Showing posts with label theme. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theme. Show all posts

Monday, June 1, 2020

Character in Action: It's Elemental

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman



All elements of fiction besides those of character and action—conflict setting, point of view, tone and mood, and theme—are interrelated. Two ways, used independently or together, relate these elements: character and action.


Character and action are themselves interrelated as well: a character is what he or she does (action determines and reflects character), and a character does what he or she is (character determines and reflects action): we are what we do, and we do what we are.
 
In fiction, personality (i. e., character) is represented as being composed of traits. In other words, a character is the sum total of his or her personality traits. These traits, in turn, are expressed in the character's action, or behavior.


There is a final element of personality, or character, as it is represented in fiction: will, or choice. It is will that sets human characters apart from the animals that are included in stories. It is the ability to choose, especially to choose to act or not, that makes literary characters human.

 
During the course of a story, the protagonist, whose “personality” is made up of a group of traits, positive and negative, some innate, others learned, is presented with challenges, obstacles, and problems that he or she must meet, overcome, or solve, but he or she is motivated to do so by his or her will, the exercise of which is manifest in the choices that the protagonist makes.

 
Therefore, in creating a character, first determine what he or she wills to happen: What he or she want?
Then, decide upon the character's traits, both positive and negative.
 
Add meaningful personal stakes associated with the character's pursuit of his or her goals.

Huckleberry Finn wants to escape the “sivilizing” effects of a corrupt society.

Huckleberry Finn is a realistic boy who relies mostly on his own experience to fathom the truth, is a loyal and devoted friend, and prefers to live a simple life, but he is ignorant, relies too much on what others believe and expect, and is literal-minded.

Huckleberry Finn risks the loss of his personal freedom and, he believes, eternal damnation.

Next, make sure these additional questions are answered:
  • What does the character do to obtain his or her heart's desire?
  • When and where does the character live or travel?
  • How does the character accomplish is goal or securing that which he or she desires, and how does he or she meet, overcome, or solve challenges, obstacles, or problems that threaten his or her success in accomplishing his or her goal (securing his or her heart's desire)?
  • Why does the character want what he or she wants? What motivaes the character to undertake the quest, risking whatever is at stake personally?
* * *
  • Huckleberry Finn runs away from home in the company of runaway slave, Jim.
  • Huckleberry Finn lives in the American South during the early nineteenth-century and travels down the Mississippi River on a raft.
  • To escape the “sivilizing” effects of a corrupt society, Huckleberry Finn runs away from home.
  • Huckleberry Finn values personal freedom.

Let's apply this approach to horror fiction using, as our example, the motion picture adaptation of William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel The Exorcist.

What does my protagonist want?

Father Karras wants to hold on to his faith in God.

What traits, positive and negative, make up my protagonist's character, or “personality”?

Aware of evil, Father Karras has begun to doubt his faith in God, but he remains a courageous and compassionate man who is committed to living an authentic life.

What meaningful personal stakes are associated with the protagonist's pursuit of his or her goals?

Father Karras risks losing his faith and his sense of transcendent meaning of existence which makes life worth living.

What does the character do to obtain his or her heart's desire?

Father Karras participates in an exorcism to deliver a young girl from her domination by the devil.

When and where does the character live or travel?

Father Karras restricts his action to a Georgetown townhouse.

How does the character accomplish is goal or securing that which he or she desires, and how does he or she meet, overcome, or solve challenges, obstacles, or problems that threaten his or her success in accomplishing his or her goal (securing his or her heart's desire)?

Through the exorcism rite and his willingness to sacrifice himself for the girl, Father Karras exorcises the devil.

Why does the character want what he or she wants?

Father Karras is a loving and compassionate man who values both human life and free will.

What motivaes the character to undertake the quest, risking whatever is at stake personally?

Father Karras's love for his mentor, Father Merrin, and his compassion for the possessed girl Regan McNeil, allows him to participate in the exorcism, despite his weakened faith.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Horror Again (and Again): Increasing Your Audience by Using Universal Themes

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


Diogenes the Cynic observed that it is impossible to step twice into the same river. The writer Tom Wolfe said we can't go home again. George Santayana proclaimed that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” A more colloquial expression of the same thought is “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Horror fiction tends to repeat itself.


