Techniques of Terror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Judging by the quality, rather than by the quantity, of one's work, Edgar Allan Poe is probably the greatest writer of horror fiction ever to live. (I make the distinction because some Internet polls give first place to Stephen King, who, in his early novels, did sometimes tell amazingly good—and chilling—stories, but who has since declined sharply, his fiction often offering little more than personal invective and political pontification. These polls' first-place awards to King seem to be based on the volume of his output, which is admittedly vast, rather than on its quantity, which is mediocre at best. King himself admits that his style is the “literary equivalent of a Bic Mac and fries.”)

As the foremost writer of horror fiction, Poe exhibits several techniques of terror from which we can learn. In The Annotated Poe, editor Kevin J. Hayes points out several.

In an earlier post, “Writing Dramatic Scenes,” we saw how Poe's descriptions anticipated filmmaking techniques, well in advance of Hollywood studios' use of them. Hayes cites a paragraph in “Metzengerstein” as an example:

The career of the horseman was, indisputably, on his own part, uncontrollable. The agony of his countenance, the convulsive struggling of his frame gave no evidence of superhuman exertion; nut no sound, save a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through, in the intensity of terror (The Annotated Poe, 34).

As Hayes notes:

The cinema has much to offer when it comes to understanding Poe, partly because his work has contributed so much to its development. The great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein found that Poe's writing anticipated visual techniques that would not be fully utilized until the invention of motion pictures. This paragraph provides a good example. Poe depicts Metzengerstein in close-up (the “agony of his convulsions”), pulls back to show him from a distance (“the convulsive struggling of his frame”), and then supplies an extreme close-up (“his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through”). The rapid shifting of images quickens the narrative pace, which the ensuing cacophony of sound—the shriek of Metzengerstein, the clatter of hoofs, the roar of the flames, and the shriek of the wind—further intensifies, thus providing a narrative running start for the horse's final bound up the staircase (The Annotated Poe, 34).

In Introduction a la litterature fantastique (1970), Tzvetan Todorov distinguishes between the “uncanny” and the “marvelous.” That which is presented in certain types of literature, including the horror genre, as fantastic, Todorov says, is usually resolved as being either uncanny (susceptible to explanation via scientific knowledge or natural law) or marvelous (inexplicable via scientific knowledge or natural law). Only that which remains ambiguous at the conclusion of such stories retains its fantastic character. In “Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” Poe sets up a similar “dynamic between the narrator's love of scientific explanation and the supernatural events of the story” by the way Poe describes the story's narrator; as Hayes points out, the narrator, is “a man who has 'a strong relish for physical philosophy'” (37). The narrator's description of the particulars of material objects, such as the ship upon which he embarks as a passenger (“a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak”) also shows the narrator's character as “a man who has 'a strong relish for physical philosophy'” (37). According to Hayes, “Poe has learned well the need, in a fantastic adventure tale, of a credible witness” (38).

Poe's use of blanks in dates, “18—“ in “Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” for example, was not new with Poe. It was an established convention, Hayes says. Used to enhance “mystery” by implying that the story being told is based on “a true story whose details have been deliberately withheld to protect those involved” (37). The device is similar to the notification, at the beginning of a movie—and often a seemingly fantastic film, at that—that the picture is “based on a true story.”

Such a statement may make the dubious incidents seem more believable, despite the fact that movies “based on a true story” often depart substantially from the facts of the “true story” itself. (For example, Backcountry is “based on a true story,” but the roles of female victim and the male survivor are changed, among other alterations of the facts, with the male being killed and the female escaping in the movie version. Likewise, in The Exorcist, the possessed person is a girl, whereas, in the “true story” upon which the film is based, this individual is a boy. Examples of such changes could be multiplied extensively.)

Poe employs the juxtaposition of contrasts to heighten horror, as when he alternates between “static and dynamic imagery” in describing, in “Metzengerstein,” the appearance of “a gigantic ship” at sea (42):

At a terrific height directly above us, and upon the very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered a gigantic ship . . . . What mainly inspired us with horror and astonishment, was that she bore up under a press of [an unfurled] sail in the very teeth of that supernatural sea, and of that ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her, her bows alone were to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim and horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of intense terror she paused upon that giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled and tottered and—came down.

