The Lull Before the Storm

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Chiller Channel startles viewers by juxtaposing a serene scene against a horrific one. In one such instance, a man is shown fishing, waist deep in a lake, surrounded by bucolic beauty. Ironically, despite its crueler aspects (the hooking of an innocent creature whose taking of bait is prelude to a desperate struggle that is apt to end in its terrifying, agonizing, and violent death), fishing is associated, by many, with relaxation and the enjoyment of nature.

After the man is shown enjoying the serenity and majesty of the lake, set among the sylvan splendor of a forested mountain, for several moments, a horrific image flashes on the screen, shocking and disturbing the viewer. Text follows, suggesting a purpose for this intrusion of horror upon a scene of pastoral serenity and bliss: “We just wanted to make sure you were awake.”

This technique, sometimes referred to as “the lull before the storm,” including the humorous undercurrent (at times, at least), is a staple in horror fiction, especially in the novel and its cinematic equivalent, the major motion picture. Examples abound, so I will offer but a few, confident that others will recall many additional ones.

The storm doesn’t have to involve violence. It may simply relate terrifying or horrific information, such as the origin of the monster or an account of its previous deeds.

(By the way, it is instructive to consider what storytellers accomplish during the lulls in the narrative or drama’s action. Usually, these are occasions for characterization or the exposition needed to explain the current situation or otherwise advance the plot.)

Example 1: A Nightmare on Elm Street

The Lull: In A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Tina Gray, Nancy Thompson, and Nancy’s boyfriend, Glen Lantz, stay overnight together after both Tina and Nancy have nightmares about a man with a badly burned face and razor-clawed hands pursuing them. Tina’s boyfriend, Rod Lane, joins Tina, and they sleep in her mother’s bed.

The Storm: This togetherness is reassuring for the teens, but their comfort is soon destroyed when the villain puts in an appearance, murdering Tina in her sleep after he enters her dreams.

The Lull: In the same film, Nancy is later taken to a dream therapy clinic, where she is hooked up to an array of scientific instruments while she sleeps in an observation room, behind a glass wall.

The Storm: The presence of scientists and the clinical setting are both comforting--until Nancy has a nightmare in which the antagonist again appears, and Nancy awakens with a cut arm, clutching the would-be killer’s worn, felt hat.

In another relatively restrained, if not serene, scene, Nancy’s alcoholic mother, Marge, provides her daughter with the secret behind the villain’s supernatural powers: he is Freddy Krueger, a child-killer whom Marge and the community’s other parents trapped inside a boiler room and burned to death ten years ago, after he was released from prison on a technicality, having murdered twenty or more children.



Example 2: The Bad Place

The Lull: In The Bad Place (1990), a Dean Koontz novel, Frank Pollard awakens surrounded by strange objects, unable to account for his apparent journeys during sleep.

The Storm: However, he senses that he is being pursued by a relentless assassin of some kind.

The Lull: He is reassured by the skills of the husband-wife team of private investigators whom he hires, Bobby and Julie Dakota.

The Storm: The Dakotas uncover the true nature of Frank and his evil brother, Candy, both of whom were born of a hermaphroditic mother who impregnated herself with her own sperm.

A Twist Upon This Technique: The Sanctuary Amidst Hell

A twist upon this technique, which is also widely used in horror novels and films, is the alternation between a safe house or place of refuge and the hostile territory that surrounds it or the antagonist’s turf.

Example 1: Desperation

Stephen King takes this approach in Desperation (1996). After David Carver escapes from the town’s jail, freeing his fellow hostages, the band takes refuge in an abandoned movie theater, while their adversary, the demon Tak, occupies and terrorizes the rest of the town.

Example 2: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

In its first few seasons, the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) also adopts this approach, alternating between the (relatively) safe refuge of Sunnydale High School’s library and the Hellmouth below or between the library and the factory (and, later, the mansion) that Angel, Spike, and Drusilla occupy.

Example 3 The Island of Dr. Moreau

In The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), such a place of safety exists in the scientific laboratory of the vivisectionist. Without, the jungle is the domain of the scientist’s Beast Folk.