In his Republic, Plato mentions the Ring of Gyges, an artifact the wearing of which is supposed to render one invisible. Invisibility, whether it is effected through a ring or by supposedly scientific means, has become a staple of both horror fiction and science fiction. Ambrose Bierce's “damned thing” is an invisible creature, just as H. G. Wells's invisible man is, well, an invisible man. More recently, invisibility is featured in The Invisible Man (2000), a combination science fiction-horror film “in which a woman believes she is being stalked by her abusive and wealthy boyfriend, even after his apparent suicide,” until she “deduces that he has acquired the ability to become invisible.”

A vast number of short stories, novels, and movies are based on the premise that human beings can be hunted like any other animal. One of the first stories of this type, if not, indeed, the original story, is Richard Cornell's 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game” (aka “The Hounds of Zariff”), wherein “a big-game hunter from New York City . . . falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean [Sea], where he is hunted by a Russian aristocrat.” This same theme is reprised yet again in the 2020 movie The Hunt, in which twelve strangers are gathered as prey for a hunting party, and in the 2015 film Final Girl, in which a group of sadistic young men stalk a young woman through a forest, intent upon hunting her down and killing her.


The idea that the door to a locked room should not be opened (sometimes the opening of the door is explicitly forbidden) is as old, at least, as the story of Bluebeard, who allows his newlywed wife to open any door in his palace but one. When she defies his order, horror ensues. The idea of the forbidden room reappears in The Skeleton Key (2005). In this film, horror also results when Caroline opens the attic of the house in which she acts as a caregiver to Ben, an elderly bedridden gentleman who has suffered a stroke. Although she has not been expressly forbidden to open the attic, the fact that the skeleton key she is given does not open the attic's door suggests that Caroline is not intended to have access to it.


Many other examples can be given of horror movies that recycle themes that have already been used many times before. Of course, each time, the repetition changes some elements, omits others, adds still others, presents a new twist, or otherwise diverges at least a little from the stories that have used the same theme before it. Such changes keep the motif fresh (or, perhaps, seemingly fresh).

Why, besides convenience and obvious box office or sales appeal, do short stories, novels, and movies recycle past themes?


Advertising executive Jib Fowles offers one possible explanation. He wrote that advertisers typically appeal to one or more of fifteen basic needs that everyone has. Among these needs are the need to dominate. Invisibility confers the ability to manipulate and control other people more so than almost any other power. Invisibility blinds by stripping away our sight—but selectively. We can see all things but the one thing that matters most in a dangerous situation—the danger itself, our invisible adversary. We become helpless to resist, which heightens both our fear and our vulnerability, making it easy for the invisible foe to dominate us.

At the same time, from the hunter's point of view, stories in which human beings are hunted as prey appeal to the basic need to agress (as almost all horror stories do) and the need to dominate. From the perspective of the hunted, these stories appeal to the need to escape and the need to feel safe. (Paradoxically, according to Fowles, advertisements can appeal to needs by thwarting them.)

The expression “curiosity killed the cat” is exemplified in many movies, including The Skeleton Key. Often, such cautionary tales remind us, being nosy about other people's business can be costly—perhaps even fatal.

Fowles's observations about basic human needs goes a long way to explain the universal appeal—and, therefore, the recycling—of such themes as invisibility, hunting humans, and the lure of the forbidden, but there are probably other reasons for the repetition of these themes in horror stories.

How much do we trust others? Would we trust someone we couldn't see? Someone who could watch us unseen, who could alter our environment without our knowledge, even in our presence? Someone who could hear—or see—everything we did in private? We might not trust even a good friend under such circumstances. Now, imagine that the unseen person is an enemy intent upon harming or killing us! Stripped of sight, we are helpless and vulnerable.


Dehumanization might explain the appeal of stories involving the hunting of human beings. Although we are, from a biological point of view, animals, we don't like to think of ourselves as such. We prefer to think that there is a difference between animals and human beings. We'd rather imagine ourselves as the Bible characterizes us, as being “a little below the angels” (Hebrews 2:7) or as Hamlet describes us: “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! / how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how / express and admirable! in action how like an angel! / in apprehension how like a god . . . !” If we must think of ourselves as animals, we should consider ourselves, at least, to be, as Hamlet says, “the paragon of animals.” Most peoples, especially in our own day, regard cannibalism as not only a criminal act but also as a moral outrage. People should not be hunted, whether for sport or for food. Stories in which human beings are hunted are, therefore, regarded as horrific; the very theme itself makes such narratives or dramas horror stories.

