The Monsters and Heroes of Fiction (Are The Monsters and Heroes of the Self)

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. -- James 4:7

Anything goes wrong in one’s life, from birth to death, can, if properly represented, become a monster, for horror fiction, as we explain in a previous post, is really about suffering and, usually, surviving, loss:

• The death of a baby = horror; what kills the baby = the monster.
• The loss of a limb = horror; what causes the loss of the limb = the monster.
• The loss of an eye or another organ = horror; the cause of the loss of the eye or other organ = the monster.
• Starvation = horror; the cause of starvation--maybe it’s bulimia or anorexia nervosa--or, more specifically, the emotional roots of such a disease = the monster.
• Loss of self-esteem = horror; the cause of the loss of self-esteem (abuse, abandonment, rejection?) = the monster.

A monster can produce offspring, many of which will not look like or act as their parents. The monster that kills a baby may cause a mother or a father--or both--to go insane, perhaps transforming a loving parent into a murderer or a suicide--or both. If the monster was a killer, perhaps the parent or parents will become a monster who takes the law into his, her, or their own hands. The abusive mother or father, or the parent who abandons or rejects his or her child may produce a serial killer when the abused, abandoned, or rejected child him- or herself becomes an adult and starts to slaughter and destroy. Perhaps, such a child will become an arsonist instead, or a sadist, or a master manipulator whose violence is subtle and psychological and all the more devastating because unexpected and unperceived. The sins of the father (and mother), the Bible tells us, are visited upon the children, unto the fourth generation. Monsters have parents; they also have progeny. But monsters can be overcome; they can be defeated; sometimes, they can even be killed. Eventually, they meet their match, and they are neutralized or destroyed. The destroyer of monsters is the hero within, the self that is bold enough and strong enough to meet the monster on his, her, or its own terms, on its home turf, and, single-handedly or aided by friends, go hand to hand and toe to toe against the beast. Gilgamesh is such a hero. Hercules is such a hero. Beowulf is such a hero. King Arthur is such a hero. Frodo Baggins is such a hero. Luke Skywalker is such a hero. Buffy Summers is such a hero. Fiction is replete with such heroes, as is life itself, for we--you and I--are potential heroes, just as it is you and I, as often as not, who are also the monsters. The monster is overcome by the hero’s gaining what he or she lacks. The acquisition of this need constitutes his or her transformation, and this transformation indicates his or her victory over the monster. There is no chance of victory for the murdered baby, but there is for the surviving parents; if they resist the temptation to become monsters themselves, they have, despite the loss of their beloved child, defeated the monster. If a person lives the fullest life possible, without self-pity, seeking his or her own welfare and happiness and the welfare and happiness of others as well, despite the loss of a limb, this person has overcome the monster that has lain in ambush for him or her and is a hero rather than a victim. The same is true of the man or woman who loses an eye or another organ. Resisting the demons of despair and self-pity, of helplessness and bitterness means defeating them. Starvation--which can be spiritual or emotional as well as physical--can be defeated if one is able to find the nutrients, whether of the soul or the flesh or both, that he or she lacks or can find the strength of character and will to defeat the monster of bulimia or anorexia nervosa, whatever hell their emotional roots may be planted in. Learning to love and trust others--and oneself--despite having been abused, abandoned, or rejected means overcoming the monster. There are many monsters. They are everywhere. There are many heroes, too, though, for the monster’s nemesis, its slayer, resides within.

Reversals of Fate and Fortune

By Gary L. Pullman

People--and, therefore, their images and likenesses, fictional characters--seek to acquire that which they lack. This is the basic motive in all fiction, for all characters, whatever their more specific, momentary motive or motives may be.

Biologists tell us that organisms, including people, seek to maintain homeostasis, or balance. If they experience a depletion of nutrients, they become hungry and eat, thereby replacing the nutrients they’ve lost. If pressure builds upon the bladder, they seek to relieve this pressure by urinating. If they feel anxious, they seek to find whatever they need to make themselves feel safe and secure. Writers, whether of horror fiction or otherwise, should make sure that, whatever other, more immediate and specific motive with which a character is blessed or cursed causes the character to act, he or she does so to acquire whatever he or she lacks or perceives him- or herself to lack.

Here are a few examples of what characters may lack and seek to acquire; there are many others. Some are not emotional, but material, physical, or social in nature. Often, the basic motive (the acquisition of something that one lacks) is related to a character’s more immediate and specific motive or motives, as we shall see in a moment, when we consider the motives of Marion Crane, of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho fame.