Poe's shift of tense in the same story indicates a compression of “space, time, and information,” that, anticipating “the technique of a cinematic montage,” increases the story's pace, “propelling readers toward its climax” (Hayes, 43).

Through description, Poe suggests similarities, both superficial and significant, between his characters. As Hayes notes, “Making narrator and captain the same height (5'8”), Poe draws the reader's attention to a deeper resemblance between the two men. Both are men of science,” or, rather scientism, “relying too heavily on science to explain everything.” (46).

Even cliches are used for effect in Poe's story, characterizing his characters: “The 'eagerness of hope' and 'the apathy of despair' are cliched proverbial phrases. The narrator's growing reliance on stock phrases suggests he is lost for words as he approaches the unknown” (Hayes, 48).

Poe uses the dialogue that a particular character uses, including his or her choice of words, as a way to suggest subtle motivations for their behavior. In “Ligeia,” the narrator's “mellifluous word pairs—a”thrilling and enthralling,” “steadily and stealthily,” “unnoticed and unknown”—reveal a narrator deliberately shaping personal experience into ornate literary prose,” Dorothea E. von Mucke contends (Hayes, 66).

Poe also enriches the possible implications and meanings of his tales with frequent allusions, mostly to the Bible, to classical mythology, to history, and to literature, but he also refers to folklore, legends, and occult systems of belief. These allusions make his stories seem predicated upon ancient knowledge or traditions, associate them with existing worldviews or metaphysical themes, and suggest his own work is, at times, commentaries or innovative adaptations or extensions of these previous materials.

In summary, Poe uses a number of techniques, the chief among which is description, to accomplish a variety of narrative effects. These techniques include those which anticipate cinematic techniques yet to be developed, dates deliberately left incomplete, descriptive characterization (i. e., characterization via description), juxtapositions of contrasts, deliberate shifts of tense, descriptive motivation (i. e., implication of motive via description), the deliberate use of cliches to characterize characters, and various allusions.

Note: Poe's use of additional techniques of terror may be considered in a future post or two.

Writing Dramatic Scenes Using the Locomotion, or Motive Power, Technique

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Movies have a distinct advantage over novels. The former dramatize, or show, the incidents of the plot as they occur. The latter describes them. Yes, yes, novelists are told to “show not tell,” and, for the most part, most try. Still, their medium is words, not pictures, and even images, or word-pictures, aren't really pictures; they're descriptions of images, written in words. The truth is plain and simple: novelists can't “show,” not really; they can only tell.

It may be argued that what is meant by “show, don't tell,” is not that novelists shouldn't describe action, but that they shouldn't explain things. Explanations, or exposition, as it's called in literary criticism, is the sort of telling novelists are told not to write. Readers don't want paragraphs or, worse yet, pages of exposition; they want action, they want immediacy, they want drama.

Fair enough. “Don't tell” refers to exposition, not description (although, novelists are also instructed, there should be no more description than necessary, either. Provide just enough detail—often a sentence or two will suffice—to convey a general idea of the setting, a character's looks, a building's appearance or whatever and move on. Readers are likely to have seen the very person, place, or thing the novelist is describing to envision it on their own, without seemingly endless descriptions.

Mark Twain

Again, fair enough. Mark Twain said “eschew surplusage,” and he's a writer whose work is esteemed both literary and entertaining, a sometimes rare combination.

Dean R. Koontz

Even with exposition avoided and description greatly curtailed, novelists can keep their writing interesting and entertaining by using a few techniques. Dean Koontz shares a few tips in an interview with The Rumpus. Page by page, sentence by sentence, and word by word, he strives for perfection:

I rewrite the page until it’s as perfect as I can get it, which will never be perfect. . . . The constant rewriting until the page really flows and the prose really excites me and I move on to the next 

page . . . .

Twain also reminded other writers that “there's a difference between lightning and the lightning bug,” suggesting that literary lightning results from using what Alexander Pope, in defining style, called “proper words in their proper places.” In an interview with Brad Crawford, Koontz said:

I like prose to have hidden rhythms; I like prose to have a music beneath the surface. It’s almost never recognized by the reader in a conscious way, but it is recognized unconsciously. It’s why readers feel the prose flow, why it speaks to them. A poet once reviewed one of my books and recognized that entire passages were written in iambic pentameter . . . .Different poetic meters affects us emotionally in different ways. It’s not anything anyone’s going to see, but it’s one of the great techniques to suck a reader right into the heart of the story.