We are curious by nature, which can be a good attribute. Science, for example, is built upon curiosity. However, the attempt to satisfy curiosity can also lead to danger or even death. Why, we might ask ourselves, before charging in where angels fear to tread, is this room locked? What sort of valuables does the locked door protect? Treasure? Secrets too dark and dangerous to be exposed? Crimes or sins unimaginable? What skeletons lie in wait within this closet, this chamber, this attic, this basement, or this wing of the house? Or, perhaps, the door is locked not to keep us out but to keep someone—or some thing—from escaping!


Another film in which a forbidden space awaits behind a locked door.

A locked room creates a private space, a space reserved, a space off limits to everyone but the holder of the key or keys. A locked room as much as commands, “Keep Out!” A locked room as much as warns, “No Trespassing!” A locked room is a forbidden space. A locked room prompts questions, evokes curiosity. A locked room is temptation. All such impulses are familiar to all men and women and, indeed, children. A locked room story has universal appeal.

Repeated themes often indicate universal concerns, needs, fears, or impulses. Depending on how such themes are handled, their inclusion as the bases of additional horror stories, whether in print or on film, can appeal to a wide audience. They could result in a bestseller or a blockbuster.

Maybe.

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

The Horror of Objective and Subjective Threats

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


Some horror fiction, both on the page and on the sound stage, features threats which are both objective and subjective. Just as objective threats can vary, so can subjective ones. If there is the threat of a loss of limb, or of mobility, or of stamina, or of life itself, there is also the threat of such losses as trust, of scruples, of faith, or of sanity.


These dual threats are depicted or dramatized through conflict: the villain or the monster is the agent by whom the objective threat is presented, and the physical threat, in turn, causes the subjective threat.

 
The outcome of conflict involving these two types of threat is resolved in one of at least seven ways:
  1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
  2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat.
  3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat.
  4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
  5. The protagonist overcomes the subjective threat, but the resolution regarding the objective threat remains unknown.
  6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown.
  7. It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat.


In the hands of skilled writers, these seven permutations can seem to multiply, as various twists are put upon each threat and each possible outcome.

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories often involve both objective and subjective threats. The outcome of the stories' conflicts vary across the spectrum of possibilities.


1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat. Hop-Frog and Tripetta, of “Hop-Frog,” not only overcome the threat of violence and possible death at the hands of the cruel king they serve, escaping after immolating the villain and his courtiers, but they also overcome the subjective threats to their pride and self-respect posed by the king's dehumanizing conduct toward them. Their victory is double; they regain both their physical freedom and their autonomy and self-esteem.


2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat. The protagonist of Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” imagines that an old man with a “vulture's eye” is a menace. He vanquishes this perceived objective threat by killing the old man. However, the police, alerted by a neighbor who'd heard the victim's screams, arrest the killer, and readers realize that the protagonist has not vanquished the subjective threat of his own madness—nor is he likely to escape the additional, real objective threat of prison or, possibly, hanging.


3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat. William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist is a good example of this variation. Father Karras is questioning his religious faith until, in an act of self-sacrifice, he bids the devil to forsake a girl he's possessed and possess him instead. However, when the devil makes the jump from the girl into the priest, Father Karras foils his adversary by leaping to his death from the upper-story window of the girl's bedroom, in which the exorcism had been being conducted. Although the objective threat of possession by the devil overcomes Father Karras, the priest retains his faith.


4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat. During the American Civil War, Second-Lieutenant Brainerd Byring of the Union Army succumbs to his on imaginary fears when, on an isolated portion of terrain over which he stands guard, he encounters a dead enemy soldier. Byring fancies that he sees the Confederate soldier's body moving slowly, stealthily toward him. A captain and a surgeon find Byring the next morning.

He has driven his own sword through his heart, after hacking the dead Confederate's cadaver. The enemy soldier's weapon lies on the ground, unfired, and his body is rotten enough to indicate that he has been dead some days before Byring “killed” him. The fight hinted at in Ambrose Bierce's “The Tough Tussle” has been entirely Byring's own; he has survived neither the objective struggle with the corpse nor his delusion that the body was alive, that the dead Confederate soldier was, indeed, sneaking up on him under the cover of darkness to kill him.


5. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown. The protagonist of Poe's “The Pit and the Pendulum” avoids the objective threat—execution—when the Inquisition that has imposed the sentence of death upon him is defeated by its enemies and he is rescued. It is unclear whether he also triumphs over the terrors of helplessness and the horrors of physical and emotional abuse. The story's ending does not say or even imply.


