The Monster as (Straw) Bogeyman

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Symbolically, cannibals already represent several more mundane horrors. In “What Libertarianism Is,” John Hospers offers another meaning for them. In writing of “moral cannibalism” (his emphasis), he argues:

A cannibal in the physical sense is a person who lives off the flesh of other human beings. A moral [again, Hospers’ emphasis] cannibal is one who believes he has a right to live off the “spirit” of other human beings--who believes that he has a moral claim on the productive capacity, time, and effort expended by others.

There is no free lunch (pathetic pun intended), however, and moral cannibals’ appetites for the results of others’ hard work must be borne, Hospers points out, by those whom these cannibals devour:

It has become fashionable to claim virtually everything that one needs or desires as one’s right. Thus, many people claim that they have a right to a job, the right to free medical care, to free food and clothing, to a decent home, and so on. Now if one asks, apart from any specific context, whether it would be desirable if everyone had these things, one might well say yes. But there is a gimmick attached to each of them: At whose expense? [Italics are Hospers’.]

In a politically correct period, Hospers’ argument might not go down well with some. Indeed, many might find his assertions a bit hard to swallow--which is why, in fiction (and, in this case, since we’re talking cannibals, most likely horror fiction, at that) often uses fantastic creatures as metaphors for more mundane (and possibly more horrible) threats, dangers, risks, and menaces.

The entitlement mentality is alive and well and living in a neighborhood near yours. However, powerful social and political forces have a vested interest in muddying debate about how much, if any, of one’s time and resources should be taken from one person, a producer (or host), and given to another, a consumer (or parasite). Therefore, fiction creates a sort of straw man, upon whom the painful truth can be unleashed.

Sure, a cannibal may want to eat someone else out of house and home (and heart and brain), but, in depicting such monsters, authors of horror stories are talking about rarities among men and women, not the reader’s friend, neighbor, or brother-in-law (or, for that matter, the reader him- or herself). After all, it’s one thing to want to devour another person’s entrails and quite another to want “a job. . . free medical care. . . free food and clothing. . . a decent home, and so on.” Right?

In times past, the “all-licensed fool,” as Shakespeare calls the court jester in King Lear, could speak freely of matters that, were others to mention them, would cost their heads, under the pretense that, as a fool, the jester was speaking nonsense, after all. Today, our modern fools, the comedians, likewise enjoy fairly wide leeway (although not as wide as that which his or her medieval counterpart was afforded). In addition, writers and other artists, once believed to be madmen and women, possessed of wild muses, or daemons, were granted similar privileges, or “license.” To some extent, they still are, largely because they have, quite wisely, adopted the stratagem of creating the straw man--or the straw bogeyman--as a surrogate for their real targets, whether these targets are those with an entitlement mentality or otherwise.

By unmasking the monster, reader and critic alike are, more often than not, likely to come face to face with a protected minority, attitude, value, or bias of the ruling class or, in America, the reigning political party of the moment. The entitlement mentality, as represented by the “moral cannibal” of whom Hospers speaks, is a conservative bogeyman.

Liberals have their own versions and counterparts, one of which is the ecological philistine who not only refuses to believe in global warming but who also persists in driving gas-guzzlers; in setting the temperature to a comfortable level, regardless of the amount of fuel that is required to maintain such comfort; in championing drilling for oil; and even in displaying the unmitigated audacity of believing that human beings have--or should have--as much a right to the land as the least snail darter. Such threats appear in such movies as Godzilla, Toxic Avenger, and The Happening and such novels as Bentley Little’s The Vanishing and Stephen King’s Under the Dome, about which King declares:

From the very beginning, I saw it as a chance to write about the serious ecological problems that we face in the world today. The fact is we all live under the dome. We have this little blue world that we've all seen from outer space, and it appears like that's about all there is. It's a natural allegorical situation, without whamming the reader over the head with it. I don't like books where everything stands for everything else. It works with Animal Farm: You can be a child and read it as a story about animals, but when you're older, you realize it's about communism, capitalism, fascism. That's the genius of Orwell. But I love the idea about isolating these people, addressing the questions that we face. We're a blue planet in a corner of the galaxy, and for all the satellites and probes and Hubble pictures, we haven't seen evidence of anyone else. There's nothing like ours. We have to conclude we're on our own, and we have to deal with it. We're under the dome. All of us.

