme” and its stories were to have been written to “specific guidelines.”

A third anthology was to have included “stories based on titles the editor provided,” all of which “were. . . clichéd horror images.” This one, Little says, “never came to pass.”

According to Stephanie Bond, author of “Much Ado About Anthologies,” these collections “are assembled in various ways,” sometimes as the result of a group proposal by several authors, sometimes at the suggestion of an editor, sometimes as a way to test the marketability of an idea, and sometimes to capitalize upon a specific author’s unusual success. Usually, they come together because “editors formulate ideas for anthologies to fill holes they perceive in the market.”

I submitted a story for an anthology myself. It (the anthology, but my story also) concerned animals. My story was accepted, but I declined the invitation, because it was to have appeared in an electronic magazine and the editor wanted to pay via PayPal. I prefer payments by check, the old-fashioned way.

Anthologies have a common theme, of course, provided by a timely or evergreen topic, a holiday, an intriguing situation, or any other reasonably good excuse for a score or more (or fewer) stories by the same or different authors of the same genre.

Horror movies have also gone the anthology route. Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye and Creepshow are only two among many. Most follow the simple convention of sandwiching three of four short movies between an opening prologue that sets up the theme to be followed and an epilogue that rounds out the series and provides an appropriate sense of closure.

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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