6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown. In H. G. Wells' short story “The Cone,” the protagonist, Raut, avenges himself upon Horrocks, the adulterer who has cuckolded him, by causing his wife's lover to fall into a furnace. The objective threat to his wife's violated fidelity has been ended, but the murderer himself may not as easily be rid of the humiliation and rage that appear to have driven him to this desperate act. Even if he does vanquish these emotions, he may have to struggle with another subjective threat, for he seems horrified at the terrible crime—the sin—he has committed: “God have mercy upon me!,” he prays, saying, “O God! what have I done?”


7. It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat. Legs and his companion Hugh Tarpaulin escape the mad, self-proclaimed King Pest and his courtiers, who have taken refuge from the plague in the basement of an undertaker's shop, but it is unknown whether the rash sailors also escape the plague that has disfigured the afflicted. They might, in fact, be taking the disease aboard the very ship from which they earlier departed, for the narrator of Poe's “King Pest” informs readers,

the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the street, and made a bee-line for the “Free and Easy,” followed under easy sail by the redoubtable Hugh Tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and puffed after him with the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.
 
If they have not escaped the plague, it is doubtful that they will escape the terror that it will bring and, if the rest of the crew they infect understand that it was they who infected them, it is unlikely that they will escape the ire of their fellow seamen; indeed, a new objective threat may arise, one which costs them their very lives. They may have merely escaped one type of death to flee into hands of a death of another kind.

These seven variations on the theme of an objective threat coupled with an often-related subjective threat provide a fertile foundation for a multitude of treatments so that no story needs to be like another, even if they are based on the same dynamics—or, indeed, a specific dynamic within the seven-fold group of dynamics. Likewise, the same writer can produce a story from any one of the objective-subjective threat pairings or from the same one, treated differently.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

"Eden": A Femme Fatale in the Homosocial Garden

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


Eden (2019) is a short horror film, indeed, lasting approximately six-and-a-half minutes. Three somewhat immature “homies” encounter a femme fatale who looks somewhat like a modern-day vampire. She is extraordinarily strong and quick, and she can open her mouth tremendously wide. Like any other self-respecting femme fatale, she lures male victims with her beauty.

The plot is simple and straightforward:

D. J., Elliott, and Jason, who appear to be slightly drunk, clown with each other as they make their way through dark city streets to Elliot's car. On the way, D. J. (Benjamin Abiola) drops his keys.

In the back seat, D. J. realizes that he doesn't have his keys.

Retracing his steps, he finds them on the sidewalk and pockets them.

In the car, Jason (Bobby Coston) shows Elliott (Charles Brakes III) a photograph on his smartphone: a young woman whose buttocks they admire. Jason tells Elliott that the woman has a sister.

Seeing a young woman (Tayla Drake) at a distance, he offers her a ride. He runs to her, and she slits his throat with a sweep of her nails.

Clutching his throat, he staggers away from her and falls to his knees.
 
In the car, Elliott tells Jason that he's going to “check on D. J.”

On the sidewalk, Elliott sees a trail of blood. He turns and runs back to his car, calling to Jason.

Returning his call, Jason gets out of the car, leaving the door open. He looks frightened as he repeatedly calls Elliott's name.

The car door slams shut behind him. He whirls and takes a couple steps backward.

Turning, he sees the young woman who killed J. D. Her top is covered in J. D.'s blood.

She looks up, smiling. Her mouth, dripping blood, opens impossibly wide.

Elliott's fate remains unknown.


Of course, besides Elliott's fate, the film leaves many other questions unanswered. Who is the predatory woman? What, exactly, is she? Why does she stalk men? Why does she kill them? Why does she feed upon human blood?

There is plenty of room for both plot and character development, but this exercise in filmmaking, in itself, doesn't offer much depth.

The only attempt to involve the action in a theme that transcends the story's action per se is a quotation, apparently invented, which is attributed to an apparently fictitious pontiff, Pope Seymore IV: “Lust of the beauteous garden bait souls of the damned, and only then will they feel the wrath of Eden.”

To begin with, the meaning of the quotation is unclear. “Lust of” suggests that it is the “garden” that lusts and that, perhaps (the rest of the quotation is unintelligible), the garden, to satisfy its lust, “baits souls of the damned.” This reading makes the “garden” the villain and the young men the victims.

How does the garden identify the “souls of the damned?” Or do the “souls” become “damned” simply by virtue of their being baited? In other words, does the garden's baiting of the souls damn them? Alternatively, does the garden's “bait” work solely on souls that are already damned?