There are plenty of bogeymen for both the left and the right ends of the socioeconomic-political continuum, but, in an age of intolerant political correctness, in which freedom of speech (and the freedom of thought which it expresses) is threatened on all sides, in lieu of the medieval fool whose time has come and gone, writers, especially of horror, must disguise the real horrors about which they write by dressing these fiends in the teeth and nails of cannibals or the hidebound fur of ecological cavemen. That way, readers on both ends of the political spectrum can pretend that the movies and novels with which they disagree are really just about fiends who eat the flesh of their own kind (and not men and women possessed of an entitlement mentality) or are about nothing more than subhuman barbarians (and not traitors to the environment).

Democrats, however, know the truth about Republicans. Likewise, no Democrat can pull the wool over a Republican’s eyes. Both parties know which is beast and which is hero. The monsters in the movies they watch in the dark and about which they read in novels, long past midnight, tell them. In doing so, such stories both confirm their worst fears and validate their favorite biases.

Cemeteries: A Matter of Setting Boundaries

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Earlier today, I was watching a movie on the ScyFy Channel. I didn’t bother to watch more than a few minutes of it, and I didn’t make any attempt to identify its title. What was of interest to me was the setting of the particular scene I’d happened to tune in: a cemetery.

 

Readers and writers of horror fiction have--or should have--an affinity for graveyards. When it comes to these places, the older are the better, because modern cities of the dead look more like parks, complete with flowers, than they do burial places.

 

The cemetery in the ScyFy movie was an old one: the stones were weathered; the names and dates associated with the remains of the interred loved ones (long since forgotten, no doubt, in most cases) were obliterated by wind and rain, by sleet and snow, and by passage of slow time; the grounds were untended, home to ragged clusters of weeds and bordered by brush. Skeletal trees stirred among the dilapidated headstones, casting deep shadows across the rugged terrain. There were no mausoleums or other buildings of any kind.

 

Most disturbing of all, there were neither fences nor walls. The lack of such boundaries is the most disturbing feature of the burial place. The fact that there is no clear-cut perimeter means that there is no unambiguous distinction between the cemetery and the surrounding terrain, no specific division between the quick and the dead, no precise demarcation between the natural world and the supernatural realm.

 

When there are no clear-cut boundaries, borders blur. How far beyond the rough confines of the cemetery do its outer limits truly lie? If the burial ground is haunted, how far does its influence project? How distant can its tendrils of evil reach? How far does its decadence and malevolence go?

 

If we were passersby or we were waiting at a bus stop for a bus to stop or we were passenger and driver in a car that stalled just outside the last line of wind-whittled, rain-ravaged headstones, would we be all right or would we be assaulted by zombies or ghosts or ghouls? Would things, once human, rise from their graves, clotted with gore or putrescent with decay, moldy and withered, to shamble forward, toward us, ravenous with hunger or hell bent upon some nameless and unspeakable mission of their own?

 

Without clear boundaries, there may be no limits at all. Of course, these boundaries need not be of iron or stone. They need not be locked behind fences and walls. There need not be a gate across the entrance to the place wherein the dead play host to worms. In horror fiction, conventions are the sentinels who guard the boundary between this world and the next. If they fall, we are imperiled. And, more and more, conventions do fall.

 

For example, for the longest time, a character who was well known, if not well loved, to readers was protected by such familiarity--which had taken the writer, after all, scores, if not hundreds, of pages to establish. Others might suffer and die--no, others would suffer and die, for the genre is horror, after all--and their deaths might be horrific and terrible, full of pain and torment, but this one or these few, whom we know well, in whom the writer had invested so much time and effort, whom we understand and might even like, respect, or love, are sacrosanct and, against them, not even the malevolence of the monster itself might prevail. 