Polished writing and cadence—there's no substitute for them in attracting and holding readers' interest, but there's a tip I'd add to the list of techniques novelists can use to maintain their readers' involvement as they move their stories forward. For want of a better term, I'll call it locomotion, or motive power.

To present a scene using motive power, envision it as images, chosen and arranged according to a specific purpose and a well-considered design, as if the sequence were being shown on a movie screen. Think of the written scene as a filmed shot. Before starting with your own story, watch a scene from movie. Then, transcribe what you see, so to speak, into words. I did this in a previous Chillers and Thrillers post, “Making Every Word (or Image) Count.” The scene I used is the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg's classic film Jaws, but my purpose in doing so, it the earlier post was to consider how “

Young and blonde, Chrissie Watkins runs along a ramshackle fence, pursued by a young man.

Tripping. He falls, but he's on his feet again in a second.

Continuing to run, she glances back, shedding her jacket. 

She pauses, removes a shoe, stumbles onward.  Behind her, the man doffs his sweatshirt.

As he tumbles down a hill at the side of the trail, Chrissie, now completely nude, runs toward the ocean.

Entering the surf, she dives into the sea. By the time the man reaches the beach, she's nearing a buoy some distance off shore.

She sinks. For a moment, she's lost to sight.

Resurfacing, she gasps, water streaming down her face. Smiling, as she treads water, she looks west. The sun is low.

On the beach, the man is a silhouette against the wash of the surf. His outline, like a stretch of low land and scattered clouds, is lit, yellow and pink, by the setting sun. Struggling to remove a shoe, he falls drunk, perhaps.

In the distance, Chrissie resumes swimming, turning her head from side to side, smiling.

Sinking, she kicks and waves her arms.

She surfaces, smiles. Then, her head jerks backward; she's pulled violently downward. 

Her eyes widen. She turns her head slightly to her right, looking puzzled. Her head dips below the surface, then reappears. She looks panicked. In a splash, she vanishes beneath the waves. When her head bobs up, pierces the surface, her mouth is open, her eyes shut tightly, a grimace of terror and pain freezing her features.

A splash, and she is pulled across the water, past the buoy, only her head and shoulders visible above the water. She struggles. She's pulled to the right. She straightens, but, again, she's pulled to the right. Water churns about her.

On the beach, the man, her boyfriend, sleeps.

At sea, Chrissie struggles. Launched toward the buoy, she clings desperately to its platform. It turns. Cast off, she swims toward shore. A moment later, she's seized. Anguished, amid the roiling water, she cries out.

She is snatched underwater.

 

Her boyfriend continues to sleep, oblivious to the breaking waves washing over him.

 

The sky is nearly dark.

Even if we cast this passage in the simple past tense, as is conventional with novels, the sense of movement, of action, of drama that the locomotion technique produces remains intact:

Young and blonde, Chrissie Watkins ran along a ramshackle fence, pursued by a young man.

Tripping, he fell, but he was on his feet again in a second.

Continuing to run, she glanced back, shedding her jacket.

Pausing, she removed a shoe, stumbled onward. Behind her, the man doffed his sweatshirt.

As he tumbled down a hill at the side of the trail, Chrissie, now completely nude, rand toward the ocean.

Entering the surf, she dove into the sea. By the time the man reached the beach, she was nearing a buoy some distance off shore.

She sank. For a moment, she was lost to sight.

Resurfacing, she gasped, water streaming down her face. Smiling, as she tread water, she looked west. The sun was low.

On the beach, the man was a silhouette against the wash of the surf. His outline, like a stretch of low land and scattered clouds, was lit, yellow and pink, by the setting sun. Struggling to remove a shoe, he fell, drunk, perhaps.

In the distance, Chrissie resumed swimming, turning her head from side to side, smiling.

Sinking, she kicked and waved her arms.

She surfaced, smiled. Then, her head jerked backward; she was pulled violently downward. Her eyes widened. She turned her head slightly to her right, looking puzzled. Her head dipped below the surface, then reappeared. She looked panicked. In a splash, she vanished beneath the waves. When her head bobbed up, piercing the surface, her mouth opened and her eyes shut tightly, as a grimace of terror and pain froze her features.

