Showing posts with label suspense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suspense. Show all posts

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Using Horror Movie Taglines to Develop Characters' Personality Traits (and Story Plots)

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman


A movie poster tagline poses various questions related to

  • WHO? (personal identity, agent, or agency),
  •  WHAT? (identity or identities, nature or natures, or origin or origins of an object or objects or an abstraction or abstractions),
  • WHEN? (time, endurance, or era),
  • WHERE? (location),
  • HOW? (process, technique, or method);
  • WHY? (cause, motive, purpose, function, or use), and
  • HOW MANY? or HOW MUCH? (quantity of number or volume).

The tagline for the 1988 movie Call Me is “Her fantasies could be fatal.”

By identifying the questions evoked by this tagline, which should be considered in relation to the film's title, we can establish the elements of the plot that create mystery, thus creating, maintaining, and heightening suspense:

WHO is “she”? (personal identity)

WHAT are her “fantasies”? (fantasies)

WHY is she fantasizing? (motive)

HOW do her fantasies involve others? (process)

WHY do her fantasies involve others? (cause, motive, purpose, function, or use)

WHO is the other or are the others whom she includes in her fantasies?

WHY does she include this other or these others in her fantasies?

WHY could her “fantasies be fatal”? (cause)

From our investigation, we find that mysteries regarding who the woman is, what her fantasies are, why she fantasizes, how and why her fantasies involve others, and why her fantasies could be fatal fuel the suspense of the plot. Counting our “whos” and “whats” and “whys” and “hows,” we see that there is two “who” question, one “what” question, one “how” question,” and four “why” questions. Therefore, the plot's main source of suspense will be related to questions of cause, motive, purpose, function, or use (WHY?). Related to this primary source of will be the secondary questions concerning the personal identities (WHO?); the nature or natures, or origin or origins of an object or objects or an abstraction or abstractions; and process[es], technique[s], or method[s] regarding the way in which she includes another or others in her fantasies (HOW?).

The tagline uses the nominative case of the third-person personal pronoun to refer to the woman who fantasies, referring to the woman as “her.” This pronoun separates her from the viewer/reader, who regards him- or herself as an “I” (if a subject) or a “me” (if an object). The story is about her (and her fantasies); she is the protagonist. Her callers are the story's antagonists. They may also be her victims, since her “fantasies could be fatal.” Therefore, she can be a predator, even a killer. Vicariously, as we read her story (i. e., “call” her), we may become her victims as well.

WHY we might call her (our motive) suggests information about us: WHO we are and WHAT we want (and, therefore, WHAT we lack). “Call me” is an invitation to listen to her fantasies, to participate in them, vicariously, potentially as her victims. We have a motive for desiring to do so. Perhaps we are lonely, feel unloved, are unhappy either at being single or in our marriages. We lack something that we believe, or hope, that we may obtain from this woman, from her fantasies. According to the U. S. National Library of Medicine, loneliness can lead to various psychiatric disorders [such as] depression, alcohol abuse, child abuse, sleep problems, personality disorders and Alzheimer’s disease. It also leads to various physical disorders like diabetes, autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and cardiovascular diseases like coronary heart disease, hypertension (HTN), obesity, physiological aging, cancer, poor hearing and poor health. Left untended, loneliness can have serious consequences for mental and physical health of people.”

As the article explains, “Loneliness is caused not by being alone, but by being without some definite needed relationship or set of relationships.” This seems to be the lack, then, that those who answer the woman's invitation to 'call” her experience. We have learned much about the antagonists of the story, including their possible physical as well as their mental health issues and their causes. (The article also defines three types of loneliness that could be of use to a writer writing about the situation reflected in the Call Me movie tagline: “situational loneliness,” “developmental loneliness,” and “internal loneliness.”