As Psycho opens, we learn that Marion is having an affair with Sam Loomis. However, she is dissatisfied with seeing her boyfriend on only an occasional basis, and she pressures him to marry her. He says he is unable to do so, because he owes his ex-wife alimony payments and is also otherwise in debt.


After she leaves Sam, she returns to work, where her boss’ latest client, an oilman, has brought the $40,000 in cash as the payment for a house he is buying outright for his daughter, who is getting married. The oilman’s daughter’s imminent marriage and happiness contrasts sharply with Marion’s unhappy, single state, perhaps worsening it in her eyes. The fact that she works for an employer who cares little for her comfort or needs, as is clear when he tells a client that his office is air-conditioned, but the outer office that Marion shares with a coworker is not, makes it easier, perhaps, for her to make her decision to abscond with the money that her boss asks her to deposit in the bank. With this money, she thinks, she can finance her own marriage and happiness. On the surface, the immediate and specific motive for Marion’s stealing of her employer’s money is to make it possible for her and Sam to wed. On a more basic level, she is seeking to acquire the love and companionship that she lacks. The basic, general and the immediate, specific motives mesh.

What is true of Marion is true of other characters--especially protagonists--as well. What about Norman Bates, the protagonist of Hitchcock’s movie? What is the basic, general need that he lacks, and how is it related to the immediate, specific motives for his actions? Toward the end of the film, a psychiatrist, Dr. Fred Richmond, explains all: Norman feels guilt for having killed his mother, who dominated him while she was alive, and seeks to “erase the crime”--that is, to make amends--by impersonating her, by becoming her. He killed his mother after she took a lover following her husband’s death; since he was jealous of his mother’s boyfriend, the psychiatrist explains, Norman believes that his “mother” would also be jealous of any woman for whom Norman feels an infatuation, which is why, dressed as his mother, he kills Marion (and, presumably, two other women who have disappeared in the vicinity of his motel).

Obviously, Norman lacks innocence, which motivates him to seek to acquire forgiveness by atoning for his crime, matricide, even if, in doing so, he must kill again, to maintain the act by which he seeks to acquire forgiveness--the impersonation of his mother.

What is true of Marion Crane and Norman Bates is true of other characters as well. By making sure that your characters’ basic, general needs, or motives, and their more immediate, specific motives mesh, you will create more fully realized and believable characters than you would if you were to motivate their behavior by only the momentary and particular desire to acquire something that is truly but a means to the end of gaining that which, on the more inclusive and permanent (often emotional or spiritual) level, they lack.

Small-Town, Rural, and Urban Horrors, or There Goes the Neighborhood!

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Among other topics in his generous introduction, “Contemporary Horror Fiction, 1950-1998,” to Fantasy and Horror: A Critical and Historical Guide to Literature, Illustration, Film, TV, Radio, and the Internet, Stefan Dziemianowicz describes several subgenres of the genre, including dark fantasy, or “quiet horror”; small-town horror; urban horror; and various modern monsters (the child, the mad scientist, ghosts, the werewolf, the vampire, psychopaths and serial killers), giving insightful overviews of the use of each in the horror of the day.

The topic of this post is Dziemianowicz’s perceptions concerning “small-town horror,” “the tale of rural horror,” and “the tale of urban horror.” All quotations are directly from Dziemianowicz’s introductory essay:

The small-town horror story--which encompasses. . . suburban. . . and. . . rural horror--. . . characterized life in postwar America. . . . In the typical suburban horror story, a small community serves as a microcosm of the world.

People of the community live in harmony, or at least a tentatively peaceful coexistence, until an external threat causes social disintegration along the lines of smoldering prejudice or social preferment. . . . Although in a small number of these stories. . . the values that tie the members of a community together prove instrumental to defeating the external threat, the basic small-town horror story offers a paranoid vision of something gone rancid at the core of small-town American life (213).

As examples of such horror stories, Dziemianowicz cites Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer, Ramsey Campbell’s The Hungry Moon, Stephen King’s Needful Things, Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, Charles L. Grant’s The Hour of the Oxrun Dead, Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives, King’s The Regulators, and Robert McCammon’s Stinger (213). These stories follow the storyline of the invasion, which I outlined in an earlier post, the prototypical one of which is Satan’s invasion of the Garden of Eden.