A splash, and she was pulled across the water, past the buoy, only her head and shoulders visible above the water. As she struggled, she was pulled to the right. She straightened, but, again, she was pulled to the right. Water churned about her.

On the beach, the man, her boyfriend, slept.

At sea, Chrissie struggled. Launched toward the buoy, she clung desperately to its platform. It turned. Cast off, she swam toward shore. A moment later, she was seized. Anguished, amid the roiling water, she cried out.

She was snatched underwater.

 

Her boyfriend continued to sleep, oblivious to the breaking waves washing over him.

 

The sky was nearly dark.

This is not a story of our own, of course; it's a scene from a movie. By “transcribing” the scene, as it occurs on film, we mimic the way the film was shot, using short sentences, action verbs, few details, little characterization through description or interior monologue. The emphasis is on action, movement, drama. By writing our own scenes in the same manner, whenever possible (which is much more frequently than many novelists might imagine), we maintain readers' interest and entertain them. Trained by movies, readers will likely appreciate our style, even if only subconsciously. If they like our stories, they'll probably be back for more.

Edgar Allan Poe

One other tip, this one from Edgar Allan Poe (by way of an annotation in Kevin J. Hayes's The Annotated Poe). First, the passage from Poe's short story. “Metzengerstein”:

The career of the horseman was, indisputably, on his own part, uncontrollable. The agony of his countenance, the convulsive struggling of his frame gave no evidence of superhuman exertion; nut no sound, save a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through, in the intensity of terror.

Sergei Eisenstein

Now, Hayes's note:

The cinema has much to offer when it comes to understanding Poe, partly because his work has contributed so much to its development. The great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein found that Poe's writing anticipated visual techniques that would not be fully utilized until the invention of motion pictures. This paragraph provides a good example. Poe depicts Metzengerstein in close-up (the “agony of his convulsions”), pulls back to show him from a distance (“the convulsive struggling of his frame”), and then supplies an extreme close-up (“his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through”). The rapid shifting of images quickens the narrative pace, which the ensuing cacophony of sound—the shriek of Metzengerstein, the clatter of hoofs, the roar of the flames, and the shriek of the wind—further intensifies, thus providing a narrative running start for the horse's final bound up the staircase.

Wow! Words in the hands of a master author who is both a short story writer and a poet can accomplish feats nothing short of amazing.

Using their techniques, we lesser mortals can still improve our own writing—dramatically.

Metaphorical Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Although most of us have a healthy respect for significant incidents, we may dismiss what we see as trifles too quickly. The great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes didn't make such a mistake. Indeed, as he reminded his friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson, “You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.”

Holmes even gives Watson an example of the importance of so-called trifles: “I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth [to] which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.”

Unfortunately, we know no other details of the adventure to which Holmes refers, for it was not one about which he or Watson wrote. Nevertheless, we can assume it constituted a “singularity,” a unique fact or feature, something that stands out because it doesn't fit or add up and which turns out, in his experience, to be “almost invariably a clue.”

Although no writer should ever imagine the matter of metaphors to be a mere “trifle,” some, no doubt, do. Having forgotten the difficulty they experienced in mastering this basic, but most eloquent, figure of speech (or imagining that they have mastered it), some authors seldom revisit it and cease to practice the art of its creation. As a result, they are likely to write less well than they otherwise could—and should—write. Had Claude Monet, in having first mixed red and yellow, obtaining orange, concluded no other shades and hues of the color could be produced that were worth his time and effort, he might never have painted San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight. Great writers, like any other type of artist, much practice every technique to perfect it. 

While great writers' work provide many examples worthy of emulation, other sources of inspiration are also useful, especially to the apprentice or aspiring author. For writers of horror fiction, for example, posters created to publicize horror movies offer quick studies of astute uses of metaphor to advertise, or “sell,” these products. If copywriters, painters, and photographers can sell a film, partially through their use of metaphors, an author of horror stories should be able to “sell” a phrase, a sentence, a scene, or, in some cases, even an entire story through his or her adroit use of appropriate and emotionally powerful metaphors.

The metaphor, we know, is a figure of speech that compares two things (or abstractions, such as thoughts or feelings) that are not alike. A metaphor may be thought of as an equation. One variable, “A,” is said to be equal to another variable, “B”:

E = MC²

wherein, “E” is energy, “M” is mass, and “C” is the speed of light times itself

We can turn an equation around, writing, for example—

MC² = E

Often, a metaphor makes readers aware of a quality that they might otherwise fail to notice:

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.