In any case, the quotation makes clear that the damned souls experience Eden's “wrath” only after they have been baited by the garden.
 
Of course, the filmmakers may have intended the quotation to begin with the prepositional phrase “lust for,” which situates the lust not in the garden itself, but in those who lust for the garden.

However, even such an attempt as this to infuse the production with depth is awkward. It characterizes beautiful young women as objects; they are flowers in a “beauteous garden,” planted, as it were, to “bait souls of the damned.”

Although, in this reading of the quotation, it is the damned souls' own lust that damns them, the flowers themselves are not entirely innocent; they are the “bait” that excites the men's lust and tempts them to sin, just as the Biblical Eve, in the garden of Eden, tempts Adam to sin. The “flowers,” one of which, metaphorically speaking, Eden appears to be, use their beauty to ensnare men, attracting their lust. In this sense, the “flowers” are no more passive than a Venus fly trap; the women are predators. Therefore, their “wrath” is hard to understand, let alone to justify.

In the Eden short, there is no serpent in the “beauteous garden” to entice the woman who entices J. D. and Jason, unless she is herself both serpent and seductress, a lamia like Lilith, Adam's first wife, according to Jewish folklore.

Perhaps, the filmmakers suggest, there is no need for a serpent as such. Instead, the sexist attitude of the young men makes them vulnerable to the charms of beautiful young women. To some degree, the young men's sexism is informed by the values and the norms of the larger society that nurtured them. The young men's notions of what is proper conduct with regard to women and sex is influenced by the media and by the conventions, customs, traditions, and practices of the patriarchal society in which they live.

Young men are taught, directly and indirectly, that it is acceptable to view women as objects, as “flowers” ripe for the plucking, as commodities that can be bought for the mere offer of a ride, the very offer that J. D. makes to Eden. These attitudes and values and the mores that inculcate them may be the snake in the garden which, in defining roles for young men, also define the complementary roles of young women.

However, Eden is not a typical young woman. She is the predator, rather than the young men's prey. She has turned the tables on her would-be conquerors, making them her victims. The beauty that would normally endanger her becomes a lure by which she snares her male victims. She, a potential victim, becomes the young men's victimizer. If she, rather than the young men, is the predator, it is hard to see how her “wrath” is justified.

Either possibility for reading the quotation, “lust of” or “lust for,” remains problematic. Indeed, if anyone seems worthy of blame, it is the party who entices, not the party who is enticed or, at the very least, both parties are equally to be blamed. Part of the problem derives from the ambiguity of the quotation that is supposed to indicate the theme of the movie, which, of course, is anything but a small error in a work of art.

If anything, the theme of the film seems to be simply that mere attraction to the beauty of the opposite sex can kill a youth. Neither J. D., who offers Eden a ride (possibly for ulterior reasons), nor Elliott, who never encounters Eden during his search for J. D., nor Jason, who simply approaches Eden, does anything to threaten her or in any way acts aggressively toward her. Nevertheless, she kills both J. D. and Jason, and the audience never learns Elliott's fate.

By themselves, the young men are in no danger. They are friends, not foes. They clown with one another, simulating fisticuffs, but they never hurt one another or came close to doing so. Their fighting is a mere pretense, consisting of friendly mock attacks and simulated counterattacks. Separated from one another, they are endangered by the sole member of the opposite sex they encounter on the dark streets.

Eden, the sole female character, is deadly. To be seduced by the charms of the opposite sex is dangerous; in fact, it can be fatal. It is better that men resist feminine beauty in favor of the company of their same-sex friends. Romance involving the opposite sex is dangerous; same-sex friendship is not. Beautiful young women break the bonds between men, disrupting homosocial relationships. Brothers are trustworthy; women are not. These seem to be the ultimate, prepubescent themes, or lessons, of Eden.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Writing Blurbs That Sell

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


According to Tomasz Opasinski, a fifteen-year veteran of movie poster design, a movie poster focuses “on the movie's main plot twist.”

In developing summaries designed to sell their books, writers can do the same thing. Indeed, they should follow Hollywood's example and point their readers toward their own story's “main plot twist” because Hollywood spends considerable money in testing the effectiveness of this approach.


As Opasinski points out, “Poster design is increasingly driven by empirical research, not artistic intuition.” This research involves tagging “the tone and content of posters with keywords” and then tracking which keywords “performed well in the past on similar movies.”