The woman who fantasizes also wants something from us: our ears, our attention, our indulgence of her fantasies. However, she does not want us for long; we are disposable because she has, potentially, many callers, many replacements for us. We are like food, as it were, that sustains her, but nothing more. Therefore, we are expendable. What counts is she and her fantasies, her needs and desires.

 Everything seems to revolve around her and her desires and needs, which suggests that she might be a narcissist, whose behavior, according to the Mayo Clinic, is characterized by:

  • an exaggerated sense of self-importance
  • a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration
  • [the expectation of being] recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
  • exaggerate[d] achievements and talents
  • [a preoccupation] with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate [Now, we have an idea of the types of fantasies she might have!]
  • [the belief that] they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
  • [the tendency to] monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior
  • [the expectation of] special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
  • [taking] advantage of others to get what they want
  • [having] an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
  • [being] envious of others and believe others envy them
  • [behaving] in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious
  • [insisting] on having the best of everything—for instance, the best car or office

What is she like? Someone who is unable to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships? Someone unconcerned about the welfare, or even the lives, of others? Someone who is willing to kill others without remorse or concern? A sociopath, perhaps? A killer, certainly, and a survivor, of sorts, a survivor at all costs. She is amoral, it appears, and is not bound by the mores, customs, conventions, or laws of society. She seems either unconcerned about them or believes that she is above them, a force of nature or a law unto herself, perhaps.

In addition, she is likely to be narcissistic, feel herself to privileged and entitled, possess a sense of superiority, and be arrogant, manipulative, dominant, and authoritarian.

What sort of fantasies might she have? Those that provide what she wants, but lacks, even if her fantasies provide them only momentarily. Company? Intimacy? Relief from loneliness, boredom, or emptiness? A sense of belonging, for a moment, at least, or a sense of being in control? She will also probably fantasize “about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate.” Presumably, those who do not properly reinforce her concept of herself or are in any other way less than “the perfect mate” would be murdered, since the fact that her fantasies “could be fatal” suggests that sometimes they are; other times, they are not. Why does she sometimes kill, sometimes spare, those who answer her call? It seems that her decision would depend on whether or how well her callers respond to her fantasies, to her? On how well her callers fulfill her needs.

It seems that she could be a narcissistic sociopathic serial killer, possibly with sadistic sexual tendencies. As the Mayo Clinic website points out, “Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental disorder in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.” In addition, such persons “tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference. They show no guilt or remorse for their behavior.” People who suffer from antisocial personality disorder also “often violate the law, becoming criminals. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively, and have problems with drug and alcohol use. Because of these characteristics, people with this disorder typically can't fulfill responsibilities related to family, work or school.” Operating one's own erotic telephone service might be an ideal career choice for someone who displays such symptoms as the Mayo Clinic website lists for the antisocial personality disorder:

  • Disregard for right and wrong
  • Persistent lying or deceit to exploit others
  • Being callous, cynical and disrespectful of others
  • Using charm or wit to manipulate others for personal gain or personal pleasure
  • Arrogance, a sense of superiority and being extremely opinionated
  • Recurring problems with the law, including criminal behavior
  • Repeatedly violating the rights of others through intimidation and dishonesty
  • Impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead
  • Hostility, significant irritability, agitation, aggression or violence
  • Lack of empathy for others and lack of remorse about harming others
  • Unnecessary risk-taking or dangerous behavior with no regard for the safety of self or others
  • Poor or abusive relationships
  • Failure to consider the negative consequences of behavior or learn from them
  • Being consistently irresponsible and repeatedly failing to fulfill work or financial obligations

So, is the woman who fantasizes a narcissistic sociopath who entertains dangerous, potentially fatal fantasies about others who accept her invitation to “call me”? Does she operate an erotic telephone service for lonely people who lack “a relationship or set of relationships”? Could she be a sadist and her callers masochists whom she lures into a sadomasochistic telephonic relationship? Does fantasizing sometimes cross the line between fantasy and reality, resulting in the deaths of her callers? Is the woman who fantasizes a femme fatale? Our search for answers to the questions the tagline provokes and our research into the implications of the tagline certainly seems to open such possibilities.