According to Dziemianowicz,

The tale of rural horror takes a more traditional tack, evoking a world of savagery outside the boundaries of the civilized city and suburb. . . . In the modern rural horror story, visitors or new residents find a heart of darkness beneath the quaint and charming darkness of rustic life. The milieu is either home to legendary monsters that terrorize old and new townsfolk alike. . . or hostage to primitive customs and rituals that have preserved its unique character. Frequently, . . . the rural menace embodies the hostility of the community to outsiders, and of the country to the city (213).

Among stories of this type, Dziemianowicz includes in his list of examples “H. P. Lovecraft’s tales of Arkham, Dunwich, and other insular New England communities whose degenerate inhabitants are linked to ancient primal forces”; Owen Brookes’ The Gatherer, Alan Ryan’s The Kill, Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home, Rob Hardy and Anthony Schaffer’s The Wicker Man, Jack Ketcham’s The Off Season, T. E. D. Klein’s The Ceremonies, and Phil Rickman’s Crybbe (213).

Concerning “the tale of urban horror,” Dziemianowicz observes,

The small-town horror story’s counterpart, the tale of urban horror, tends to make much of the incongruity of primitive horrors taking root in a symbol of modern civilization [i. e., the city]. . . . Even more innovative are those stories that present the city itself as a monstrous incarnation of moral decay, human indifference, and brutal violence. . . . Horrors grow out of the grime, crime, and squalor of the urban landscape. Characters in these stories find themselves in danger of engulfment or absorption by their surroundings (213-214).

This type of horror story, Dziemianowicz says, is exemplified by Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, Ken Eulo’s The Brownstone, Jeffrey Konvitz’s The Sentinel, Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness, Whitney Strieber’s The Wolfen, Ray Garton’s Live Girls, Thomas Monteleone’s Night Train, and Klein’s “Children of the Gods” in the Dark Gods anthology (213-214).

Much contemporary horror fiction is set in small towns, rural communities or locations, and urban centers because these are the places that contemporary people live, and each is a source of horrors characteristic, if not always unique, to itself. One of the sources of enjoyment in such fiction is its insertion of the reader into a world that is familiar, but one in which strange and bizarre incidents occur, seemingly at random, either drawing the folk together or driving them apart or, conversely, allowing the reader a glimpse into life as the other half (or third) lives it.

The country bumpkin can get a peek at the lives of city slickers, or vice versa, or the suburbanite can see how things go among his or her city or country counterparts. It may be reassuring to know that others, elsewhere, live problematic lives in which horror and terror are omnipresent possibilities. Maybe the place where one lives is not all that bad, after all, readers, whether urban, rural, or suburban, may conclude after reading about the lives of their counterparts who have chosen or who are forced to live elsewhere instead of next door. Life may not always be better in the pasture on the other side of the fence, after all.

A well-written story in one of these subgenres, if such subtypes they be, also offers a bit of solace to the reader who does occupy the real-life counterparts to one of these fictional settings. The city resident may face serial killers, rats in the sewer, and the inhumanity of man (and woman) to man (and woman) up close, as it were, and personal, but so does everyone else who lives in New York City, Los Angeles, or Detroit. Misery loves company, and, in cities, large, medium, and small, there are anywhere from several thousand to several million other people in the same boat, as it were (to mix a couple of metaphors).

The same is true, of course, of the city residents’ rural or suburban counterpart; the farmer who tends a hundred-acre farm is isolated, to a degree, perhaps, but there are others of his kind across the country and, indeed, around the world; even a far-flung community, the members of which are separated by acres and miles, is still a community, similar or identical values and practices, concerns and hopes, fears and dreams holding them together. The suburbanite has neighbors--sometimes, one too many (and usually the one next door).

In the “What’s My Line” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the protagonist, Buffy Summers, having encountered Kendra Young, a second vampire slayer, like herself, as the result of a once-in-a-million-years’ accident of sorts, tells Kendra, “I’m a freak,” to which declaration, Kendra replies, “Not the only freak.”

These two teenage girls, saddled with the responsibility to keep humanity safe from demons, vampires, and other monsters, natural, paranormal, and supernatural, take comfort in the knowledge that they are no longer alone, that they are “not the only freak” any longer. The same is true of the reader of horror stories set in cities, in rural areas, and in suburban housing tracts across the country and around the world, thanks, in large measure, to the sort of fiction that Dziemianowicz cites, “the small-town horror story,” “the tale of rural horror ,” and “the tale of urban horror.”

Syntactical Storylines

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

The adjectival subject verbed its object adverbially.