 

That was the convention, at any rate, before Stephen King overturned it in his fiction, killing off as many likeable and well-liked characters as he liked. The result was to increase readers’ anxiety and the suspense of his own work, for in toppling this convention, King also toppled readers’ certainty and easy confidence, opening new possibilities for fear and trepidation. One could no longer be sure which character would survive and which would die. Therefore, any character could suffer, and any character could die. The boundaries expanded, blurred, bled. . . .

Dust Jacket Plotting

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

If you’re like most people, you find plotting a novel difficult, even with such helps as those I have identified and explained in many previous posts. There can never be enough tips or techniques, it seems, when it comes to making (or trying to make) plotting E-Z. So, here’s another tip: write your synopsis as if it’s the blurb inside the dust jacket of the finished book. Doing so is apt to help you to envision your novel as a finished product. It may also help you to emphasize the promotional aspects of your story, those features which are likely to sell your story to the reader (and, indeed, an editor). In preparation for doing so, you might read a couple of existing blurbs. These will get you into the spirit of things and indicate how to ignite your prospective readers’ interest in your story. Here are a couple, to get you started, followed by one concerning one of my own novels. The first sample is from the book jacket of Stephen King’s Needful Things (1991); the second is from the just jacket of Dean Koontz’s Breathless (2009). Each is superbly written.

Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story

With a demonic blend of malice and affection, Stephen King says goodbye to the town he put on the map--Castle Rock, Maine. . . where Polly Chalmers runs You Sew and Sew and Sheriff Alan Pangborn is in charge of keeping the peace. It’s a small town, and Stephen King fans might think they know its secrets pretty well: they’ve been here before. Leland Grant is a stranger--and he calls his shop Needful Things. Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk is his first customer, and Brian finds just what he wants most in all the world: a ‘56 Sandy Koufax baseball card. By the end of the week, Mr. Gaunt’s business is fairly booming, and why not? At Needful Things, there’s something for everyone. And, of course, there is always a price. For Leland Gaunt, the pleasure of doing business lies chiefly in seeing how much people will pay for their most secret dreams and desires. And as Leland Gaunt always points out, at Needful Things, the prices are high in deed. Does that stop people from buying? Has it ever?

For Allan and Polly, this one week in autumn will be an awful test--a test of will, desire, and pain. Above all, it will be a test of their ability to grasp the true nature of their enemy. They may have a chance. . . But maybe not, because, as Mr. Gaunt knows, almost everything is for sale: love, hope, even the human soul. With the potent storytelling authority that millions of readers have come to prize, Stephen King delivers an Our Town with a vengeance, an inimitable farewell to a place his fiction has often and long called home.

This blurb consists of 285 words. Notice that each of its first four paragraphs are of approximately the same length: 63 words, 58 words, 57 words, and 64 words, respectively. At 36 words, the concluding paragraph is a bit shorter. In this short space, the blurb’s author has accomplished a good deal, suggesting the tone (a mixture of “malice and affection”); introducing several characters, including protagonist Sheriff Pangborn and antagonist Leland Gaunt; identifying the setting as Castle Rock, Maine; and establishing the basic conflict, which examines, as its theme, the price that people are willing to pay for the things they want most in all the world. The blurb’s writer has, in the allusion to a famous play, also suggested a comparison between King’s novel and Thornton Wilder’s dark drama of small-town horror. Not bad for 285 words! The blurb suggests the elements that appeal most to prospective readers: intriguing characters involved in an intriguing situation in a familiar location that involves an important theme and is told with flair. Adjectives further indicate what readers will encounter in the novel’s pages: “malice,” “affection,” humor (Chalmer’s shop is named “You Sew and Sew”), the “secrets” of a small town, a mysterious “stranger,” the question of “how much people will pay for their most secret dreams and desires,” and a severe testing of characters.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz delivers a thrilling novel of suspense and adventure, as the lives of strangers converge around a mystery unfolding high in the Colorado mountains--and the balance of the world begins to tilt. . . .