 

Checking a synopsis of the movie's actual plot shows that the screenwriters chose a different plot than the one we might envision from the movie's tagline, but that doesn't mean our ideas of the protagonist's character, the antagonists' characters, and the protagonist operating her own erotic telephone service while she searches for her “perfect mate,” according to her own needs and desires as a narcissistic sociopath with a well-defined list or criteria is “wrong.” It is simply an alternative plot—and perhaps a better one, at that.

   

Here are a few more horror movie taglines that you can try, each of which is capable of suggesting personality traits, if not mental disorders, for a protagonist and one or more antagonists and a plot based on those personality traits. Using horror movie taglines as a means of developing characters' personality traits goes a long way toward generating plot ideas as well.

Dawn of the Dead: When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.

Paranormal Activity: What happens when you sleep?

Saw: Every piece has a puzzle.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Who will survive, and what will be left of them?

The Grudge: It never forgives. It never forgets.

Wolf Creek: How can you be found when no one knows you're missing?


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

In the Beginning

 Copyright 2021 by Michael Williams

 



Since 1976, Stephen King has been killing trees left and right. In both its paperback and hardcover incarnations, King's Desperation (1996) is 704 pages long; 'Salem's Lot (1975) is 672 pages (paperback) or 464 pages (hardcover); the length of his IT (1986) isn't measured by page count, but by the pound (2.1, paperback; 3.49, hardcover).

Buy 'em by the pound!

 


How does an author write such massive tomes, one after another, seemingly tirelessly, for 45 years? That was my original question, which mutated into, How does an author even begin such a massive volume? From there, my query branched, as thoughts—at least, my own—often do, becoming, What are some of the conventional ways by which authors start books?

Taking the Aristotelian approach, which is descriptive, rather than prescriptive, meaning that the philosopher didn't tell how something was to be done, offering rules and dictating procedures, but, instead actually attended plays and described what he saw playwrights actually do, I compiled a short list of techniques that writers of various genres have used successfully in beginning their own books in effective and engrossing ways. I am pleased to share my observations with you.




Gather characters. In epic-length (or even in not-so-epic-length stories), writers often have their characters undergo a quest of some sort, literal or figurative, which requires, of course, that the characters gather together to begin with. We see King use this technique in Desperation, as the demon-possessed Sheriff Collie Entragian arrests travelers bold enough to drive along U. S. Highway 50, “The Loneliest Road in America.” We see it in The Wizard of Oz (1939), when Dorothy Gale is joined by the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, as she journey to the Emerald City of Oz in the screenplay, by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf, of L. Frank Baum's novel. This technique is also employed by many others, including Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales (c. 1400) pilgrims entertain each other by telling tales as they journey to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at the Canterbury Cathedral. Indeed, the gathering of characters is a time-honored (meaning really, really old) means of beginning a story in a manner that is likely to engage readers.
  1.  

     

    Convene a group. In the award-winning A Fine Art Mystery Series, Paula Darnell's protagonist Amanda Trent is a member of an artists' guild; in the 1998 movie Armageddon, Harry S. Stamper gathers a team (Chick, Rockhound, Max, Oscar, Bear, and Noonan) to help him stop an asteroid on a collision course with Earth; in the TV series Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996), Jessica Fletcher, who writes murder mysteries for a living and solves them as a sideline, lives in Cabot Cove, an idyllic coastal town in New England; in Gary Pullman's dark urban fantasy, A Whole World Full of Hurt (2016), the leader of a witches' coven gathers sacrificial victims, whose life-essences provide the spiritual energy she needs to conquer rival covens. The tactic of convening a group is frequently used in the 2014 TV police procedural series The Brokenwood Mysteries as well. The sereis is set in the New Zealand town of Brokenwood and involves murders among such groups as a traveling theatrical troupe (“To Die or Not to Die”), bicycle racers (“Tontine”), ghost train passengers (“Scared to Death”), steampunk festival participants (“The Power of Steam”), a hunting party (“Hunting the Stag”), Lord of the Rings tourists (“The Black Widower”), and a local historical village's staff (“Stone Cold Dead”).