(Example: The old man ate cake quickly.)

The above sentence reflects the basic, normal syntax (word order) of the English language, which can be modified by additions of words, phrases and clauses, as necessary or desirable. Reducing this syntax to one of subject-verb-object, and appending to it a final phrase or clause that identifies or explains its cause, motivation, or reason can suggest a storyline that can then be developed into a plot. Here are some examples, based on summaries in Fantasy and Horror: A Critical and Historical Guide to Literature, Illustration, Film, TV, Radio, and the Internet, edited by Neil Barron:

Most writers can come up with the subject (protagonist or antagonist), the verb (incident or action), and the object (which may or may not be the antagonist). The explanation as to why the incident or the action occurred is what often troubles authors--and it is upon just this item that the whole story hangs, for without a cause, a motive, or a reason, a sequence of incidents or a chain of actions (behaviors) has no meaning. Consequently, the story has no consequence or value. It is merely a meaningless succession of pointless happenings unrelated to one another except by chronology.

One of the beauties of a syntactical approach to creating storylines is that, in compiling a list of examples of the process, such as the one that we have complied here, based upon stories’ summaries in Fantasy and Horror, one can obtain, as it were, a bird’s-eye view of causes, motives and reasons--of the explanatory origins or consequences--of a plot’s incidents or a protagonist’s or an antagonist’s actions, which allows the writer to give significance and understanding to such incidents or actions.

Motivated actions, or behaviors (which, unlike incidents, which are caused, rather than motivated) have ends, or purposes; such actions are goal-directed. They may be directed toward self-satisfaction or the satisfaction of another. In either case, they fulfill various needs that psychologists have identified. Some needs can be fulfilled by oneself; others needs must be fulfilled by someone or something other than oneself; and still other needs may be fulfilled by either oneself, may be fulfilled by another, or may or must be fulfilled by both the self and another who act together, in cooperative interaction, with one another. (Abraham Maslow identifies classes of universal basic human needs that energize, or motivate, human behavior: physiological needs, safety need, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs, and other psychologists identify still other types of universal needs with which writers should be familiar.)

In horror fiction, the past often affects the present, and the present often affects the future. Sometimes, these effects are intended; they are set up by a character on purpose, to initiate future incidents. Other times, they seem to be merely the workings of chance. They may be caused by a character’s performance of a ritual by which he or she hopes to impart a supernatural status to a natural object, process, set of circumstances, condition, or event. They may result from the contact of two points in the space-time continuum that are usually separate. An action may be the result of hubris, or they may be intended to effect catharsis, or a venting of powerful emotion.

The explanation for the incidents that occur or the actions that the protagonist or the antagonist performs may also suggest a back story--or, at least, elements that should be developed and, eventually, explained in the back story. For example, if an architect is motivated to perform ritual murders as a means of “baptizing” the cathedrals he designs or builds, in order to cause later repetitions of these initial killings, the reader, at some point, will want and expect to know why--in other words, what motivates this character to do want to do such a thing to begin with? The character’s immediate purpose, or motive, is to cause later repetitions of the original killings; his or her motive for wanting the initial murders to be repeated might be called the final motive. Learning the immediate cause, the reader will be content to read further, but he or she will expect to be told the final cause as well, at some point in the story, or the character’s actions will, despite the immediate cause having been identified, remain baseless and incredible. Withholding, but ultimately disclosing, the final cause as well is a good mean of maintaining suspense--as long as, at some point, the final cause is also revealed.

Note: All summaries are quoted directly (except where modifications are indicated) from Alan Frank’s The Horror Film Handbook.

The storyline, or premise, of a narrative should normally follow the subject-verb-object syntax that is typical of English sentences and include any necessary articles:

A bishop unleashes a demon.

Usually, the subject identifies the story’s protagonist; the verb, his or her action; and the object the recipient of the protagonist’s action.

The storyline may add words, phrases, or dependent clauses to provide additional information about any or all three of these elements. However, the additional details should be necessary and minimal, at this point. For example, Since this story (Abby) (1974) is set in an African country (Nigeria) and, in fact, the demon itself is a native, as it were, to this country, the bishop’s race may be regarded as significant; therefore, it is mentioned; otherwise, it would not be:

A black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon.

If it is pertinent to the plot of the story to further describe any of these elements, additional words, phrases, or clauses can be added. For example, the type of demon can be indicated; in our example, based upon the movie Abby, the demon is one “of sexuality,” so this phrase is added, after the noun “demon”:

A black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing. . . .