Breathless

In the stillness of a golden September afternoon, deep in the wilderness of the Rockies, a solitary craftsman, Grady Adams, and his magnificent Irish wolfhound, Merlin, step from shadow into light. . . and into an encounter with enchantment. That night, through the trees, under the moon, a pair of singular animals will watch Grady’s isolated home, waiting to make their approach. A few miles away, Camilla Rivers, a local veterinarian, begins to unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring to her door all the forces of a government in peril. At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come together to begin a descent into darkness. . . . In Las Vegas, a specialist in chaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable. . .. On a Seattle golf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements for murder. . . . Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the past begins a trek toward his destiny. In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless, fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the moment between one turn of the world and the next, across the border between knowing and mystery. It is a journey that will leave all who take it Breathless.

At a total of 254 words, the blurb for Koontz’s novel is 31 words shorter than the one for King’s, but Breathless, at 337 pages, is quite a bit shorter than the 690-page Needful Things. In fact, King’s novel is a little more than twice the length of Koontz’s book. The paragraphs of the blurb for Koontz’s novel number 42 words, 62 words, 31 words, 67 words, and 51 words each, respectively. They are not nearly as symmetrical as the paragraphs in the blurb for King’s novel, nor is the information that they impart as specific or clear.

What does the Koontz book blurb accomplish? It identifies the setting, introduces the protagonist and other major characters, suggests a situation of national importance that involves “the forces of a government in peril,” mentions a conspiracy to commit murder, alludes to a movement of mysterious forces, and indicates the narrative’s tone (“fearless and funny”). A bit vague about the details of the novel’s plot, the blurb’s elusiveness underscores the mystery of the forces at work, suggesting that fate may be operating behind the scenes, as it were. As with the King book blurb, the Koontz book blurb also uses adjectives to pinpoint the elements to which readers are known to respond: “mysterious,” “singular,” “isolated,” “unknowable,” “scarred,” “timeless,” “fearless,” and “funny.”

These blurbs are not the full-fledged synopses that editors will want to see when they are deciding whether to green light publication, of course. Their objective isn’t to summarize the entire plot of the novels they represent, but to pitch the basic storylines to prospective readers who are willing to read two or three hundred words to get an idea of what the book they hold in their hands may offer. A full-fledged synopsis will run 15 pages or more. Nevertheless, these blurbs are good starting places for writers faced with the task of plotting the basic idea for their latest (or, for that matter, first) novel. They supply such prerequisites of plotting as protagonist, antagonist, setting, conflict, tone, and theme. They seek an appealing means of orienting the writer’s storyline to readers’ interests.

Here is a blurb for my own first novel Saturday's Child:

Although Crystal Fall, her not-so-secret admirer David Lewis, and their friends Fran Newell and Dee Dee Dawkins crack jokes and behave in the silly manner characteristic of teens across America, what’s happening at their alma mater, Edgar Allan Poe High School, in southern California is no laughing matter. Their new principal, Dr. Snyder, has introduced changes, both to the school’s curriculum and to the way things are done at Poe, none of them good. For example, he not only lengthens the school days to twelve hours, but he also institutes Saturday school. Once open, the campus is now closed. In fact, it has become more like a prison than a school, with the patrol officers, or “trolls,” as the students call them, guarding the campus and surveillance cameras everywhere--even in the locker rooms and restrooms. An odd dress code is imposed, governing even students’ choice of underwear. Strange, whispered messages are repeated all day in the music piped through the school’s public address system. Students are compelled to eat in the school cafeteria, and a secret ingredient has been added to their food. A student health clinic is planned, wherein hypnotized students will receive mental health evaluations--and brain implants. If the new administration wins, personal freedom will be lost forever, and Crystal and her friends will become the first of an army of brain-dead public servants in a new world order. And the odds seem stacked against the teens, for Principal Snyder is backed by top government officials with unlimited resources, including an endless supply of funds and military forces. But the teens are willing, even at the cost of great personal sacrifice, or even death, to take back their school, and Crystal and her friends have a secret ally: God is on their side!