World = stage

Men and women = players

Exits = deaths

Entrances = births

Often, we make metaphors by stating them directly, as William Shakespeare does in the above quotation (“the world's a stage”).

However, we can create a metaphor indirectly, by speaking (or writing) of an object in relation to one (or more) of its parts. Consider this poster for the movie Teeth: 

We see a young woman lying supine in a bathtub of soapy water. Only her head appears above the water's surface. The featureless white wall above her head does not distract us with color, patterned wallpaper, paneling, or anything else. The water is also featureless, and the layer of soap lying upon its surface makes it seem one with the tub and the wall. Our gaze remains on her face; we are encouraged, in effect, to consider her, to study her. We see that she is young and beautiful. Her skin is flawless, her cheeks rosy, her lips full and red. She looks at us directly, without fear or shame.

As our gaze wanders down the poster, we see, beneath the dark water, rising bubbles and a single red rose which seems to float at about the position the young woman's genitals would be, were they visible to us. The metaphor is unstated, but suggested: her vagina = a rose. The image of the rose recalls the flower's qualities: delicacy, beauty, fragrance. We might also associate the rose with romantic love, for the flower is traditionally a symbol of erotic passion.

Beneath the flower, we encounter a single word, in the capital letters of a serif font: “Teeth.” The word's blood red color is reminiscent both of the rose above it and of the young woman's vagina, which it represents. The vagina is bloody during the moment of deflowering and throughout each menstrual cycle. This rose-vagina, or vagina-rose, becomes more and more complex, as layers of meanings unfold themselves, much in the manner of a budding rose.

This seemingly simple poster has more to offer: the smaller text, also in the capital letters of a serif font, but white, not red: “EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORNS.” White is often a symbol of purity, or innocence, of virginity. If the young woman is a virgin, transforming her from a state of purity and innocence into a woman of knowledge—and of carnal knowledge, at that—and experience, through sexual intercourse, is apt to result in violence, injury, and, perhaps, death, not to her, but to the man who so transforms her. This young maiden is no passive and acquiescent Galatea, but a vengeful Fury. Such seems to be the warning conveyed by the poster's reference to a vagina with teeth, the legendary vagina dentata.

The front cover of a DVD made for the Spanish-speaking segment of the market bears the same imagery as the movie poster for its English-language counterpart (described above), except, instead of the title Teeth, the Spanish version is called Vagina Dentata, and, in case the front cover's message isn't clear enough, text on the Spanish edition's back cover spells out the meaning of the front cover's iconography:

[Vagina Dentata] es la historia un brusco desperta sexual como nunca se ha visto antes . . . Como nuestra protagonista pasa de liderar un grupo de castidad a experimentar sus primeras experencias sexuales de manera traumatica . . . un extrano habita en su cuerpo. Adivine que pasa cuando Dawn O'Keefe descrubre una dentadura en el lugar mas espantoso que usted puedo imaginar . . . Cuidado las chicas buenas pueden morder.

(English translation): [Teeth] is the story of a sudden sexual awakening unlike any ever seen before. . . As our protagonist goes from leading a chastity group to experiencing her first traumatic sexual experiences. . . a stranger lives in her body. Guess what happens when Dawn O'Keefe uncovers a set of teeth in the most frightening place you can imnagine. Beware: good girls can bite.

It may seem that we've gotten away from the original topic of our essay, but we haven't. The text on the back of the Spanish-language version of Teeth merely spells out the consequences, according to the movie's treatment of the topic represented by the double metaphor, “rose = vagina; thorns = teeth”: a young woman's first sexual experiences are traumatic; she responds by murdering her partners, using her vagina's teeth to effect bloody vengeance. For her victims (and for male members of the audience—yes, pun intended—the location of the young woman's second set of teeth is “the most frightening place” they can envision.) The effects presented by the movie are made possible by, if not contained within, the double metaphor.