Most writers don't have the financial resources to hire social scientists to conduct original research, so how can writers learn what keywords work for their genre? The solution is simple and effective, but entails a bit of “research” on the writer's part.

Using a web image browser (I like Bing myself), type something like “horror movie posters” (you might also include a time frame, such as “2020” or “2010 through 2020,”) You can also enhance your search term by specifying a subgenre or a particular theme: “horror movie posters 2020 forest setting.” Results are apt to be a bit general, despite the use of such qualifying terms, but it's a start.


Now, a pad and pen beside you (or an open word processing program before you), keep track of words in the movie posters' taglines that are used more than once (and preferably several times). Your resulting list should give you the keywords that researchers have blessed as effective. Use as many of these keywords as possible (and as relevant) in your own story's blurb. (You might practice on familiar movies, writing new [and improved] blurbs for classics such as Frankenstein or The Mummy.)


A poster, Opasinski says must sell a movie within “one or two seconds.” For that reason, in addition to pointing potential audience members toward the film's “major twist,” leaving “them wanting more” and using research-validated keywords, Opasinski says, poster designers also focus on a single “icon” and the use of conflict, both visual and emotional.


Although Opasinski doesn't define “icon,” presumably he uses it in its traditional, denotative sense, as “a sign whose form directly reflects the thing it signifies.” For him, it appears, the leaning bridge over which Tom Cruise, as Jack Harper, walks in the poster Opasinski designed is the “icon” he selected to sell the film. Its meaning is intended to symbolize the protagonist's survival of the catastrophe represented by the “ruined bridge.” It is this moment, presumably, that Opasinski sees as the movie's “first major twist.” He relies on it to sell potential audience members on seeing the film; his poster has led them here, leaving “them wanting more.”

Opasinski says studios provide the keywords that appear on the poster, so we may assume that the copywriter employed them in the poster's tagline, “Earth is a memory worth fighting for.” Earth is home to everyone; the word “memory” suggests that it is of the past. If it has not ended altogether (which, the poster suggests, it has not), it is in some way significantly altered. Perhaps it is to the memory of the Earth as it was, before the catastrophic event, that the tagline alludes, although it's unclear how such a state of existence, now lost, can be “fought for,” unless such fighting involves revenge.

From Opasiniski's observations about his art, we learn several principles to keep in mind as we develop the blurb to sell our own stories:

  1. Select a “single icon” that represents the story's “main plot twist” and the protagonist's emotional conflict.
  2. Keep the blurb as short as possible, and do the targeted readers' thinking for them. (The summary should suggest the theme of the story.)
  3. Use research-based keywords to describe the book's plot.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Poster Pointers: Color, Imagery, Figures of Speech, and Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Artists often learn from one another, especially with regard to technique. In particular, visual artists—illustrators, painters, and the like—use techniques that writers can adopt, just as the reverse is true.


In this post, we'll take a look at how horror movie poster artists use color to express themes, evoke emotions, and sell films. Microsoft's Bing image browser lets users choose the color (that is, the predominant color) of images. (Other browsers may do so as well; I'm not sure.) This ability helps observers to focus on an artist's exploitation of a particular color as a means of highlighting and conveying themes and emotions.


Sometimes, a writer may be able to accomplish something similar, through description, but, even when doing so is impossible, the painter's use of color can show a writer what the painter emphasized; as a result, the writer can view his or her own subject through the eyes of another artist, one who is, in all likelihood, more visually oriented than writers, in general, as we tend to be more linguistic than visual in our orientation.


Against a black background, a poster for Craig Anderson's 2016 movie Red Christmas shows a round, red Christmas ornament inside which is a human fetus, umbilicus attached. The ornament, transformed by the presence of the fetus into a womb image, drips blood. The poster's text, in white font to the left of the ornament-womb, against the black background, reads, “This Christmas the only thing under the tree is terror.”

By using only the image of the ornament-womb, the artist stresses the metaphor which compares the ornament to a mother's womb. The metaphor also alludes to the birth of Christ, for Jesus's birth is celebrated on Christmas Day, a holiday often represented by the colors green and red. However, blood leaks from the ornament-womb, suggesting the fetus's viability is at risk. Thus, red, which is both one of the colors of Christmas and of blood, fuses the holiday with a suggestion of violence. (In the movie, a woman sought to abort her fetus, but the procedure failed when the clinic was bombed, and her child, a son, survived. Now, on Christmas Day, he returns to exact vengeance.)