This sentence comprises the setup of the story; it is the inciting moment--the one incident in the action of the story that sets everything else in the narrative in motion, the spark, or catalyst, that ignites the remaining actions of the plot. To identify this moment as the cause of the actions which follow, rather than merely their antecedent, many writers convert the sentence into an adverbial clause by adding “When” to the beginning of the group of words:

When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing. . . .

What was formerly an independent clause (“A black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing”) is now a dependent clause (“When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing”), and an adverbial one, at that, which will modify the as-yet non-existent independent clause that will follow it, completing the sentence. The independent clause (underlined in the example, below) will identify the effect, or consequence, of the cause that the dependent, adverbial clause identifies:

When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing, his daughter-in-law becomes possessed.

As before, if it is pertinent to the plot of the story to further describe any of these elements, additional words, phrases, or clauses can be added. For example, the location in which the daughter-in-law lives may be deemed relevant; if so, it should be identified (as it is here, underlined):

When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing, his daughter-in-law in Louisville becomes possessed.

The consequence that follows from the storyline’s initial cause can itself become the cause of a subsequent consequence, as in the extension of the premise (in which the added consequence is underlined):

When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing, his daughter-in-law in Louisville becomes possessed and he has to perform an exorcism.

This is a fairly well-written summary of Abby’s basic plot, or storyline, although the phrase “and evil-doing” possibly could be omitted. As such, it specifies the three parts of the story, in a cause-and-effect sequence, thereby representing the germ of a logical, coherent, well-structured, three-act premise:

Beginning (Act I): A black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing. Middle (Act II): His daughter-in-law in Louisville becomes possessed. End (Act III): He has to perform an exorcism.

A storyline can also state or suggest the protagonist’s motive, as this one does, in summarizing the plot of The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), in which, here, underlining has been added to indicate the motive:

A wealthy musical genius, the horribly disfigured Dr. Phibes, plans to murder all the surgeons who failed to save his wife’s life and uses methods of death based on the ten curses of [i. e., on] Pharaoh.

In other words, Dr, Phibes is motivated by revenge. This premise could be improved:

A wealthy musical genius, the horribly disfigured Dr. Phibes uses methods of death based on the ten curses of [i. e., on] Pharaoh to murder all the surgeons who failed to save his wife’s life.

Notice that this summary, in addition to suggesting the protagonist’s motive (revenge), also identifies an unusual twist: Dr. Phibes will employ “methods of death based on the ten curses on Pharaoh.” If a story contains such a twist, the storyline should indicate it, as this one does, because it is such unusual twists that add interest to a storyline. However, a writer is still well advised to start with the simplest subject-verb-object method of delineating the original germ of the plot and then add such words, phrases, or clauses that seem justified to present all pertinent details, whether of character, setting, unusual plot twist, motive, or otherwise:

A genius murders surgeons.

The following summary (of The Abominable Snowman) also indicates the movie’s three-part plot structure, the character’s motive, and the setting:

An expedition travels into the Himalayas [Beginning (Act I), which constitutes the inciting moment and includes an identification of the setting as “the Himalayas”] in search of the legendary Yeti [Middle (Act II), including the characters’ motive] and discover the creatures to be monstrous but friendly [End (Act III)].

Notice that this summary could be recast in the “when-this, that” format:

When an expedition travels into the Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti[,] [the team] discover the creatures to be monstrous but friendly.

Even a classic like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) can fit this format:

[When] a young woman steals $40,000 from her employer and stops over at an isolated motel . . . she is killed by a schizophrenic transvestite who believes that he is his own mother.

[Beginning (Act I)]: A young woman steals $40,000 from her employer. [Middle (Act II)]: [She] stops over at an isolated motel. [End (Act III)]: She is killed by a schizophrenic transvestite who believes that he is his own mother.

Although this summary doesn’t state or suggest her motive, the movie itself does, and the summary could easily be adapted to do likewise:

[When] a young woman steals $40,000 from her employer to finance a new life with her boyfriend before stopping over at an isolated motel . . . she is killed by a schizophrenic transvestite who believes that he is his own mother.

Source: Barron, Neil, ed. Fantasy and Horror: A Critical and Historical Guide to Literature, Illustration, Film, TV, Radio, and the Internet.

Frank, Alan. The Horror Film Handbook. Barnes & Noble Books: Totowa, NJ. 1982.