My blurb numbers 295 words: 48 (paragraph one), 87 (paragraph two), 64 (paragraph three), and 96 (paragraph 4), so the lengths are a bit uneven. Perhaps the text can be shortened a bit without losing the hoped-for appeal of the blurb to prospective readers. The relative lengths, in words, indicate where chopping may best take place: the second and last paragraphs are rather longwinded in comparison to the other two. As a rough draft, though, my novel’s blurb accomplishes the same sorts of things as those for King’s and Koontz’s books. Like their books’ blurbs, mine sets the tone; introduces the major players, including both the protagonist and the antagonist; identifies the basic conflict, implying that it is significant; establishes the setting; and suggests the story’s theme. As a means of getting the novel’s basic outline down on paper in a compelling fashion, it’s a pretty good way to kick-start one’s imagination and get the creative juices flowing. Such a synopsis, although far from the level of detail that a publisher would require, also allows one to expand upon the basic storyline, adding details to fill out the plot, develop the characters, describe the setting, maintain the tone, expand the conflict, and convey the theme. Not bad for fewer than 300 words.

The Grand Entrance

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Buffy Summers, the protagonist of the television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that bears her name, moves from Los Angeles to the “one-Starbucks town” of Sunnydale, California. She’s a young, nubile hottie, and, as she ascends the stairs leading up to the sidewalk that approaches her new high school, she catches the eye of Xander Harris as he arrives on the scene, aboard his skateboard (“Welcome to the Hellmouth“). Enthralled by the new coed, he is so busy examining her physical assets, instead of watching where he’s going, that he’s doubled over the handrail with which he collides as his vehicle flies out from under him. Not only is his mishap humorous, and perhaps deserved, but it also has the benefit of focusing the viewer’s attention upon him and, indirectly, upon the object of his attention, Buffy herself--or a portion of her, at any rate.

In another episode, “Lover’s Walk,” the vampire Spike runs over a “Welcome to Sunnydale” street sign as he returns to town.

In “Hell’s Belles,” Xander’s future self (or supposed future self) arrives at his younger self’s wedding to warn Xander not to go through with his marriage to former vengeance demon Anyanka Jenkins. The elder Xander makes his appearance carrying a bright red umbrella.

When Buffy goes to Sunnydale’s bus station in search of the male foreign exchange student who is supposed to stay with her and her mother, Joyce, during his visit to the golden state, she is surprised (as is the show’s audience) to discover that the student, Ampata, is a girl (“Inca Mummy Girl”).

Kendra Young, another slayer, activated, so to speak, upon Buffy’s earlier (and temporary) demise, is mistaken for an assassin, come to kill Buffy (whom Kendra herself mistakes for a vampire after she observes Buffy kissing her vampire boyfriend Angel) (“What‘s My Line, Part I”).



“Faith, Hope, and Trick” introduces not only the slayer Faith who is called after Kendra’s death at the hands of the vampire Drusilla, but the episode also introduces viewers to Faith’s nemesis, an ancient vampire named Kakistos and to his henchman, Mr. Trick, another, lesser vampire. As Faith dances with a young man at Sunnydale’s teen nightclub, The Bronze, his outdated dance moves make Buffy suspicious. Thinking he may be a vampire, Buffy follows him outside when he leaves with his dance partner, only to be astonished to see how quickly and easily the dark-haired beauty dispatches the fiend when he does attack her. Obviously, a new slayer has arrived in town. Earlier, Mr. Trick, chauffeuring Kakistos, orders a soda at the drive-through window of a local fast-food restaurant. Becoming hungry when Kakistos talks about devouring the slayer, Mr. Trick decides to pick up some food to go, and he drags the terrified restaurant clerk through the window, into the limousine.