Example 3: The Thing

Likewise, in The Thing (1951), an arctic outpost is the place of sanctuary. Outside, an alien roams the frozen wastelands, attacking sled dogs.

Of course, these sanctuaries provide refuge for only so long; and, sooner or later, they are likely to be invaded, infiltrated, or attacked.

Whether a story juxtaposes a tranquil and reassuring scene against a violent and disturbing one or alternates between a refuge and the domain of the antagonist, the effects are pretty much the same. A false sense of security is created (to be overturned in the next, horrific scene) or the reader or viewer is constantly reminded that the evil thing, the monster, exists just outside the protective walls of the sanctuary and might attack, infiltrate, or invade the refuge at any moment. This juxtaposition or alternation heightens both the sense of goodness and of evil and of tranquility and of horror. At the same time, it reminds the audience that there is no safe place, after all; evil will find us wherever we hide. The only way to deal with wickedness is to accept its challenge, take arms against it as a community, and destroy or banish it.

Of course, even then, it’s likely to come back some other day. . . with a vengeance.

Plotting By Trial and Error

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

• A demon dimension opens under the library of a southern California high school.
• An alien, sent to earth just before his own planet was destroyed, develops superhuman powers.
• A spacecraft explores newly discovered worlds.
• Government agents collect potentially dangerous supernatural artifacts, storing them in a secret warehouse.
• A town is populated by geniuses who work for the federal government, developing top-secret, cutting-edge technology.
• A tabloid reporter encounters paranormal and supernatural threats as he pursues news stories.
  

Each of these sentences identifies the premise of a weekly television series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Star Trek, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

What these premises have in common is that each one provides the basis for a theoretically endless number of episodes. Buffy: What will emerge this week from Sunnydale High School’s Hellmouth? Smallville: What powers will the alien develop, and to what use will he put them, and why? Star Trek: What new worlds are discovered, and what does the crew encounter when they explore them? Warehouse 13:What artifacts have been collected, and which remain? How and why are these objects dangerous? Where did they come from, or who invented them, and why? Eureka: Why research is being done? What effects has it had, if any, on the scientists and the townspeople? Do any of the experiments go awry? If so, what happens as a result? Kolchak: Where do the threats come from that the reporter encounters? What motivates their hostility? What happens when the reporter reports them? Is he believed? (He does, after all, work for a tabloid newspaper.)

Not everyone who is interested in writing horror (or any other type of fiction) is likely to want to write a weekly television series, so why should a writer be interested in a premise that promotes such a project?

Here’s at least one reason. By envisioning even a single, stand-alone story for which no prequel or sequel is envisioned or intended as a series of episodes, a writer can develop several plots relating to the same setting, characters, and situations, choosing from the results the best of the best. If one intends to write only one story, he or she may as well make it the best of which he or she is capable of writing. This approach will provide an author with the means of doing so, providing, as it does, the opportunity for him or her to develop virtually any number of plots using the same themes, characters, settings, and situations. The results? Sequels, prequels, trilogies. . . .

Moreover, if a single, stand-alone story should take off as a series, the writer who uses this approach is apt to have a lot of story ideas available, right from the start.

In addition, this approach allows a writer to envision how and why his or her characters may change as the story progresses. Should A, B, and C occur, what effects would their occurrences have upon the protago0nist six months or six years hence? This approach allows the author to ask and answer this and other questions. Whether the writer shares these perceptions with his or her reader or keeps them to himself, the fact that they have occurred to the writer should help him or her to anticipate future developments, attitudes, behaviors, and incidents, preparing the reader for their eventual occurrence, in the same or a later book, and to make such changes believable and seemingly natural.