     


    Show a series of bizarre events. Many novels and movies start by showing a series of bizarre events, which, because the explanation of them is withheld, appear mysterious, enhancing readers' or moviegoers' interest in them. The Taking (2010), by Dean Koontz, employs this technique, as do many of his other novels. An eerie scent lingers in the air. A strange rain falls; thick fog drifts through an isolated small town. Mysterious lights float among trees. Reports of bizarre weather are broadcast. As the residents of the community band together, they come under attack, but they don't know who—or what—their predators are. Pullman's urban fantasy also begins with a series of strange incidents: a college student is attacked when he collects for a subscriber on his little brother's paper route; a bride is assaulted from within,  during her wedding; a cemetery caretaker meets his end as he rests from his labors; gargoyles atop the Washington National Cathedral eerily come to life; a young woman vanishes while taking a bath. What is behind these bizarre incidents? Audiences will continue to watch as the film progresses; readers' curiosity will keep them turning the pages.

     


    Begin in media res. Writers also frequently start a story in media res, or in “the middle of things.” The audience or readers have no idea what led up to the current events in which the character (often the protagonist) finds him- or herself, which is one reason for their absorption in the story's initial action. In the process, the writer might involve the character in a problem; then, the audience or the readers have another reason to continue to watch or read; the suspense—and the moviegoers' or readers' curiosity—is doubled: they are curious about how the character got into his or her present situation and about how or whether he or she will get out of it, and the audience or readers are also curious as to whether the character's related problem will be solved and, if so, how or, if not, why not. Falling Down (1993) starts with the protagonist, William Foster, stuck in traffic; he is shown as frustrated, easily angered, at the breaking point. He solves his immediate problem by abandoning his car on the jammed freeway, but the greater question of whether he will solve his ability to cope in a society that he believes is “falling down” around him remains unresolved, so the suspense continues. By combining an in media res beginning with an enduring problem for the protagonist, storytellers hook their readers twice.

These are only a few of the many ways, of course, that novelists and screenwriters create and maintain suspense while establishing their stories' settings, characters, conflict, and tone. Maybe, in future posts, we can look at some of the techniques writers use to encourage audiences and readers to continue the story through its middle and how writers conclude their tales in an emotionally satisfying manner.



Note: Michael Williams is the author of the Twisted Tales series, which presently consists of three volume of suspenseful flash fiction, mostly in the fantasy genre, Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, and Tales with a Twist III.

Friday, February 26, 2021

US → C → E → FO w/ T

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Today, Michael Williams, the author of the Twisted Tales series, which presently consists of three books, shares a few tips about how he writes some of his flash fiction stories.


One way that I generate some of my Twisted Tales is by using a formula I've invented. It consists of four steps. First, imagine an unusual situation (US). Second, account for this unusual situation by showing its cause (C). Third, show the effects, or results, of the unusual situation (E). Fourth, show the final outcome, being sure to include a plot twist (FO w/T).


Here's an example, based on one of the stories in Tales with a Twist IV, which will appear on Amazon and other online retailers' sites.


US: A woman begins to hear voices.

C: She's not human; she's a android, and she hears the voices due to a faulty transmitter implant.

E: She is kidnapped.

FO w/T: In rescuing her, police stumble upon a top-secret government experiment gone awry: she is a prototypical android scheduled to be mass produced.


Of course, the steps, or elements, in the formula can be rearranged. Here's another possible configuration for the story:


US: A woman begins to hear voices.

E: She is kidnapped.

FO w/T: In rescuing her, police stumble upon a top-secret government experiment gone awry: she is a prototypical android scheduled to be mass produced.