One can create a metaphor directly, as Shakespeare does with his “all the world's a stage” trope, but a metaphor can also be created indirectly, by associating the qualities of one term (“A”) with the other term, “B,” with which it is linked by comparison. As we have seen, a well-conceived metaphor can accomplish a lot more than simply making us see something in a new light; it can become a vehicle for an entire movie's basic situation. In the case of Teeth, the screenwriters (and the poster's creators) have taken a leaf from Edgar Allan Poe, whose narrator, at the opening to his story “Berenice,” speaks of his having “derived from beauty . . [not only] a type of unloveliness,” but also a situation ripe with horror.

Note: For those who are inclinded toward psychoanalytical, or Freudian, interpretations of literature (as a rule, I am not), Teeth might also be seen as symbolic of the so-called castration complex and as rife with all sorts of unconscious significance.

Subtext: The Key to Greater Storytelling Sophistication

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In the past, when same-sex love dared not name its name, filmmakers whose movies, horror or otherwise, featured gays or gay themes had to rely on coded messages to convey their messages. While such a tactic is not necessary now that mainstream society has embraced, or is beginning to embrace, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender men and women, the approach can be adapted to other uses, offering a subtler, more indirect way of communicating that could help make horror films more nuanced in their presentation of themes in general.

The group of editors who co-wrote an Advocate article, “17 Horror Films Only LGBT People Understand,” identify several of the ways by which gay filmmakers “coded” their homosexual content.

In The Black Cat (1934), Christopher Harrity observes, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff) “keeps dead women in glass cases.” Extreme misogyny, he notes, was a shorthand way, back in the day, to suggest a character's homosexuality.

In The Haunting (1963), Trudy King identifies the “Mary Quant outfits” that Theo wears and points out how she rejects a male character's “advances” while she “coyly” flirts with another female character, Eleanor. A brief mention, in a Metro article, “The V&A is holding a Mary Quant retrospective to celebrate the iconic designer’s work,” suggests their significance in the movie's disguised same-sex context: “defiant 60s hemlines were a symbol of young women shrugging off the more traditional and repressive gendered expectations of previous generations, and embracing a new world where they had more impetus to take control of their bodies and their futures.” Theo (note the ambiguity of the nickname, which could stand for either Theodore or Theodora) wears clothing that signify her unconventional lifestyle. Precisely how, or in what manner, she is unconventional is indicated by her style of dress, her rejections of the male character's advances, her sexually ambiguous nickname, and her surreptitious flirtations with another member of her own sex. Although the evidence is circumstantial, it is also fairly substantial. 

Tracy E. Gilchrist sees the clothing that Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) wears—a “formfitting sage skirt suit and glamorous fur that would make Cate Blanchett’s [awakening lesbian] Carol Aird swoon”—and her “impeccable hairdo that The Birds just can't help dive into”—symbolic of her latent saphhic desires. She is a straitlaced lady, but her beauty and sex appeal don't seem to escape the notice of “sumptuously husky-voiced” Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) who opts for male attire (pants) over feminine clothing. Gilchrist detects a “sizzling . . . tension” between the two women, who appear to represent the butch-femme pairing typical of the sleazy pulp novels of the day. (The movie was released in 1963). But there's more, as infomercial announcers like to say:

Beyond the calculable lesbian energy set off when Melanie and Annie interact, and Melanie’s fabulous wardrobe, there’s an argument to be made for those lovebirds (they’re called lovebirds, after all) as an allegory for forbidden love shaking things up. Bodega Bay was perfectly fine and set in its ways before Melanie, with her progressive ideas and those winged outsiders, turned up and created a feathered maelstrom.

For Gilchrist, it's warrant Officer Ripley's personal characteristics (“laconic sensibility, competence, strength,” not to mention her “cheekbones”) that establishes the Alien (1973) character as a butch lesbian. A lesbian context for the female Marine (who's a middle-management fighting woman, halfway between the ranks of commissioned officer and that of enlisted personnel) is created by the presence of the alien eggs and by the “feminist iconography of tunnels and dark spaces evoking vaginas, ovaries, and wombs, and . . . recurring primal scenes of birth and rebirth.”

According to writer David Chaskin, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (1985) contains a gay subtext because he promoted the movie's “gay themes.” These elements—“leather bars, male shower scenes, and a 'final boy' who is more interested in hanging out with his cute guy friend than making out with the beautiful gal pal”—were directed, Chaskin admitted (after initially denying the “gay themes” were present in the movie at all), at “teenage boys' rampant AIDS-era homophobia.” 