Background: The Key to Interpreting Foreground

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Bats’ wings, horns, talons, tails, reptilian shapes, scales, tentacles, multiple mouths equipped with jaws full of jagged teeth, compound eyes, flies, worms, skeletons, corpses, mummies, skeletons, skulls, distortions of face and figure, conical heads, skin masks, blood, viscera, anthropomorphic trees, birds, hybrid life forms, living statues, men and women walking on air, eyes embedded in tree trunks, Santa with an axe, ghost children, bloody tears, alien babies, strangers at the window, vast spaces, disembodied body parts--these are but some of the images one finds in art associated with the horror genre. The fear of the animal within, of the predator, of the grave and the secrets it holds, of deformity, of a confusion of cognitive categories and loss of sense, of madness, of love and trust betrayed, of the strange, of dislocation and dismemberment, of suffering and death--these are the terrors upon which such images are based.

If the foreground is the text, more or less clearly expressed, albeit, usually, in metaphor, the background is the subtext. The background is the whisper that provides the context by which the spoken (foreground) is to be interpreted, and, in artwork related to the horror genre, the background often hints at night and darkness, at the distance of stars, at clouds and fog, at alien worlds, at disorientation, at devastation, at decomposition and putrefaction, at fragmentation, at mystification, at torture, at suffering, at passion, at destruction, and at hostility.

According to Trevor Whittock, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue, in Metaphors We Live By, “against the view that experiences and objects have inherent properties and are understood solely in terms of those properties. . . [that] inherent properties only in part account for how we comprehend things. Just as important is [the fact that] our concepts, and consequently our experience, are structured in terms of metaphors” (Metaphor and Film, 114-115). By comparing the new and unfamiliar with the known, people seek to understand better that which is strange or novel. Often, the creation of metaphors and analogies are means of doing so.

I assert that something similar to this process can occur in the contemplation of a drawing or a painting. The foreground is the overt (known), the background the covert (unknown), half of a complete statement, or vision, that, to be understood must be considered in light of its complementary counterpart. Some of the clearest, or more obvious, examples of the background’s importance to interpreting a work of art’s foreground are seen in the work of fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, whose paintings often adorn science fiction and fantasy paperback novels, but which also frequently exhibit horrific imagery.



In one such painting, a warrior dressed vaguely in the manner of a Viking rushes toward a nubile, nude young maiden who is about to be sacrificed upon a stone altar by a cloaked figure holding a large knife. An alligator, but with wavering tentacles attached to its reptilian tail, lies at the base of the short flight of stone steps that leads to the altar. The background is peopled, as it were, with dark shapes comprised of huge bat-like wings, fanged human faces, lupine ears, and brawny arms, one or more (it is difficult to tell, for the background is dark, and the figures which occupy it are little more than shadows) seize the pale, white corpse of another nude woman who, it appears, was the victim of an earlier sacrifice. Above the heroic warrior, parallel bands of shadow descend, as if they are the dark outlines of a monstrous hand reaching for the would-be rescuer. The background suggests a hellish or demonic cult and, perhaps, the evil god whom the cultists worship and who are about to sacrifice the female victim, thereby offering a key to interpreting the overall image, or scene, that the painting, as a whole, depicts.

In another of Frazetta’s paintings, Queen Kong, a gigantic blonde stands astride the Empire State Building, New York City stretched out below her, circled by attacking biplanes. In her right hand, she holds a miniature version of King Kong. The sky is blue-gray, shot through with wisps of red-orange clouds that resemble used bandages. Obviously, the painting is a spoof upon King Kong, with the roles of the ape and the human object of his simian affections reversed; the background (the city streets below the skyscraper, in particular) helps to establish the context that makes this humorous work intelligible.

A final example should suffice to clarify my point that a painting’s background is--or can be (and probably should be)--an important contextual clue to the interpretation of its foreground. In this picture, Barbarian, a warrior stands atop a heap of rubble, a nude woman lying at his feet. The palm of his left hand rests upon the hilt of his sword, the blade of which thrusts into the pile of debris. A closer look at the rubble reveals it to be not only a heap of earth, but one which is strewn with skulls, spines, severed arms, a battleaxe, and what might be a spear. Symbolically, the warrior stands upon the bones and corpses of enemies whom he has bested in battle, an interpretation which seems to be borne out by the delicate images of a huge skull and a cowl-shrouded death’s-head which are close to the same colors--tan, light brown, yellow, and orange--out of which they appear to swirl, perhaps as representations of the warrior’s memories of the evil forces whom he has, in past battles, slain. The yellow and orange colors rise, seeming to flicker, as if they are flames, perhaps suggesting the final fate of the vanquished, whom the victorious hero has dispatched to hell.