C: She's not human; she's a android, and she hears the voices due to a faulty transmitter implant.


The elements should be arranged in the manner that best conceals the story's mystery (she's an android) until the end of the tale and best delivers the plot twist that represents the story's “punchline.”


There are plenty of other examples in the Twisted Tales volumes.


Watch this space! Michael may be back, as a guest speaker, sharing more tips on how he writes his Twisted Tales!

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Interview with Michael Williams

Campbell and Rogers Press has just published my fellow author Michael Williams's Tales with a Twist III, the third installment in his Twisted Tales series. As someone who has followed Michael since his first book, I am delighted to recommend his series. I love the short, short form and the variety of his flash fiction, and I believe you will as well. Check out his interview, below. He is a man with an imagination and a vision that is on fire!

Interview with Michael Williams

Q: What interests you in the super-short genre of flash fiction?

A: Alfred Hitchcock once said that a movie shouldn’t be longer than the capacity of the human bladder. I find I agree. Edgar Allan Poe considered the effect of short fiction to be more intense than that of longer works, such as novels or—my apologies to Hitch—full-length motion pictures. I also tend to concur with Poe: shorter fiction can pack more of an emotional wallop than longer forms. In our modern, fast-paced world, I think shorter fiction is also more convenient for many. A lot of people want complete stories without having to spend hours or days to read them.

Q: It seems that you prefer fantastic to realistic stories. Why is that?

A: Actually, I enjoy reading and writing all forms of fiction, but I think that tales of the fantastic, marvelous, and uncanny—handy distinctions that Tzvetan Todorov makes—add an element of magic to mundane experience, the icing, so to speak, on the cake. I also believe that, as Flannery O’Connor once said, a writer sometimes needs to use hyperbolic techniques to communicate with readers, and the shock of the surreal; the astonishment of the weird; and the wonder of the otherworldly, the supernatural, the occult, and the mystical provide these rhetorical approaches.

Q: As the titles of your books suggest, your tales are rather “twisted.” I'm going to ask the question most writers hate to hear: Where do you get your ideas?

A: I'm an eclectic reader. I enjoy learning about a variety of subjects. I guess you could say I'm a generalist. Sometimes, when the stars are in alignment, a remembered fact here will meet up with a recalled fact there, and, out of this connection of one thing and another, an idea will emerge. I might combine one of Thomas Edison’s inventions with the spiritualistic belief in the ability of the living to communicate with the dead, or I could update an ancient myth or a modern horror movie. As Arthur Golding wrote, in translating John Calvin, “All is grist for the mill.”

Q: I know you're something of a mariner. Does the sea ever feature in your stories?

A: Not as often as I might expect, but, yes, there is a sea tale or two. In one, the ocean solves a murder, which is rather a novel notion, I think.

Q: By definition, according to the title of your series, Twisted Tales, and by the titles of the books in the series, each of your flash fiction narratives contains a plot twist. How do you think up so many of them?

A: Usually, the story suggests one. However, I also employ a couple of tricks, or techniques—three, actually. First, when plotting a story such as those in Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, or Tales with a Twist III, I keep in mind the idea that almost everything has a direct opposite: new, old; lost, found; hero, villain; reward, punishment; rich, poor; right, wrong. Then, I start with one polarity and end with its opposite. The second way is more concrete. I keep a list of the plot twists I see in novels, short stories, movies, and TV series. Then, I adapt them to fit the situation or circumstances of my own stories. My third technique is to remember that there is a fine line not only between good and evil and right and wrong, but between all such polar opposites. A person who is cautious may become distrustful or even paranoid; a man who's strict can become controlling; a woman who's concerned with her own health and that of others—a doctor or a nurse, perhaps—can become a hypochondriac; a trusting person may become gullible. Each of these possibilities is a source of plot twists.

Q: How many of your tales with a twist are autobiographical?