What these scenes and incidents have in common is that each of them represents a grand entrance of sorts for the characters they introduce. By bringing a new character on the scene in an unusual, dramatic manner, rather than simply having him or her make an appearance in an ordinary, banal way, the series’ writers make the new characters stand out from everyone and everything else, and, from the very outset, these characters are memorable.

Once characters are established as regular or recurring members of the cast, viewers aren’t allowed to take them for granted. Through witty dialogue, the show’s writers keep viewers interested in the characters as the dramatic personae continuously deliver hilarious, often characteristic lines.

Narcissistic Cordelia Chase, for instance, after running over a fellow student during Driver’s Education class and breaking the girl’s leg, exclaims, “It’s the worst day of my life, and she’s trying to make it about her leg” (“Out o Sight, Out of Mind”). In another episode, Cordelia says, “Look, Buffy, you may be hot stuff when it comes to demonology or whatever, but when it comes to dating, I’m the slayer” (“Halloween”).

Xander, likewise, is full of comical one-liners, many of them targeting Cordelia’s vanity and arrogance: in reply to her question, asked while she’s complaining about having been awakened to give him a ride to Buffy’s house, “What am I now, mass transportation?” he quips, “That’s what a lot of the guys say, but it’s just locker room talk” (“What’s My Line, Part I”). Regarding a skimpy outfit Cordelia wears, Xander remarks, “I don’t know what everyone’s talking about, Cordelia. That outfit doesn’t make you look like a hooker” (“The Zeppo”).

The series has much to teach writers, and the importance of having a new character make a grand entrance and of keeping him or her interesting throughout the story (or series) by putting witty words in their mouths are two lessons that the show imparts to discerning viewers who want to be beguiling writers. In a later post, we’ll look at a few of the show’s other narrative techniques.

Equating “This” with “That”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Like most art, fiction is built upon metaphorical understandings and communications of human experience. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the underlying metaphors are frequently fairly obvious. The obvious metaphors for evil may lower the literary and dramatic quality of the series, but it also makes the show a good example for teaching others how the process (this = that) works. The “this” is the metaphor; the “that” is its real-world, or existential, counterpart.

 

For example, invisibility = being ignored is the metaphorical equation that underlies the episode “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” and cavemen’s conduct = boorish, drunken behavior is the metaphorical equation upon which the episode “Beer Bad” is based.

 

To use this approach in your own stories, identify a thing (or, often, a state of existence) that can represent another state of affairs--the one with which your story is concerned. Although you would not explain to your reader that “this is that,” you, as a writer, should be aware of the basic metaphor and its implications, thematic and otherwise. The use of a metaphorical equation in which this thing or state of affairs equals that existential state of affairs will enhance your story by adding depth and complexity to the plot and, indeed, the characters that are involved in the story’s action. 

 

For example, in another Buffy episode, a male ghost possesses men and the ghost of his previous lover possesses women as these spirits seek to work out the issues (guilt, mostly) that resulted from their teacher-student affair and the eventual shooting of the teacher (and her death) at the hands of the student after the teacher tried to end their relationship. Their existence as ghosts allowed writers to suggest that the spirits were in purgatory and to propose that an illicit affair between an older person in a position of responsibility and authority over (in this case) her protégé is not only wrong but also dangerous. The ghosts who haunt Sunnydale High School are themselves haunted--by their pasts. (A similar theme occurs in the movie The Others, which concerns the ghost of Grace Stewart, who is in purgatory because of her murder of her own children, followed by her suicide. However, thanks to its masterful use of situational irony, the film has much more depth and complexity than the Buffy episode, which is, nevertheless, excellent as a one-hour television episode.)