Writers can accomplish the same effects as Frazetta and other visual artists by writing descriptions of settings in which details comprise a contextual background which illuminates, on a more or less subliminal level, the significance of a scene’s “foreground” action or characters, thereby enriching their own work. By describing settings in such a way that the descriptions themselves tell a story, the writer can tell stories within stories, the former providing emotional, thematic, or narrative subtext for the latter.

Metaphorical Enhancements

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In his excellent study of cinematic metaphor, Metaphor and Film, Trevor Whittock lists various types of film metaphors, explains how they are created, and offers one or more examples of each kind. In addition, he suggests how these tropes enrich the audience’s perception, understanding, and appreciation of the film’s content. Authors of fiction in general and writers of horror stories in particular can learn much from Whittock’s discussions and treatment of his fascinating topic, including how to use metaphorical descriptions to suggest unconscious, even, perhaps, subliminal thematic nuances and undertones regarding characters, settings, and other narrative elements. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho offers several examples, Whittock contends, of this process at work.

One of the ways by which filmmakers create metaphors, Whittock says, is “by context, which forces the audience to see A as B.” Such a “context is often an emotionally charged one,” he observes, offering the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film as an example. After talking to Norman Bates, Marion Crane decides to return the money with which she has absconded, and her shower, following her repentance, represents a sort of “ritualistic. . . spiritual cleansing,” whereby she washes “away her guilt.” Therefore, when she is “murdered in the shower,” Whittock contends, “our sense of shock is all the greater: We perceive a terrible moral gratuitousness in the crime” (52-53).

Another technique for creating cinematic metaphors, Whittock argues, is to employ situational irony, or “rule disruption,” such as occurs in Psycho, with Crane’s death:

Because audiences. . . feel confident that whatever happens the star will not be killed off, when relatively early in Psycho they witness the murder of Marion Crane who is played by a star actress (Janet Leigh), they experience extreme disorientation. This disruption of complacent assumption, combined with the disruption of another cherished pattern--that someone who repents and washes off her guilt should not be harmed--works to create a disturbing sense of the gratuitousness and insecurity of our existence (65-66).

Another of Hitchcock’s films, The Birds, also makes use of metaphors, both to characterize and to heighten suspense. For example, the director, in an interview with Francois Truffaut, Whittock points out, explained that he had ordered a “road watered down so that no dust would rise because I wanted that dust to have a dramatic function when she drives away”; the truck, Hitchcock says, is “an emotional truck,” signifying by the “tremendous speed” at which it moves and “the sound of the engine,” which is “something like a cry. . . as though the truck were shrieking,” the mother’s “frantic” state (57).

Whittock identifies the use of an objective correlative as a means of creating cinematic metaphors that can serve the interests of suspense and characterization as well, citing an example from The Birds: “the five broken teacups” in Mrs. Brenner’s house, broken by in an attack by the birds, he says, represents both “the damage done by the birds that have attacked the house” and “Mrs. Brenner’s tense fragility, glimpsed in her endeavors to preserve a domestic and unchanging home life,” functioning “as an objective correlative for the deep-seated anxieties now surfacing in Mrs. Brenner” (62-63).

Finally, in a quotation of Hitchcock at the outset of Whittock’s study, the famed director himself comments on metaphors that he created in The Birds:

At the beginning of the film we show Rod Taylor in the bird shop. He catches the canary that has escaped from its cage, and after putting it back, he says: I’m putting you back in your gilded cage, Melanie Daniels.’ I added that sentence during the shooting because I felt it added to her characterisation [sic] as a wealthy, shallow playgirl. And later on, when the gulls attack the village, Melanie Daniels takes refuge in a glass telephone booth and I show her as a bird in a cage. This time it isn’t a gilded cage, but a cage of misery (1).

Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Let's start with that old pedagogical favorite, a--

Pop quiz:

1. Star Trek’s Data is

A. an android
B. a cyborg
C. a robot
D. none of the above

2. Terminator is

A. an android
B. a cyborg
C. a robot
D. none of the above

3. Blade Runner’s replicants are

A. androids
B. cyborgs
C. robots
D. all of the above

4. Forbidden Planet’s Robby is

A. an android
B. a cyborg
C. a robot
D. none of the above

5. The Bionic Woman and the Six-Million-Dollar Man are

A. androids
B. cyborgs
C. robots
D. none of the above

A mainstay of science fiction, androids, cyborgs, and robots feature in both fantasy and horror fiction as well. Therefore, it behooves writers to know the difference between these creatures, as, sooner or later, one or more of them is apt to appear in one’s sort story, novel, or screenplay.

Fortunately, Daniel Dinello tackles these distinctions in Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology. I’ve taken the liberty of juxtaposing the differences in this handy, dandy chart, the text of which comes from Dinello’s book (pages 7-8):

The Bionic Woman and the Six-Million-Dollar Man, by the way, are cyborgs.

"Alien Androids": Another Plot-generating Method

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Writers often say that plotting their stories is one of the most daunting challenges they face. In previous posts, I’ve shared a few ideas for generating storylines. In this installment, I share another, which works particularly well for novel-length fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories. For want of a better title, I’m calling it “Alien Androids.” I offer an outline of the method, followed by an example:

METHOD

1. Present a startling claim.
2. Provide several possible justifications for the claim.
3. Combine as many of these justifications as possible to make the claim seem even more supportable and to widen the story‘s scope.
4. Using the claim as the story’s premise, break the plot into the three parts common to horror fiction:
   a. Bizarre incidents occur.
   b. The protagonist discovers the cause of the incidents.
   c. The protagonist uses his or her newfound knowledge to restore order.
5. Repeat 2-4 with a different set of justifications, and then select whichever of the results seems to represent the better basis for the story.

EXAMPLE

1. Startling claim: Aliens are actually androids created by the U. S. government.
2. Justifications. The aliens are created to unite the world’s nations against a common foe, to create a secular religion to replace other faiths, to unite humanity indoctrinate people according to predetermined “alien” objectives, to occupy bored citizens by enlisting them to in the global fight against the invaders, to reenergize citizens’ interest in space exploration, and to redirect people’s focus from social and political problems
3. Combined justifications: all of these justifications can be used. Some of the alien androids can be described as hostile and others as peaceful. The nations unite against the former, whereas the latter are used create a new, worldwide faith as a means of indoctrinating humanity according to the “alien’s” creators’ objectives. Whether people combat or follow the hostile or peaceful aliens, respectively, humans will be engaged, rather than bored, and their attention will be redirected from social and political problems. At the same time, the peaceful aliens can promote humanity’s interest in renewing space exploration, possibly as a means of combating the hostile invaders.
4. Break of the story into the three parts common to horror fiction:
   a. Bizarre incidents occur: In various places around the globe, people see UFO’s. Some witness alien visitations. Others report having been abducted by aliens who have conducted experiments upon them, including the collection of their semen or ova. News media report increasing cases of dead, mutilated cattle. Important men and women in various fields of endeavor are reported missing. The number of faces on milk cartons increases dramatically. In an age of unprecedented leisure among humans, during which machines do virtually all the work, a clash of titans breaks out between two groups of visiting--or invading--extraterrestrials.
   b. The protagonist, former Navy SEAL and present Service Agent Adam Drake, discovers the cause of the incidents. The president of the United States, flanked by British and Japanese heads of state, is broadcast in an address to the United Nations. The many reports of extraterrestrial visitors that have occurred since Roswell are true! Two groups of aliens, Hostiles and Friendlies, are at war with one another, and, now, that war has broadened beyond both groups of Celestials to include the nations of the earth, and every nation must decide with which party, it will align. The U. S., Europe, and Japan, as well as other, lesser states, have aligned with the Frendlies, while China, North Korea, and the Arab states have aligned with the Hostiles. Other countries, for the moment, hoping to remain neutral, have sided with neither of the Celestials. However, the president suggests, neutrality will not remain an option for long.
   c. The protagonist uses his or her newfound knowledge to restore order: Recognizing that both alien parties represent a threat to humanity’s welfare, Adam organizes a resistance force to fight the Hostiles while, at the same time, sabotaging the Church of the Friendly Celestials in a two-pronged attack upon the Earth’s invaders. Meanwhile, his army continuously recruits new soldiers, preparing for a long and sustained resistance effort against both the nations’ armies and the Celestials themselves.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 and then select whichever of the results seems to represent the better basis for the story: Not included in this example.
   