The poster seems simple, but it attains depth through the artist's expert used of an image that is both metaphorical and allusive on several levels. Writers frequently use metaphors, too, of course, sometimes as central tropes, but, more often, as figures of speech related to specific narrative points, rather than as an all-encompassing, unifying, central trope. By using metaphors more deliberately and purposefully, writers can heighten and enrich the horror they seek to effect. The tip from this artist to writers seems to be not only to think in images, but also to use metaphors to encapsulate the story's theme.

A poster for Alexandre Aja's 2010 comedy horror film Piranha 3D, a spoof of the 1978 film Piranha, both alludes to and lampoons the famous poster for Steven Spielberg's 1975 horror movie, Jaws. Here are the posters, side by side:


In both posters, positioned at the top center, a young, nude blonde swims upon the surface of the ocean. In the Jaws poster, a shark, its mouth open to show its long, jagged teeth, streaks toward the unsuspecting swimmer. There is no accompanying text; the artist is willing to let the images speak for themselves. In the Piranha 3D poster, a piranha, shown close-up, appears huge in relation to the woman above it. Behind this fish, a school of other sharp-toothed piranha crowd the sea. Their shadowy presence looks eerie, as their features are somewhat indistinct, making them resemble fish, but also plants or rocks, emphasizing their primitive, prehistoric origin. They are clearly a species altogether different from that of human beings. The caption, in title case and sea-green letters, beneath the movie's title, which appears in all-capital, blood-red letters, advises, “Sea, Sex, and Blood—Don't Scream . . . Just Swim!”

The Piranha 3D poster's school of piranha, as opposed to the single shark in the Jaws poster, suggests that the latter movie is many times more horrific than the latter film; after all, an entire school of the deadly fish, not a lone shark, are about to attack the helpless swimmer. The unlikelihood of the swimmer's escaping the predatory piranha by swimming heightens the horror, just as the tongue-in-cheek advice heightens the poster's humor.

Since both posters promote horror movies associated with attacks by marine predators, their dominant color is green; however, the Jaws poster also employs shades and hues of blue (another sea color, reflective of the sky), while Piranha 3D includes grays and red (in the title). In the latter poster, the swimmer is also more clearly seen, as is her golden skin and her blonde hair, which helps her assume presence among the predatory fish that are about to attack her. The woman's placement near the top of each poster devotes much more room to depict the ocean below her. She is small, in comparison to the shark or the school of piranha, which emphasizes her helplessness while highlighting the shark or the size of the school of piranha, which makes them seem all the more formidable.

What lesson does the Piranha 3D poster offer horror novelists and short story writers? If a story is to include humor alongside horror, the humor is apt to arise from the situation. Although the situation itself is horrific, the humor is accomplished by undercutting the horror. The story alternates between presenting scenes that are truly horrific and, at the end (or, sometimes, during) the same scenes, undermining the horror, perhaps with ludicrous advice (swim—maybe you can outpace the piranha) or some other means. Mixing humor and horror is difficult. Before attempting such a feat, it is a good idea to study how screenwriters accomplish this task. Buffy the Vampire Slayer offers some excellent examples.

These posters also show the need to design the action of a scene to maximize its horror. The woman's comparably small size, her isolation—she is alone in the sea—and her utter helplessness in the face of predators much larger than she, increase the horror of her situation. At the same time, the poster's design focuses the action of the scene on the conflict between the woman, as victim, and the shark or piranha as monstrous creatures intent upon attacking, killing, and gorging upon her, even before she dies. A well-planned combination of images can both direct action and unify the scene in which it occurs.


Some horror movie posters use a dominant color because the color is suggested by the film's title (Red Eye, Red Water, Red Christmas); because the color is associated with a holiday or the season of the year during which the story unfolds (Red Christmas uses red; Halloween, orange); because the color has symbolic associations with the movie's subject matter (Red Eye's caption makes it plain that this is one of the reasons for its use of red: “He wants to see your insides”); because it contrasts sharply with, and, therefore, emphasizes, the subject matter or its representation, in the case of The Eyes of Laura Mars, by way of a synecdoche, which shows the whites of her eyes against her shadowed face and a black background); or, in some cases, as an alternate way to convey a condition or a situation (dark blue is often used to represent darkness, as it is in the poster for Poltergeist and many other films, because black is too dark). Doubtlessly, there are many other reasons that a particular color is chosen. What is done with the color is what separates amateur designers and artists from the pros. Use the color selection tab on Bing or the image browser of your choice, and see what you can discover.