 

To enrich your stories, find the metaphor for the real-life matter you’re writing about and let this metaphorical equation of “this = that” communicate to your reader’s (or viewer’s) unconscious mind.

Reacting with Fear and Trembling

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror posters can be very instructive for writers. Take the one for Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. It shows the movie’s protagonist, Nancy Thompson, a teenage girl, lying in bed, presumably naked (the blanket is pulled up over her breasts, but her shoulders and upper arms, like her neck, are bare), staring wide-eyed; her wild hair is fanned out behind her, upon the pillow. Superimposed upon the headboard (the slats of which resemble prison bars) is a skull with bulging eyes and a bloody metallic hand, the fingers of which are knife- or razor-like blades. The caption reads, “If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all.”

Normally, one would suppose that to wake up screaming implies an unpleasant and undesirable experience--a nightmare--so the assertion that “she won’t wake up at all” unless she “wakes up screaming” is intriguing, just as the advertisers no doubt mean it to be. The poster is instructive for writers because it suggests a way by which irony can suggest a storyline in which it is, indeed, better to awaken than not to awaken at all. What’s worse than a nightmare? One from which the dreamer doesn’t awaken--one that kills.



A poster for Alien warns, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” A poster for the movie Anaconda bears a similar caution: “When you can’t breathe, you can’t scream.” Below this caption are a pair of yellow reptilian eyes and a suggestion of scales lost in surrounding darkness, followed by the film’s title and the promise, “It will take your breath away.” You won’t, therefore, be able to scream; your terror will squeeze the breath--and very possibly, it is implied--the life out of you, just as the gigantic snake of the film’s title will squeeze its onscreen victims to death.

The inability to get one’s breath is terrifying (as anyone who has ever choked, for example, certainly is aware), rendering one helpless, frantic, and unable to call for help. A story about such hopelessness is, like Anaconda, likely to be terrifying, and, of course, there are many ways to render a victim helpless besides having them squeezed by an anaconda.



“What do I see,” the Beatles once asked, “when I turn out the light?” Answer: darkness, and darkness is symbolic of the unknown, of evil, of death, and a slew of other unpleasant conditions and states of mind. What if the night were not just the result of an absence of light? What if it were alive? What if it had claws and fangs and could fly? What if it were a vampire ands sucked blood?

This is the premise suggested by the poster for Bats (the title is suspended, from the top edge of the poster, suggesting bats clinging to the ceiling of a cave or other sanctuary). Two luminous eyes appear in the night sky, above the suggestion of a head and leathery wings. Below the outstretched wings is a cluster of other dark, similar shapes and the silhouette of a leafless tree. To the right is a house, black but for the illuminated square of a window in its side. The roof seems to be lifting into sunset that stretches beneath the darkening sky above the red and gold clouds, as if into an invisible whirlwind. A closer look shows that what first appeared to roof tiles are, in fact, part of a flurry of bats. The congregation of bats represent the night itself and all that darkness symbolizes, as the poster’s caption makes clear: “Where do you hide when the dark is alive?”

This poster reinforces the importance of the use of symbolism and metaphor in fiction. Such figures of speech communicate with readers on an unconscious, almost subliminal, level. Writers are well aware of the unconscious mind’s perception of such implied associations, and they use this tendency to good effect. Stephen King, for example, uses Cujo, his rabid St. Bernard, to symbolize the unfaithfulness of his novel’s protagonist, Donna Trenton, and the destructive effect her adultery has upon her son, her husband, and her marriage.

By picturing one’s story as a poster, complete with defining image and caption, a writer can clarify his or her theme and highlight the source of the story’s horror. Alternatively, by studying the posters that promote existing horror movies, an author can discover emotional links between image and text or between the “this” and the “that” of a metaphor, an antithesis, hyperbolic statement, metonymy, simile, and similar figures of speech.