The Devil Is in the Details

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

This morning, I awoke to a naked pillow--a pillow that wore no case. Because my mind was in the receptive state that follows one’s awakening (as it also precedes one’s slumbering)--the best time, incidentally, for conceiving ideas for stories!--I saw something, a detail, which, more likely than not I wouldn’t have noticed at all had I not been in such a receptive frame of mind: a decorative feature. Spaced apart by three inches or so, a series of seven bands of stripes, each of which, starting with one, increased by an additional stripe, appeared upon the pillow’s surface, or skin: one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. Someone had deliberately designed this feature, although chances are that few, if any, would ever notice it and that fewer still, perhaps, would care. It was enough that the designer him- or herself had cared to take the time and trouble to add this pattern to what would have been otherwise blank cloth. Seeing the time and trouble that an anonymous someone had taken to add this design to a fabric that few would ever even notice, much less appreciate, made me think about the significance of detail, especially as it relates to writing horror (or any other genre of) fiction. Not only does the inclusion of such details in one’s descriptions of settings (or the physical appearance of characters’--including the monsters among them) help to create verisimilitude, but detailed descriptions also create mood, tension, suspense, fear, and disgust--in a word, horror. Indeed, a judicious use of details can even produce a somewhat subliminal effect, affecting readers (or moviegoers) on an unconscious level. As they do in many other ways, ancient Greek (and other) myths offer writers, especially of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, a prototype of techniques for developing monstrous characters. Some mythical monsters are hybrids, which merge features from two or more actual animals (the centaur combines man and horse). Others are formed by removing a feature that an actual creature typically possesses (the Cyclops has only one eye). Still others are created by multiplying the attributes that a real animal or human has (the hydra has many heads). In many cases, two or more of these techniques are combined, so that, for example, a griffin combines aspects of the lion (body), the eagle (head), and the dragon (wings). Another trick is to replace one thing with another, as is seen in the Gorgon’s hair, in which serpents take the place of Medusa’s and her sister’s dreadlocks. Although a monster such as the griffin might appear more ludicrous than hideous to modern readers or moviegoers, the point is that a more judicious combination of anatomical parts, more appropriate to today’s sensibilities, could produce startling--and eerie or frightening--results. In the version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which Donald Sutherland stars, an image appears that remains firmly embedded in my brain: a dog with a human, instead of a canine, head! The sight of this sight nearly floored me then, and it haunts me yet. And, who knows but that, soon, we might be confronted with just such a real-life monstrosity, for, with both cloning and genetic engineering present-day realities, anything seems possible. Of course, details apply beyond just the physical environment and the physiological appearances of monsters and other characters. Writers should be specific about the abilities of their characters--and their non-human or monstrous dramatic personae, in particular. Stephen King’s monster in It seems to derive from the shape-shifting Greek deity Proteus, whereas Tak, the demon who inhabits the pages of his Desperation, appears to be something right out of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The It villain can take the form and appearance of anyone’s worst nightmare, whereas Tak can leap into and possess anyone’s (or anything’s) body, although, as a result, he causes a biochemical meltdown of his host in not-so-pretty short order. Horror writers, more than any other type of author, need to remember that the devil is in the details.