“Subverting gender roles” can also mark a movie as bearing a gay theme, as The Descent (2005) does, claims Neal Broverman, in the film's depiction of women without men as “strong women,” rather than “helpless girls” who must face monsters on their own in the remote cave they're exploring.

In Teeth (2007), the protagonist, Dawn O'Keefe (Jess Weixler) fights “male aggressors” with a weapon unique to her sex—her vagina, which, unlike those of ordinary women, is armed; she possesses an actual vagina dentata. The movie “is a tale about empowering women,” Daniel Reynolds contends. 

Writers can learn from moviemakers who wanted to imply certain themes before it was socially acceptable even to mention such topics in a public forum. Their solution was to use subtext to suggest, rather than to communicate about forbidden lifestyles directly. As a result, they used indirect communication to get their points across to an audience who was in the know or who could relate well enough to the implications of the subtext to figure out its overt significance. This approach doesn't have to be limited to the expression of same-sex themes. The use of subtext can enrich any movie by suggesting, rather than stating openly, by intimating rather than declaring, by connoting rather than denoting.

By exemplifying the behaviors characteristic (or believed to be characteristic) of a group of people—in other words, stereotyping—writers can imply that an individual character is a member of the group whose characteristics he or she expresses. Sometimes, to drive home the point, writers may exaggerate such characteristics or behaviors.

A person who masquerades as a member of a race, nationality, or ethnicity other than his or her own could be shown as speaking and acting as members of the group he or she is imitating generally speak or behave. In short, such a character could impersonate a member of the group. A particular manner of dress, which is associated with a specific group, can help to create the illusion that the character belongs to the race, nationality, or ethnicity he or she is impersonating. Of course, it is likely that an actual member of the group could recognize the character as fraudulent, possibly with violent or even deadly consequences—we're talking horror here, after all.

Just as a character's sex and gender can be disguised by a sexually ambiguous or androgynous nickname, a nickname can suggest that a character belongs to a group of criminals, especially if “Guido,” “Scarface, or “Cool Daddy” uses criminal cant, or “gangster talk”; “The Colonel,” “Jarhead,” or “Sarge” uses military jargon (complete with plenty of acronyms); or “Doc,” “Sage,” or “The Professor” employs the argot of a particular profession, such as medicine, philosophy, or higher education. 

Symbolism can create the impression that something stands for something else. Symbolism often works on the basis of metaphor, the comparison of two unlike objects—and, in fiction, the second object is apt to be the story's setting. In a sense, a metaphor is an equation of sorts, suggesting that one thing (A) = something else (B). If Alien used a “feminist iconography of tunnels and dark spaces evoking vaginas, ovaries, and wombs, and . . . recurring primal scenes of birth and rebirth” to create a lesbian subtext, another subtext can be created by using an “iconography” (visual images and symbols) appropriate to it. To develop such an iconography, use a metaphor. Alien's iconography might have been based on the metaphor Spaceship's Interior (A) = Woman's Body (B). What if a writer wanted to suggest that a Lake (A) is a Mouth (B).

What iconography—which images and symbols—could be used to accomplish this end? Perhaps a wave (tongue) caused by an underwater disturbance rumbling (like a stomach) near a cave (open jaws) could curl over a boat, lifting it upward and backward, into an eddy down which the occupants (food) would swirl (as if being swallowed). Then, a big bubble might form on the surface of the lake, get bigger and bigger, and then pop (as though the lake had belched). A line of cone-shaped buoys could represent teeth. Before and after, people on the shore could be seen eating picnics and people aboard boats on the lake could be seen drinking—one or two might even pour a beverage into the lake, and the water could carry it toward the cave-jaws. When victims die violent deaths on the lake, as surely they would in a horror story, their blood could follow the same pathway as the poured-out beverages.) 

Deception can also suggest that things are other than they appear. Members of organized crime are famous for using legitimate businesses, such as restaurants or warehouses, as “fronts” for their criminal activities. Mafia members have held meetings in restaurants, where, in a basement room, they've committed murders, even cutting up the body so its parts could be parceled out and dumped throughout the city. A mortuary did double duty, conducting legitimate burials during which a double-decker coffin allowed the disposal of both the dearly departed in the upper berth, so to speak, and a murder victim in the lower berth. The restaurant employed a chef, servers, and assistants, and it served meals to the public, just as the mortuary provided actual services to the community. Were a novel written or a film produced with such a plot, saving the truth about what is really happening until the end of the story would make the horror all the more shocking when it is finally revealed. 