Many other horror movie posters show how carefully planned images can convey unity, theme, action, emotion, and other elements of a story using color, the positioning of models (in stories, characters), settings, figures of speech, lighting, camera angles, points of view, and other elements of storytelling and cinema. Studying them can suggest similar ways of accomplishing these goals in a novel or a short story.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Underscoring Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror movies aren't about stubbing one's toe. They're about life-and-death struggles, about suffering life-threatening injuries, about being driven insane.

But they can be about subtler, but equally horrific, experiences, although they seldom are.




In my own urban fantasy novel, A Whole World Full of Hurt, one scene is about some worm-like monster that consumes a woman from within, on her wedding day, as she stands at the altar, about to exchange vows with her husband-to-be. The subtext relates to a bride's anxiety about entering a lifelong relationship and her questions, largely unconscious, perhaps, about what could go wrong with such a union.

Every scene in a horror novel should have a deeper layer, a theme beyond the literal horror, that goes to the heart of being human in a hostile world. (For example, the scene previous to that which involves the bride on her day of days concerns a college student who feels guilty about not spending enough time with his younger brother; collecting for the newspaper from one of his kid brother's peskier customers is an attempt to rectify such neglect, but it doesn't go well.)

By coupling scenes of horror with existential situations and predicaments, writers give symbolic significance to such action scenes, thereby enriching the story. Stories, even horror stories, are about people (i. e., characters), after all, not about mere incidents in themselves.




In A Whole World Full of Hurt, the scene involving the worm-things came to me, from who-knows-where—my imagination, the stockpile of horrific imagery I've accumulated over the years, my own unconscious fears?—as I wrote the scene. I hadn't planned it. I had worked out the structure of the novel, knew who most of the characters were, and had the setting firmly in mind, but the monsters, the plot twists, and the thematic significance of various scenes presented themselves out of the ether, if you like.




That's often not the case with me and with many other writers. Ideas come from everywhere, bidden and unbidden. One source is news, especially, if you're a writer of dark fantasy or horror (if there's really a difference between the two) is bizarre news.

Here's an item, for example, that might easily suggest the basis for a novel of fear and trembling. Part of a headline in a Daily Mail newspaper proclaimed, “Women's breasts 'eat' themselves after they finish breastfeeding.” Remove the quotation marks from around the verb “eat,” and the word acquires a literal, rather than a figurative, meaning: breasts actually consume themselves. By “eating” cells “left over from . . . breastfeeding,” a process known as “phagocytosis ,” breasts revert from their engorged, milk-producing state to their “natural state in a matter of days,” undergoing a type of self-destruction, the article informs us.



Male anglerfish (circled) attached to female; he will atrophy to little more than parasitic testicles.


In itself, this process could make a remarkable short story, if not a novel, but it could also be extended to other anatomical parts that essentially commit suicide after they've completed the process for which they've evolved to perform: the completion of ovulation, gestation, or ejaculation could cause the ovaries, the uterus, or the testes to cannibalize themselves or to be cannibalized by the body. That's pretty much what happens with the male anglerfish.

Different stories would result according to whether a woman or a man knew, ahead of time, the fate that ovulation, gestation, or ejaculation would bring or remained ignorant of this effect until the process was complete. If a person knew in advance that her ovaries or uterus would self-destruct or his testicles would consume themselves or be consumed bu their bodies, what type of character would sacrifice this part of him- or herself and why? Who would refuse to accept this fate and why? What effects would the decision have, either way?




Other news items that might suggest equally bizarre horrors are the one reported under the eye-catching title “Tapeworm Removed From Woman's Breast 5 Years After She Swallowed Live Frogs.” What kind of woman swallows live frogs? A carnival sideshow performer? A starving woman who raids a frog farm (yes, there are such places)? An overweight woman on a tapeworm diet? What would possess a person to embrace such an extreme measure—besides entertaining a rather kinky audience of voyeurs, staving off starvation, or losing a few pounds of unwanted weight? Such a story cries out for psychological and sociological exploration.


The important thing, though, is to associate the horror of the story and its scenes with character and theme. That way, your short story of novel will have something to present besides blood and guts; you will underscore the horror of your story by making it symbolize something meaningful beyond itself. You will emphasize your terror by making it represent something about human beings (your characters) that most people didn't realize or, in rare cases, perhaps didn't know at all.




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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