We think by drawing relationships between perceptions and thoughts (or feelings), and by drawing such relationships indirectly and nonverbally, through associations of color, shape, direction, image, figures of speech, and rhetorical and visual devices, we can suggest the “this” of the ordinary may be associated with the “that” of the extraordinary, the “that” of the monstrous, the “that” of the supernatural, or the “that” of the horrific. The unconscious mind isn’t disturbed by incongruity or logical non-sequiturs. It operates on instinct and emotion, not reason, after all, and the suggestion that “this” is “that” is all the cue it needs to react with fear and trembling.

Characterization via Tarot

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Using the Tarot deck as a shorthand system for establishing the bases of characters can be as effective as any other approach. Whether the mysticism behind the Tarot deck or the Jungian brand of psychoanalysis, which shares some of the same notions concerning human nature and the human condition as the Tarot tradition proposes, is true or even valid is debatable at best. However, fiction, by definition, is itself not true; it needs only to be true to life, or believable, and whatever approach to personality and human behavior appears plausible is likely to be acceptable to most readers. Psychology, after all, is an inexact science, with many schools of thought concerning why people behave as they do, and fiction has always been pragmatic in electing to use whatever theory, of psychology or any other discipline, might promote its own literary aims. Before psychology existed as a study, writers referenced the theory of the four humors to explain human conduct, and some students of human behavior refer, even today, to the ideas of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. Horror writers need be no different than other writers.

So, what can horror writers gain from Tarot? The positive aspects of the cards (especially those of the major arcana) provide traits useful for characterizing the good guys and gals of your narrative, while these qualities, reversed (opposed or blocked), suggest possibilities for the characterization of the bad guys and gals.

I won’t go through all 21 of the major arcana cards. Information about them is readily available. To illustrate my point, I will suggest how three of these cards could be employed to create protagonists, antagonists, and other sympathetic or unsympathetic characters.

In most stories, the protagonist is apt to be an embodiment of the Fool, who seeks a new start, embracing life’s possibilities as he (or she) embarks upon a journey, actual or figurative, sometimes without planning all that well, if at all, for the eventualities that are likely to be encountered. The Fool has a profound, albeit perhaps rather naïve, faith in the notion that he’ll be able to get by, that his needs will be fulfilled, that he will be all right regardless of how much he plans, works, or strives. In fact (especially in a horror story), he may not be, of course, and his shortsightedness and spontaneity might help to bring him to misfortune.

Reversed, the Fool is apt either to have trouble getting started upon his adventure (that is, he may suffer from the failure to launch syndrome), or he might get stuck in his ways, failing to find the inspiration that motivates him to continue the adventure he’s undertaken.

When you think about the Fool, chances are you will recall having read about him in a horror novel or seen him in a film of this genre. Gordie LaChance and his buddies, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio, the boys in Stephen King’s The Body (and the movie, Stand By Me, based upon it), come to mind.



The Sun character is the successful, triumphant man or woman who, having discovered a great truth (or maybe several great truths) about life enjoys pleasure and fulfillment. He or she enjoys his or her day in the sun.

According to Jung, the Devil archetype represents the repression of desires, impulses, and other aspects of one’s unconscious that are condemned by society.

Opposed. This character is subject to emotion and superstition and is apt to reason falsely, taking evidence out of context or reaching warped or twisted conclusions about the facts before him or her.

Blocked, the Sun character suffers from confusion, perceiving things as through a glass darkly, and he or she may have trouble interacting with youngsters.

When you think about the Sun, chances are you will recall having read about him in a horror novel or seen him in a film of this genre. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Willow Rosenberg is an example, as is Smallville’s Lex Luthor.




The Devil card does not refer to Satan or a lesser demon. Rather, this card alludes to unbridled ambition and a lust for power. He or she can be authoritative, powerful, even manipulative and controlling.

Opposed, the Devil character can succumb to temptation.

Blocked, this character is repressed and timid in the face of risk and unwilling to take chances.

When you think about the Devil, chances are you will recall having read about him in a horror novel or seen him in a film of this genre. Victor Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau are examples.