A: Many of them are fantasies in which I explore how something might be if a particular set of unusual circumstances were to apply. Many of my stories are thought experiments, of a sort. I place a certain type of character in a particular kind of environment and see whether he or she adapts and, if the character does adapt, how he or she manages to do so. Frequently, the environment is physical, but it need not be; some of my stories' environments are philosophical, or moral, or psychological, or political, or cultural, or otherwise. The autobiographical element, when there is one, may be small—a detail here or there, the description of a place I've been, desires I've experienced, wishes I may have wanted to fulfill, thoughts or feelings or impressions I've had, that sort of thing, embedded in the narration, the exposition, or the dialogue.

Q: Will there be further Tales with a Twist?

A: I'm working on the next one now.

Friday, April 17, 2020

The Means to an End, or Catch and Release

 Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


In plotting horror fiction, as in other genres, it helps to think of the phrase “a means to an end.”

The “means” are the means that the writer employs to encourage the reader to continue to read the story.

The “end” is the theme, or the “meaning,” of the story of film, the point of the narrative or the drama, what it is all “about.”


Here is a simple illustration: an attractive young woman in a bikini is the “means”; the reason for her being a part of a story about a serial killer who preys upon attractive young women in bikinis is the “end.”

We can think of the means as a series of hooks. The writer hooks the reader, but releases him or her; hooks the reader again, and releases him or her a second time; hooks the reader yet again, and releases him or her a third time; and so on, until, at last, the writer releases the reader for good, at the end of the story.


Too often, writers think of not a series of hooks, but of a single hook: the hook that lands the reader, that succeeds in getting him or her to read the rest of the story. However, the idea that even a short story has but a single hook does not work, and it does not work for a novella or a novel, either. (It also doesn't apply to a feature-length film—and what we say here, in this post, about written stories also applies in general to filmed ones; simply substitute “screenwriter” for “writer,” “film” or “movie” for “story” or “novel,” and “audience,” spectator,” or “viewer” for “reader.”)

We might also note that every hook leaves behind a question which is answered either sooner or later. The hooks (usually actions) generate questions; the questions generate suspense. Once the suspense is satisfied—temporarily—the next hook is set.


Let's take, as an example, H. G. Wells's short story “The Red Room.” Here are the hooks:

Hook 1: Castle caretakers warn a young man who has recently arrived not to spend the night in the Red Room, which, they say, is haunted.
Question: Will the young man be dissuaded?
Hook 2: The warning is repeated.
Question: Will the young man be dissuaded?
Hook 3: The warning is repeated again.
Question: Will the young man be dissuaded?
Hook 4: The young man proceeds upstairs to the Red Room.
Question: Will the young man continue to the room or change his mind and depart from the castle?
Hook 5: The young man locks himself inside the room.
Question: Will he stay in the room?
Hook 6: Having secured himself inside the room, the young man inspects the chamber for any signs of secret entrances or hiding places.
Question: Will the young man find any secret entrances or hiding places.?
Hook 7: A candle goes out.
Question: Why?
Hook 8: The young man suspects a draft, but he cannot find a source of an air current.
Question: What caused the draft that blew out the candle—or was it a draft that extinguished the flame?
Hooks 9-12*: One by one, additional candles are apparently snuffed.
Question: What caused the drafts that blew out these additional candles—or were they drafts that extinguished the flame?
Hook 13: The fire in the fireplace is abruptly extinguished.
Question: What caused the fire to go out? (Here, the reader may draw a tentative conclusion: a draft of air certainly could not have extinguished the fire!)
Hook 14: The young man panics, running through the room, and is knocked out.
Question: Did ghosts attack him?
Hook 15: The castle's caretakers ask him whether the room is haunted, as rumored?
Question: What will the young man answer: is the room haunted?
End: The room is haunted—by the young man's own imagination, which ran away with him.

*The numbers are invented, as the exact number escape me at present.