Sex-role and gender reversals can occur in horror fiction whether there is an LGBT dimension to the story or not. 

Since horror is a type of fantasy fiction, anything can happen. A woman's vagina can grow teeth. Alternatively, inanimate objects may come to life or, through personification, nature can be embodied by a giantess with the power to create an earthquake simply by shaking her body, grow plants and trees out of her torso, and become solid rock, loose sand, or running water.

By using the same techniques that filmmakers employed in less tolerant times to convey LGBT themes in mainstream movies, today's writers can imply meanings that transcend the literal text, enriching their stories while making them more sophisticated than they'd be without such an approach.

Home Sweet Home, or The End of Writer's Block

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

For most of us, home is _________________. We can fill in the blank with a variety of thoughts and feelings:

where the heart is

where one hangs one's hat

where one can be oneself

a refuge

a retreat

one's castle

We'd be likely to agree with most of these sentiments. That's one reason they've become cliches. A lot of people believe them, and a lot of people repeat them.

Being a cliché doesn't make an idea false, but it does make it common. When it comes to fiction, that's the problem. When it comes to fiction, we want something new, something different, something that's not commonplace. We want a new perspective, a new orientation, a new sense of ourselves and of other people and of our surroundings.

That's where quotations about “home” can help writers. By searching a website, such as BrainyQuote, we can look for uncommon, surprising, even astounding thoughts about home (or whatever other topic we happen to make the theme of a short story, a novel, a screenplay, or a poem.

Along the way, among the more ordinary thoughts we encounter on the topic, we can also get a sense of what “home” represents for individuals and what, in particular, they appreciate it. For example, Irina Shayk states, “Nothing is better than going home to family and eating good food and relaxing.” These interests can come in handy, too, in writing horror—or any other type of fiction.

In reading such quotations, we may find that people define “home” as being much greater than the house in which they live at present; some see “home” as their city or their country, some as the world, and still others as the “universe” or “heaven.” For some, it's a base of operations, for others a starting point, and for still others a point on a circle to which one always returns. Some says their homes, or their, families who live in them, “ground” them, while others believe their children inspire and improve them. For some, “home” is the soul's body or a temple of God. Rather than a retreat or a refuge, some find “home” a prison from which they escape, for intervals, to the city or the country.

When we contemplate the statements others have made about the topic, we should consider them from the perspective of a horror writer interested in developing a plot that centers upon the topic—home, in our example. For example, perhaps our antagonist will invade our protagonist's home, disrupting his or her home life and injuring or even killing one or more family members. (Despicable, I know, but at least, in a story, it's make-believe.)

This is one of the quotations about home on BrainyQuote that I found to be not only insightful and “different,” but also useful as the basis of a possible horror story plot:

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. —Lily Tomlin

In the film After Midnight, college students visit a professor's house for lessons in fear, learning, as the movie poster puts it, “Terror has no curfew.”

Had Stephen King been responding to this quotation, as a writing prompt, the result may well have been his novella Apt Pupil, in which a schoolboy blackmails his teacher, whom the pupil discovers is a Nazi war criminal, into educating him about the nature of human evil. As the story's title suggests, he is an eager and adept student, eventually becoming a serial killer, just as his tutor resumes his killing victims.

What if the “something” the teacher gives our student isn't information or ideology, as in King's story, but something physical? What might such an object be, and what might the teacher expect our student, his or her charge to discover about the artifact? How is the object related to the student's home life, if, in fact, it is at all? For that matter, what is the student's life at home like? (Stephen King wondered this about a classmate of his whose mother was fanatical about her religious faith; the result was CarrieWhite.) And what about the teacher? Should the teacher be a man, a woman, or, perhaps something entirely different, such as an demon (old school) or an alien or a robot (new school)? The possibilities are as unlimited as our imaginations.

A quotation can suggest a lot, if we consider it from the proper perspective, as a man or woman with bad intentions regarding our characters, and apply to it the power of our own minds, hearts, and imaginations. Think of how many topics there are and of how many quotations exist about those topics. There's an inexhaustible supply, and no need, ever, to experience “writer's block”!