While the incidents of a plot must be linked by cause and effect, they should also be related through actions, or hooks, that cause questions, generating suspense, until, at the end, all is explained.

But must stories be explained? Isn't ambiguity best, in some cases? That's a question for a future post.


Wednesday, November 21, 2018

The Woman in the Window

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
 


A blurb on the back cover of Night Guants and Other Tales of Suspense (2018) summarizes “The Woman in the Window,” one of the stories by Joyce Carol Oates's which appears in her latest collection:

A woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window of an apartment she cannot afford [sic]. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining Edward Hopper's Eleven A.M. [painting], the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door.


It's only a matter of which illicit lover with strike first, and Oates keeps her readers guessing until the last moment of her tale.


The title of Oates's story characterizes its protagonist, as a line in the narrative itself reminds readers: “She is the woman in the window.” In objectifying her and by reducing her to such a status, Oates perhaps invites comparisons of other objects seen in windows: merchandise, mannequins, pets (“how much is that doggie in the window?”) and, in some countries, prostitutes. The difference between these other objects in windows and the woman in the window is that the latter can think and feel, and her thoughts and feelings are aired, as it were, in the story:

His wife is not young. She is not so beautiful as I am. When he sees her, he thinks of me.

Next time you touch me! You will regret it.

Of course he loves me. That is the face of love.

Most of her thoughts are about her lover:

Nude he calls it. Not naked. . . .

He can say anything he likes. It's a masculine prerogative to say the coarsest, cruelest words uttered with a laugh—as a man will do. . . .

Such soft skin. Amazing . . . . His voice catches in his throat. . . .

However, the story's omniscient narrator challenges her thoughts or informs the reader of the truth that her thoughts skirt or hide:

His wife is not young. She is not so beautiful as I am. When he sees her, he thinks of me.

(But is this true? The past half-year, . . . she has not been so certain) . . . .

The omniscient narrator also tells the reader about the woman, and, by convention, an omniscient narrator is always to be considered truthful and reliable:

She's doing what she does best: waiting. . . .

Nude he calls it. Not naked.

(Naked is a coarse word! He's a gentleman and he feels revulsion for vulgarity. Any sort of crude word, mannerism—in a woman.)

She understands. She herself disapproves of women uttering profanities.

Only when she's alone would she utter even a mild profanity—Damn! God damn. Oh hell . . .

Only if she were very upset. Only if her heart were broken. . . .

She has come to hate her entrapment here. Where it is always eleven A.M. and she is always waiting for him.

The more she thinks about it the more her hatred roils like smoldering heat about to burst into flame.

She hates him for trapping her here.

For treating her like dirt.

It's as though the omniscient narrator is part of the woman, her subconscious mind, perhaps, now supporting her, now challenging her, now telling her the truth about herself, even as she comes to realize facts about herself that have been hidden from her for months or years. She comes to see herself not as she pretends or wants to be, but as she is, as she has become, but she blames her lover for the hated transformation her adulterous affair with him has brought her. It is his fault, not hers. He has trapped her; he treats “her like dirt”; he is her “oppressor”; he has “murdered her dreams.”

Now, she thinks, he must be “punished,” and her weapon of choice, “a female weapon: sewing shears,” will free her, avenge her, deliver her, restore her.

Ironically, of course, if she wins the contest and kills him before he can kill her, the act of murder will not have any such effect; instead, it will imprison her, both in a house of correction and in her own mind, for it is she, not simply her body, that is entrapped, and she is as much the predator, as much a victim of her own fears and self-deception and compromised character, as she is his prey.

The woman in the window is complex—much more so than she needs or should be. Therein lies her true predicament, the naked truth about her that she seeks to hide and to ignore.

Monday, September 17, 2018

Fandom Wikis: Suspense through Cliffhanger

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


Fandom wikis are only as good as the typically anonymous fans who compose the site's articles. For this reason, they shouldn't be used unless one has seen the series—and the particular episode of the series—about which an article comments and knows, therefore, whether the information the fan-writer provides is reliable. (I have found that, in most of the articles I've read, the articles' contents are reliable.)


I mention Fandom wikis because, for writers, these websites can be a gold mine. For example, my wife and I are late to the party in watching Blacklist, a series I suspect I enjoy more than she does. Currently, we're in the middle of season three. One of the features I like about the Blacklist Fandom wiki is the list of questions that appears at the end of many of the articles on the series's episodes. From a writer's point of view, these lists suggest how, whether in writing a stand-alone novel or a series of novels, a writer can maintain suspense by leaving questions he or she has developed open (i. e., unanswered) at the end of a chapter or a section of chapters of a stand-alone novel or at the end of a volume in a series of novels, much as television series leave such questions open at the end of each episode and at the conclusion of each season.


In effect, such open questions are examples of the cliffhanger, a plot device that leaves readers hanging alongside protagonists at the edge of a precipice, literal or figurative. Charles Dickens popularized the cliffhanger, but it's been around since ancient times.

The wiki provides both a synopsis and a detailed summary of each episode, and then lists a series of “Unanswered Questions” that keep viewers in suspense, motivating them to return again next week (or, if one is binge-watching on Netflix, to watch the next episode as soon as possible).

Here is the synopsis of the first episode of season one, “Pilot”:

Ex-government agent and one of the FBI’s Most Wanted fugitives, Raymond "Red" Reddington mysteriously turns himself in to the FBI and offers to give up everyone he has ever worked with including a long-thought-dead terrorist but under one condition – he’ll only talk to newly-minted female FBI profiler, Elizabeth Keen with whom he seemingly has no connection. For Liz, it’s going to be one hell of a first day on the job and what follows is a twisting series of events as the race to stop a terrorist begins.

By clicking on the title, a hotlink, one accesses the page of the site that's dedicated to this particular episode, which offers a detailed summary of the episode and the “Unanswered Questions” it implies. Here are the “Unanswered Questions” that “Pilot” suggests:

  1. Why did Red refer to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list as a “publicity campaign” and a “popularity contest”? He was/is on the list and deserved the listing.
  2. What was in Red’s briefcase?
  3. Why did Red surrender his aliases?
  4. Why was Donald Ressler, an FBI agent, involved in an operation to assassinate Raymond Reddington? Even for the CIA, the chance of such an illegal operation being exposed would make it risky. Even if the foreign government approved the assassination, why include an FBI agent? Why did Harold Cooper not know of the assassination attempt?
  5. How did Ranko Zamani fake his death so that the FBI believed he was dead? Was Eric Trettel involved?
  6. How much does Red know about Cooper? He sensed Cooper’s presence because of the “hubris.”
  7. Why is Red helping the FBI now?
  8. How will Red make Elizabeth Keen famous?
  9. What will be the aftermath of the Innkeeper's arrest? Will his network of safe houses be shut down?
  10. How many of the Innkeeper's clients will be arrested?
  11. How many of the Chemist's clients will be arrested?
  12. What number was Zamani on The Blacklist?
  13. Why will Red only [sic] talk to Liz?
  14. How is Red linked to Tom?
  15. Who and/or what is Tom?
  16. Why did one of the FBI techs wheeling in the cartons of files on Red have a kippah on?

Some of the questions are complex, others trivial. The answers to the former are likely to unravel over several episodes (if they are answered at all), while the latter may be answered in the next episode (if at all).

The same device, cliffhangers in the form of “unanswered questions,” can work for a novelist just as they do for a screenwriter. Of course, a novelist might have to jog his or her reader's memory from time to time, if the answers to some of the questions are postponed for more than a few chapters or books.

Many TV shows have their own Fandom wikis. By examining them, whether in regard to "unanswered questions" that create and maintain suspense or for other storytelling techniques, writers can continue to hone their own narrative and dramatic skills.

Saturday, August 25, 2018

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.



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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